Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jan 15, 2012, 9:32 pm
Recently I had been thinking about what kind of gear ratios I would need to climb Mount Washington on my derailleur equipped bike. Being an engineer, efficiency is a staple word in my daily mingling with other engineers. So I started to think about gear to gear effect on a multi sp...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Dec 30, 2011, 7:40 pm
"..The wheel consists of a ring of small rubber wheels overlapping a single large wheel. When the large wheel rotates, the U3-X moves forward or backward.."Hundreds of years ago and approaching the Industrial Revolution, we had all sorts of genius and madmen tinkering with devices to propel an age...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Dec 25, 2011, 11:18 am
Readers, After I got hired by Cummins to help engineer/integrate their turbochargers to diesel engines earlier this year, I haven't had much time to concentrate on the blogging aspect. I'm still as passionate about cycling as I ever was, infact I try to commute the 6 miles to work in cold temp...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 28, 2011, 11:08 pm
William Powers, a team member of a new start-up group called PumpTire LLC, informed me a few days ago of their self inflating tire idea. James of Bicycle Design had posted on his blog that he received the same email as well so I figure that this made the rounds to many bloggers in a mass email.
...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 11, 2011, 12:25 am
Staying cool out there? Most of us have gone through or are still experiencing the 'heat wave' here in the United States. Temperatures in some places have taken on record proportions. I remember sweating absolute buckets in mid-July here in Western New York. The same route that I have biked fo...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 28, 2011, 1:43 am
Do bicycle chains get stretch marks? Will smearing cocoa butter on them be a step in preventive maintenance for future? I don't know, but hold that thought for a moment. I, like many, am a fan of chains. For bikes, they present a technology that is  ubiquitous, economical, and proven to work ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jan 18, 2011, 9:01 pm
This sort of thing might come in handy for your investigations. Thanks to Troy Rank, an engineering student at RIT and electric bike tinkerer, for showing me this. The chart lists the aerodynamic drag co-efficient and a host of other performance factors for human powered vehicles. I'm not sure of th...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jan 7, 2011, 10:23 pm
The Cycling News Reader Poll has pedal based powermeters topping the list of best tech innovations of 2010, among 9 other items. Pedal based power meters, like the one introduced by Metrigear, will tell you how much workload each leg applies into cycling motion. Positive tangential, negative tangent...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Oct 27, 2010, 3:47 pm
Appleman Bicycles in Orange County, CA is the brainchild of Matt Appleman. After an injury called an end to his 10 year long bike racing career, he decided to pour the knowledge gained through his college Composites Engineering degree and work experience into building carbon fiber bikes.  Today, he...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Oct 20, 2010, 4:08 pm
Part failures are a common story in world of cycling - be it metal or composite parts. If you have ever experienced a metal part failure yourself that was a factor in any injury, have that part sent to someone knowledgeable in metallography. Metals have existed for thousands of years and both their ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Oct 18, 2010, 11:44 pm
The scene of Jure Robic's fatal crash that left him dead is below. I was a bit late to the news but boy was I shocked to hear this. One day a great champion, next day, your number is up. I wonder if Robic had the chance to spend time with all the people he cared for before he passed on.  Life's so ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Oct 2, 2010, 12:22 am
Here's another image of one of those braking induced fork failures that crop up from time to time. This was sent to me by a reader. The entire story of how the accident occured is mentioned on this blog. Because of the lack of telescopic front suspensions like those nice mountain bikes h...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Sep 22, 2010, 10:37 am
It looks like one of those linear drive systems have shown their face again. It was in 1897 that a patent, granted to a teen Swedish inventor Birgin Ljungström, showed the world a linear drive bicycle where the pedals moves in linear, reciprocating fashion. The project was sponsored by dynamite inv...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Sep 19, 2010, 12:10 pm
"I raced at this TT. Shaved 3 seconds off my time & seventh in my age group!" "Why that's an awesome result,! ....Just curious, how many people raced in your age group?" "...Seven." Do you suck as a bike rider? Want to sugar coat the real results? Pull the age group card! There's an a...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Sep 17, 2010, 12:54 am
This was published recently in the NYT Op-Ed section written by none other than Nicholas Kristof. He's a 2 time Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, whose columns I like to read from time to time because of his tremendously insightful accounts of poverty, social and human rights issues in som...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Sep 15, 2010, 10:35 am
Bike Ride : 130 miles 10,000 Ft of climbing Ride Time : 10 hours Day : Saturday, 11 Sept Location : Finger Lakes, NY Run Distance : Full Marathon Time : 4:20 hours Day : Sunday, 12 Sept Location : Rochester NY I have been away for more than a week or so from this blog mainly because of my pr...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Sep 6, 2010, 1:35 am
