Eurotrip Day 2

This day starts wtih the Grimsell pass, a category 1 climb with a 9km descent "to rest up on" for the Furka.  An HC climb.  Originally I'd intended to clear the Gotthard pass on following the Furka, but too much time was wasted at the top of Grimsell warming up with soup and cappuccinos, so Gotthard got pushed back a day.
..just as well.    Furka is the dramatic big climb that brings in the crowds but Grimsell punches over it's weight in my opinion.
 At ~25km of pretty much continuous climbing with pitchy stiff sections all stacked up at the end it beat me up a bit.

Taught me a thing or two about managing calorie intake also.

That said, Grimsell is a gorgeous climb. The road offers majestic views, backwoods isolation, barren snow fields, cobbled old road detours around 'new road' tunnels.  Just fantastic, and I'd do it again in a second. But it was pretty hard too.   Below are just a few shots from the Grimsell climb.

The old road still exists off to one side or another of the newer road in many locations.  Notably where the new road goes through a longer tunnel, the old road typically snakes around to one side, so I took these old abandoned roads whenever possible.  Apart from being awesome, I hate tunnels..

More old road pics.

Cobbles!  My first climb on cobbles!  Surprisingly smooth actually.  Much preferable to the west Quebec rattletrap-collapsing-ashphalt roads most of us are familiar with anyway.

Another first in this pic.  A few actually.  First high elevation alpine lake with icy green water. And my first false summit.   Yeah, that saddle in the view isn't the top.   I was crushed when I crested it to look up at another series of switches.

Finally at the top!  This is the view back along the way I came up.  It was bugger cold here with mad winds. I had to retreat to the restaurant for a bowl of soup and a few cappuccinos to get warmed back up.

This is the view down the otherside of the Grimsell pass.  At the bottom is the tiny town of Gletcsh and rising up towards the center of the frame is the Furka pass.

The view of the Furka switches from a few km's out of Gletch.

Looking back down to Gletch from about 2/3 of the way up Furka.

Trophy shot with Furka pass sign.

 Nice curves down the north side of Furka.  Unfortunately, as was the case coming down from Grimsell, I couldn't let the bike run too much because often (at least higher up) there was melt water running across the corners and the wind was incredible. The gusts must have been hitting 45km/h.  It was crazy. you'd be clipping along and get hit with a gust and the bike would jump over about 16 inches and get redirected.  Consequently I ran it down pretty tame until well down where the wind was more manageable.

Coming down towards Hospental where I would stop for the day.

Numbers for the day;
70km & 2360 meteres vertical.   I wouldn't have guessed a 70km ride could shell as this one did. Cold and pooped.
http://www.bikemap.net/route/540936

Eurotrip Day 1

Riding out of European cities can be a challenge with finding the right roads and not getting turned around but my start went really well from a navigational perspective.  I did have an issue with establishing tire pressure to get started as I didn't bring with me a luftdruckeanseiten   (aka. "pressure gauge". Thanks to the woman at Radsport-center bike shop in Meiringen  for the help with the concatenating german nouns)  My attempt to get it sorted in Zurich was only partially successful.
At this point I'll take the opportunity to reinforce a stereotype.  Avoid triathlon shops for bike service.  The level of expertise of the shop personnel was well below what would be considered 'entry level self sufficiency' for any mountain biker I know.
Anyway, the ride went really well.  I found the secondary road I wanted to take (Albis strasse) to climb up out from Zurich towards Luzern where I was rewarded with this view to start my journey.

The ride from Ober-Albis to Luzerne was just a bit rainy and cold on and off but my new showers pass jacket had a chance to show it's chops.  It really does breathe a whole pile better than any gore tex or alternative I've had a chance to try.  Very happy with the purchase.  I'll perhaps do a dedicated review on it some other time. For now, I was thankful to have bought it.

Luzerne is strikingly beautiful, and that will be a theme throughout the whole trip. Just replace the placename with wherever I was at the time and it applied.

 

From Luzerne I made my way south along the Alpnacher see, Wicher see, Sarnen see, and finally the Lungerer see before heading up the second climb of the day and first legitimate pass! Brunig Pass.  It's a low pass but provides some stiff grades.  The reward is a beautiful view up the valley of lake through which I had just rode.






Along the way I noticed the proliferation of cycling route signs and map points. It turns out Switzerland had over 60,000km of designated bike routes including overland (mountain bike) routes.   Incredible!

Found accomodations, got settled and set about hunting down dinner.  Dinner invariably started and ended like this.

Numbers for the day:
~120km with 2180 meters vertical.
http://www.bikemap.net/route/540933

Eurotrip in the books.

I'll post up a few images and highlights of my Swiss alps "training camp" recently attended.    Training camp in parentheses because that really wasn't at all the focus.  example. The first days arrival-celebration-training camp orientation consisted of several pastries, at least as many cappuccinos all washed down with a pot of hot cheese and 12 beers for dinner.  The second day was  little more low key due to jet lag.

Zurich is lovely. The altstadt is awesome and my hotel is right in the middle of it all.  The arrival and following day are slated for touristy type stuff and last minute bike panic arrangements.   All of which went well.  So, with a couple pics out of the way the next post will be onto the riding portion of the trip.

Race bike to Euro-mule conversion.

This is how the Casati looks all loaded up.  Thats pretty much exactly how it will look for the next couple weeks in Switzerland and Italy.    Actually, I'll be on top of it most of the time, but it looks better without my ugly ass in the frame..

The bags are Epic Designs from Alaska.   The seat bag is a 'Mountain mini' model, the bento box thingy is a 'Gas tank' (size small) and the frame bag is custom fit to the Casati.

These packs are pretty incredible.  The Seat bag which carries all my clothes at ~11lbs weighs less than a unloaded pannier rack and thats not even counting the pannier(s).  I think there is a little over 13lb total on the bike shown.  Only counting the bags and contents so that doesn't include water.

I did a short ride on it a few evenings ago, and the handling is really quite neutral considering.   There is a very slight pendulum effect towards the rear that can be felt when rocking the bike during standing efforts but otherwise it's surprisingly "normal".   

Seated climbing is completely unaffected apart from the weight and standing climbs or efforts are totally fine provided the cadence isn't too high and/or you move yourself over the bike rather than move the bike under you.  If you've ever done loaded touring you know what I mean.  Same effect but much less of it.  Higher cadence and associated faster rocking back n forth of the bike causes the seat bag to sway a little so Tom Boonen type efforts aren't advised ..but really, it is surprising how unaffected it is.

The bike is now disassembled and packed into Fritz's Pika packworks bag which is another really impressive piece of kit.  You can see Fritz's post on the Pika bag here.  

It will be interesting to see how the fine people at Casati  react when they see one of their race bikes turned into a mule for a thunder-arsed Canadian in a few days time..    stay tuned.

Eurotrip

Preparations are wrapping up nicely. 

12 hours and 300kms later

My Ride to Conquer Cancer fund-raising ride last Wednesday was a grand success. I started at 0600, riding at a crisp 7C and was just starting to warm up when the rain began falling. Fortunately, it only lasted about 45 minutes or so. There were many geese, wild turkeys, deer, and a coyote out to cheer me on.

The wind picked up as the day progressed but I spent most of my time marvelling at how beautiful a ride my new R3 is. I had recently been fitted by Mary at Bike2Body and everything just felt right. I switched over to 28mm Grand Bois tires to handle the dirt roads and construction at work so the ride was pretty sweet. Only problem was the lack of clearance with my 3T forks but after a consultation with Matt of Tall Trees fame I solved that problem with a judicious use of tinfoil to shorten the depth of the 3T dropouts. Perfect.

My goal was to ride 250km in 12hrs, but after about 4 hrs I realized a more lofty goal was achievable. By the end of it I covered 302.6km in 12:02. I "cheated" along the way by drafting behind an Ironman athlete friend of mine for a couple of laps, but I figure that compensates for the few laps where I slowed down to enjoy the company of a few friends who were kind enough to join me along the way.

Here's a graph of my progress on the 9.25km course. I owe some gophers an apology.



Some other stats:

Calories burned: 10880
Calories consumed: 3750 (mostly Lara bars and eLoad)
Water consumed: 6L
Average Speed: 26.16 km/hr

Total time stopped over 12hrs: 7 minutes

My back was a bit sore between hours 9 and 11, and my traps were a bit weary, but the only really sore spot was my right foot that didn't like the last hour. Remember to cut your toenails before embarking on one of these things. Post-ride, I did wake up in the middle of the night a bit nauseous, but the only other casualties were a tender achillies and bit of a crunchy knee.

I raised over $1200 towards my ride. Thanks to everyone for contributing.

cheers,
P

Ride to Conquer Cancer

Hey Everyone!

I'll be doing the Ride to Conquer Cancer on June 12-13 on a team of medical physicists (who do both cancer research and treatment) from the Princess Margaret Hospital. The ride consists of 100 miles (a century) each day with the funds raised for Cancer Research.

I was inspired to do this ride as I've watched a number of people around me struggling with cancer, and because I have friends directly involved in cancer research and treatment.