Will Cheng is an electrical engineering Ph.D. student at Stony Brook University here in NY. In their free time, he and his sister ride their bikes with a group of retiree friends in Long Island. Early in August, Will met with a nasty bike accident during a pace-lined group ride that lef...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 30, 2010, 12:58 am
I discovered through velovision.co.uk that the first issue of the "Electric Bike" magazine is out and ready for viewing online. The publication goes a bit indepth into e-bikes for starters, what they comprise of, the models available in the market and supplier locations. Enjoy the read. Open public...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 29, 2010, 3:05 pm
140 Miles   8000 Ft Climbing   10 hours saddle time In two weeks time is yet another edition of one of the toughest rides in the country - the "Highlander Death Before Dismount" Double Metric. 125 miles long in the beautiful Finger Lakes region, with over 10,000 feet of climbing in 16 major...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 20, 2010, 11:09 pm
Its not about the bike. Or is it? Without a shadow of doubt, most of us will say that today's Grand Tours are faster than those of the past. True. For instance, since its inception in 1903 to the 1990's, the Tour de France had seen its winner's average speed increase some 50-55%  as th...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 17, 2010, 9:55 am
1. Prince McQuaid keeps room open for donations : According to reports, the immaculate cycling chief McQuaid has said that in the future, the UCI "may deal differently" with a donation like Armstrong's. But he insisted that it depends heavily on donations from all riders and teams to support its a...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 16, 2010, 2:13 am
As a touring cyclist, I am well acquainted with the fact that almost all cycling advice and almost all cycling equipment is made for the high-tech, high-speed, ultra-light, streamlined cyclist. We hear of the need for cyclometers, cadence monitors, altimeters, heart-rate monitors, and combination de...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 10, 2010, 2:23 am
Those Chinese made Crank Brothers Candy C pedals, whose flaws we discussed in an earlier post, has obtained another victim. The pedal failed in the same area again. A reader, who describes himself as a relatively non-litigious person, emailed me his story with pics of his injuries along with t...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 7, 2010, 1:20 am
Dr. Alex Moulton is a source of inspiration for me as a young engineer. I encourage you to watch these videos to see how a great mind thinks. The message couldn't be clearer. Good engineering is a hands-on job. If his biography weren't so expensive, I'd voraciously consume the book in one sitting ov...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Aug 3, 2010, 11:03 am
A man who knew how to train properly to overcome adversity was Johan Museeuw. He was known for his gradual approach to training, his belief in his training ideas and his ability to focus on training so he could return to racing when his cycling career seemed to be over - a couple of times. A wicked ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 28, 2010, 12:00 am
I had written a post a month back reviewing the story of a SRAM brake lever housing failure, belonging to an individual who maintained that when his mechanic called SRAM to find out what the issue was, the reply came back from the SRAM employee something to the like of  "oh yeah, we knew about that...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 25, 2010, 2:44 am
The 2010 Tour de France, the last one of this decade, draws to a close. Alberto Contador, the consummate cyclist of our times, has nearly clinched his third Tour de France title as he and his team roll into Paris today. This will be his 5th Grand Tour win in a row, and he has everything under ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 24, 2010, 2:38 am
UPDATE : It looks like ABC got rid of the Nightline interviews with Floyd Landis which were on their website upto this afternoon.  They suddenly disappeared. We obtained another full copy of the show from Hulu. I recorded almost 15 minutes of it, but missed out the last 2 minutes of the endi...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 22, 2010, 10:37 pm
Today's mountain top finish involved the climbing of 18.4 km of the western side of Tourmalet (see detailed 3D terrain here), from Luz-Saint-Sauvier onwards. The Tourmalet is the queen of all climbs in the Tour de France and the roads here are some of the highest in France. The Henri Degranges prime...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 18, 2010, 3:56 am
Lots to report on in today's shorts. 1. The doping saga continues : The truth is out there. TREK and Lemond have been subpoenaed this past week! The NY Daily News is at the height of their game, reporting on the minute-by-minute news in the doping drama with great finesse. Yesterday, the German ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 17, 2010, 3:41 pm
"The former Soviet state of Kazakhstan is the size of Western Europe, and is not so much of its own country as its own planet, a vast sameness of boreal forests and grasslands, boiling in summer and frozen in winter, a land the Soviets found ideal for growing wheat and testing nuclear bomb...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 12, 2010, 10:58 am
The following, divided into 3 parts, is a simple physics exploration of wind and altitude's independent effects on power to weight ratio, a subject that has not been treated by any cycling book so far.  Independent effects are important to understand in order to get a feel for how they affect po...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 9, 2010, 6:09 pm
The following article was written for the July edition of ASME Magazine by Frank Wicks, a mechanical engineering professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. He is a cyclist and an ASME Fellow. Enjoy over a cup of tea or coffee.  Credit To The Bicycle This descendant of the hobby horse put the ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 7, 2010, 3:34 am