To help raise funds, I'm taking this Wednesday off and riding laps of my campus at work. I'm planning to ride for 12 consecutive hours in an attempt to cover 250km which would be a new personal best for me. I also expect that by the 25th lap that I will be close to setting a new record for tedium, possibly surpassing that time I went camping with a bunch of accountants and marketing folks.

This is my Donation Page and here is the route for Wednesday's ride. Another 10 people at work have agreed to join me for part of Wednesday's ride with the hope of matching the number of kilometers I put in, giving us a total of 500kms.

I appreciate any support anyone can give. A post-event report will be posted on the Big Ring Racing blog.

cheers,
Peter

Day 5 - Asheville NC Industry Nine!! Warning. Massive post.

So, today we drive home.   nothing to look forward to there except warm temps, windows down driving. Sitting on our arses going from fried food outlet to fried food outlet.  At least until we'd left the deep fried states and entered the truck stop states.

But first. Drew and Eric from Industry Nine (who'd we'd rode with a couple days back) said it would probably be ok if we stopped in to see their facility.  So, we loaded up a couple trays of Starbucks coffees and headed off to intrude upon our new friends at their place of work on an early Monday morning.

We arrived and while we could see Eric's car in the lot, there was no other indication we were actually in the right place. No neon I9 signs, no ethereal halo over the building, no rainbow ending on the building roof, nothing.    ..Just like any other job shop.  We entered the building (who's only signage 'Spego' meant nothing to us) and proceeded to poke our noses around corners and doorways with eyebrows raised "Hellooo?  ..helloo???        ...helllooooo.." 's  

nuthin.

we did know we were in the right place though cause there was a childs bike with ~14" wheels laced up with I9 hubs and spokes.     Clearly this is no ordinary job-shop.  Clearly unusual things happen here.

So, we timidly poked our noses through the door labelled "Emplyees only" "eye protection required"
(holding our Starbucks coffee offerings out in front of us like crosses in a vampire flic in case anyone should question our intentions)  strolled around the steel racks and machinery until we found someone who pointed us in the right direction when we blurted out Eric? Drew?

And  so we found ourselves in the womb of Industry Nine wheels.
This is where the last part of the magic happens.  the 'birthing room' if you will.
Eric is seen here lounging comfortably, lacing up some lucky punters wheel, a kaleidoscope of hubs in the background await their turn in the capable hands of our wheelsmiths.

(ugh. I just puked in my mouth a bit reading back that last sentence!  yech. what next? 'it was a dark and stormy night?")

Here Drew is showing us one of the things that set the I9 free hub apart.  There are six engagement pawls, each offset to the next by one half of an engagement tooth period. pawls are active via a tiny leaf spring.  That means three pawls (engaging three teeth each) lock in every 3 degrees for 9 engagement points for every 'click' you hear.

No special tools required to service them and standard sealed cartridge bearings are employed so that access & service is completely within the realm of competent home bike mechanics.

Bearing removal and replacement would be a challenge but apparently they're toying with the idea of a custom bearing cartridge puller.
I'm guessing it would be a tiny version of flywheel puller set up to pull from the inside.  Time will tell.

Looking in, it's a fairly simple arrangement, but as a designer, I know only too well how much time, energy, creativity and sometimes luck it takes to come up with a truly tidy, graceful, effective solution that meets all the criteria.
Any hack can bang off a Rube Goldberg solution if time is short, motivation is low or the 'eureka moment' simply eludes, but dialing in the solution without compromising is way cool.

We left Eric and the guys to they're instruments (bore gauges, DT tensiometers, arbor presses, truing stands etc) to follow Drew further upstream in the manufacturing process.
The tour was run in reverse of manufacturing operations.    Leaving the 'birthing room' we headed up the canal to the previous operation.
Anodizing, Polishing.

This is Drew's domain at I9. If you're lucky enough to get your hands on I9 gear no matter what colour, size or shape your bits are, Drew has had his hands and eyes on your bits first.

The parts shown here are post polish, awaiting the anodization bath of hot acid where a +/- 3 mil porous oxide (rust) coating will form from the corrosion of the acid.  This porous coating is what accepts the dye.  So, parts are dunked in the hot acid bath, left for specified time then transfered to the dye tank where the colour is absorbed by the oxide and voila. We have Bling!

There are many different methods of affecting the anodization process and Drew happily fielded my incessant queries but they're for the most part beyond normal interests so I won't bore you with my geeking out over them.