1. Interpol In Armstrong Doping Probe : What you may not know is that WADA has an agreement of understanding with Interpol, which was established in 2008. That's the International Criminal Police, with a reputation for helping nab crooks and fugitives worldwide. That they are providing assistanc...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 6, 2010, 3:33 am
Are you surprised that Armstrong wears 15,000 dollars on his head these days? Why? History has it that an entire empire is built around the guy to babysit him with products with which that he be marginally faster or psychologically faster. Its an incredible win-win situation for the producer and the...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jul 4, 2010, 5:58 pm
The true punchline of my blog is "cross-pollinating velo buzz".  I'm going to continue the Cycling Shorts option - provide you short pollinations with a summary and opinion and you decide if you want to click on it and read further, agree or disagree with me. Hopefully, these links as they ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jun 21, 2010, 11:11 pm
I can't believe this was on Youtube and it garnered just 400 views. Here it is again, ABC Radio's interview with a fantastic athlete. (Recall I wrote before on how both his power to weight ratio and VO2 max were greater than Armstrong's when both were at their peak). His new book sells f...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jun 16, 2010, 1:01 am
An object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same velocity unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Unbalance can easily come in the way of a gentle sideways push during a sprint, such as that from Haussler yesterday which planted half a dozen riders including the Boy Racer himself straight...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jun 7, 2010, 3:51 pm
One of the tricky aspects to catch in product design is the amount of true value in it between its stages of evolution. Sometimes, last year's model that you bought could have negligible difference in it as opposed to this year's. Its marketing might say its improved, with a new recipe, new ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jun 2, 2010, 12:10 pm
GRUBER Assist, an e-bike drive train company in Austra, has (fortunately or unfortunately) found itself at the center of rumors regarding illegal motor use among the peloton. I covered the story two days back and wrote about my feelings of what a motor should be capable of to help someone win t...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - Jun 1, 2010, 4:03 pm
Writeup updated slightly on June 3, 2010 So dear readers, quick recap : there's this idea floating around of Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara using an electric motor at the classics. It seems to have originated at the rumor mills of il Italia and a couple of journalists, an ex-pro cyclist a...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 30, 2010, 6:00 pm
When I first read the story this morning via a Twitter shrapnel, I dismissed it as an unimpressive attempt at comedy. The story was titled "Former Pro Says 'Mechanized Doping' Is Real." 4 hours later, people were crying "mechanized doping, mechanized doping!" and sharing another story from ...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 25, 2010, 9:29 pm
Note : A gentleman on Cycling News' forums wrote the following, but it does not represent the views of CN itself. I'm helping to spread the word to other cycling fans, as I told him. The letter comes in direct response to McQuaid's statements today, denying using the money Armstrong "don...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 22, 2010, 4:35 pm
FOR PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS OF STUPIDITY, SEE : Saturday Stupidity I Saturday Stupidity II Saturday Stupidity III Saturday Stupidity IV Saturday Stupidity V Saturday Stupidity VI Saturday Stupidity VII Saturday Stupidity IX Saturday Stupidity X Saturday Stupidity XI * * *
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 20, 2010, 11:50 am
Remember the Floyd Landis Fairness Fund? Well, we now know that was an outright lie. An interesting letter surfaced this morning. A pdf copy of the same gets uploaded to this Scribd account and is attached to this post below. Hit "Fullscreen" and read away. Also, keep following the uploader. There&#...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 20, 2010, 12:00 am
Among our available dose of cliches, one you'll hear many say is that real cyclists are the ones who race. Or that real cyclists are the one's who ride fast, break bones, lose skin and come back to bite the tough again. Or that real cyclists have so many well-defined muscle groups. And so on...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 17, 2010, 2:39 pm
Internet sites like Youtube has become a popular avenue for decentralized distribution of media content, whether it is a music video, a film trailer, a clip from a recent concert or why, even footage from cycling races. The embed function effectively pollinates such content throughout the world wide...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 11, 2010, 12:32 am
35 year old Argentinian, Pablo Garcia, made a life changing decision in 1999 when he gave up everything he was doing to pick up a bicycle and trot the globe. His mission, one he set in Brazil before pulling out of there, was to explore world cultures and traditions and pen them in the form of a boo...
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 8, 2010, 1:17 pm
"My daughter has just had a crap, so I'm off to wipe her backside." - Bradley Wiggins on Twitter (May 1)
Comment - Like

Ron G. posted an article on Cozy Beehive Bicycle Blog - May 6, 2010, 12:00 am
It is quite often that we observe cycles becoming a platform for design and study ideas, especially at universities. Perhaps it is the simplicity and access to the structures and parts of cycles that make it popular for such use. Students choose bikes to explore the physics of riding, or torque and ...
Comment - Like