The polishing step is the only process that doesn't happen in house at I9. The reasoning is that there is so much cotton waste involved as a product of the polishing that it brings with it a lot of environmental concerns with disposal of the waste so for the time being at least the polishing happens remotely.
Worth noting that initially the anodizing was done off site also, but that because the aesthetic quality could not be controlled and consequently parts were failing QC where they end up on the shelf of broken dreams, I9 opened up their own anodizing dept.
..speaks to how seriously they take their QC.

The next step up the canal for us was to the machining room.
We saw the swiss mill with autofeed that turns the aluminum round stock into spokes.

(not sure if the proprietary thread form is cut here or if thats a post process...)

The first shot is just the mill interface.  The second is the discharge chute with a little bit of a spoke poking through waiting to be pushed out to drop into a box below.

This is the round stock autofeed for the spoke turning.

We saw the EDM machine that cuts the pawl engagement rings out of tool steel
here is the off cut (waste) from the EDM process.

You can see the tiny wee kerf and the incredible edges & accuracy that EDM is capable of.
This operation is so time intensive that only a dozen engagement rings are turned out in a day.


The milling machine where the spoke shoulders are cut from the flanges, and the control pc. for dim checks.

 

The lathe(s) where the hub axles and hub bodies are turned down from round stock blanks, and this is the part where, from a manufacturing perspective we can consider ourselves at the point of 'conception'.
As is typical, much is made of the 'conception', but when you get right down to it once you've run a part through a few times and worked out the kinks you're just feeding in plain old round stock and getting on with business.
 ..and when you're caressing holding you're shiny new wheels, few will think on or care about that moment the round stock was placed in the center and door closed around it.

This tour alone made the 30+hrs of driving worth it.  I'd never seen an EDM machine, up close nor a swiss mill and while they're not actually terribly exciting looking themselves when put in the context of making top drawer, sexy-ass bike parts with them it was super cool for moi.
If I wasn't so overwhelmed with the uber-coolness of it all I'd have thought to note when/where the proprietary thread form is cut.  I know from seeing some of the blemished hubs in the recycle box that it happens between anodization and 'birthing' but I didn't see, or think to note it.

Random Pics.
Craig thinking on how to convince our I9 folks that this wheel needs to be with him. That he loves it as no other could, that it's an incorrigible crime that someone else should be allowed to use, abuse, possibly ignore and maybe even leave it dirty and unpolished after a ride.

there is surprisingly little exaggeration in that paragraph.  I think everyone present felt the love in the room and things were more than a little uncomfortable.  Drew wisely departed. (probably to have a shower)




Me holding an I9 road wheel. This time it was my turn to get star-struck and speechless. This wheel weighted less than an angel's fart.   carbon tubular rim. Sapim cx-ray spokes and of course that hub.  It was completely off the f-kn charts.  This wheel restored my faith in a higher power. or lesser power.
like, with this wheel I'd need less power to get my fat arse up hills like.

like, if you threw this wheel away into the wind it would come back and rub itself on your calf purring like a hungry cat.  well, thats what I was thinking anyway which is weird cause I don't really dig cats, but.. anyway, yeah if cats were like these wheels i'd be doing the crazy cat lady thing for sure.

that is all. this is getting dumb and looking at that road wheel again I have to excuse myself..

edit: I'd incorrectly stated the hubs engage at 5 degrees but it's actually 3 degrees.

Day 4 - Asheville NC annual MTB road trip #4

Day 4 was a "recovery ride" day.

so we pointed our bikes up a mountain and rode for views and vistas.  Surprisingly the legs felt pretty good.  ..until they didn't.

Par for the course I suppose.

The trail was exceptionally beautiful.  Smiles make themselves when you're spending time in this landscape.

Laurel mnt trail was a nice even grade incline for the most part.

Nevertheless, a lot of elevation was gained.

So, celebrations were in order, as the ayatollah of Rok'n'Rolla says.  At this point the awesomeness was almost blinding!

At the top where  Laurel mntn connector and Pilot Rock meet we mulled over whether to lurch and bounce our way down Pilot or bomb back on Laurel.

Laurel won handily and didn't disappoint.  no pics due to the incredible speeds (you could actually hear the air being torn!) and suspect skill set of the photographer.

As much fun as Laurel is to climb it's even more fun to bomb down and capped off the riding portion of the trip in great form.  No injuries or mechanicals and only one dismount by yours truly who managed to find the only running water to hammer his arse into thereby turning a capable pair of riding shorts into a sodden dirty diaper. yay. And just in time to get back into the car.    I was kinda pissed but it gave Craig such pleasure that I ended up laughing with him ..at me.

Of course the day doesn't end there. no.  It's Eatin' time!!  a quick change then off to Asheville Pizza and Brewery for a few thousand calories of happy then bed.

Tomorrow a date with Industry Nine!