19th December 2015 Do you want grey, grey or grey with that?

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Saturday 19th 48-49F, 9C, breezy with a heavy overcast. The mild and misty weather continues with similar day and night temperatures. No walk today due to the wrong kind of rain.

Have you noticed the latest influx of food products from China? Even organic produce now! Why would anyone buy anything from the most corrupt and polluted country on the planet? A shiny organic grower's license is only ever as far away as the nearest crooked communist mafia party member and good ol' Roundup salesman. (spit)

The mess on a favourite track in the woods after the forestry workers left. The climb used to be a series of steps covered in wild plants and flowers.

How do we know they aren't using forced labour slaves in Chinese agriculture? What about the vast cost, in CO2, of sending such easily home-grown products right around the world? Those damned Danish supermarkets again! They'd sell  anything if there was the slightest increased margin in it. Non-EU production written in sub-microscopic text placed on an area of the bag which is impossible to read without a scanning electron microscope! Stick it where the sun don't shine! [Due to deliberate pollution for communist mafia offshore profit!]

I am getting a few bits of spam disguised as comments recently. Should I be flattered or put it down to their sheer bad luck? After 50 years of being fed watery TV diarrhoea, aimed specifically at single cell amoeba, I already detest advertising of any kind. Having it thrust down one's throat by some criminal cheapskate only adds to the pleasure when I hit the Spam button to delete their unexpurgated crap. If the button could simultaneously apply a severe shock via electrodes attached to their nether regions I'd be even more content. Perhaps that should be the latest Internet trend? Go on Farcecook to get a local to wallpaper the spammer's windows with the real truth behind their advertising "campaign."

Imagine standing at the "pearly gates" and admitting you were a spammer, worked for an advertising agency, were a modern [piss] artist or an investment banker. I wonder whether your chances of a free pass would increase if you were standing behind Assad, Kim or Putin? Are you feeling lucky punk?

Very rare and collectable! Barn find, only one owner and she only used it to go to church on Sundays. Tires may need pumping and chain may need some oil but otherwise ready to ride.

Late morning ride under leaden skies and a strong headwind for 15 miles. I'm getting quite used to the Higgins again. I lost my [yellow lens] cycling glasses [again] yesterday.  I'm not sure which is worse.. having to queue and ask some pre-pubescent infant at the checkout in pidgin Janteloven. Or finding them in a pocket I didn't remember having in the latest sports bag. So that's where my new rear light went! Whoopee! ;o))

Sunday 20th 49-50F, 9-10C, breezy, overcast. It is 08.30 CET and still struggling to get light. The sky is covered in dense, small clouds all squashed together. Leaving only a little room for blue. The mild but cloudy weather continues. The eastern horizon is suffused with pinky-red. Not a good sign according to the seaweed fondling cult and my weather station. Winds will [allegedly] be gusting to 25mph all day from the SW on a 15mph base. Kite-powered triking to the north east has some [one way] potential but certainly not on busy roads. Stowing the kite for the [long] ride back doesn't sound like nearly so much fun! Where will we go today? For a walk up to the woods first. No sign of the promised sunshine. Judging from the sound of gunfire, coming from all directions, the "weekend warriors" were having a nice game of cowboys and victims.

Rode a hilly, late morning, rural loop for 19 miles. Mixture of cloud and watery sunshine. Strong and gusty headwind coming home. I miss the gear change of the Chorus levers with micro-adjustment on the front changer and jumping over multiple sprockets with a single lever sweep on the rear.

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17 December 2015 Being pulled both ways.

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Thursday 17th 48-50F, 9-10C, very heavy overcast, very mild, misty, drab, grey and miserable with occasional, light misty rain and a steady breeze. Visibility was about 50 yards and then everything rapidly disappeared with greater distance. The mist cleared and returned slowly and was a bit patchy and thicker with greater altitude. Even if it was only a few meters higher than the average. At least there was no need for gloves today. I walked my usual forest loop trying to avoid puddles and mud. If it gets any wetter I shall need waders!

Spent the dark and rainy afternoon playing with pull-ratio conversion, cable pulley ideas. I eventually made an eccentrically placed, middle pulley to act as a gentle ramp for the cable to climb between the smallest and largest pulley. It ended up midway between the two in size as well. This pulley will provide a tangential flat for the cable to lead on and off without needing cable clamps, bends or kinks. Making the groove narrow really increased the friction compared with the wider V-grooves of the original pulleys. This suggests that deepening and narrowing the other two pulley grooves would have similar benefits. The middle pulley has very little cable wrap so will not add much friction by itself. I have yet to file [or mill] flats on the rims to allow the cable to cross to the next pulley along. It's quite a hefty lump of metal now! I'm really  not sure the pulleys need to be so thick at 5mm each for 15mm total. The gear cable is only 1mm in diameter.  Not easy to photograph the triple pulley combination with flash. Far too dark not to use it. No ride today.

Friday 18th 48F, 9C, modest winds, very heavy overcast. The promised potential showers did not materialize. Spent the morning looking at improving the gear change arm. I modified the front changer clamp which I use for the arm pivot. I have bored it oversize for a brass bush which will be squarer to the clamp than the original [skewed] hole. Using a 10mm end mill I produced a flat on the back of the steeply sloping area. I have also filed away the curved area where the front changer would normally have fitted. The 35mm pulley clamp will provide support for a short length of cable outer instead of the previous brake noodle. This will guide the downtube cable over the top of the bottom bracket to meet the ratio changing arm as near as possible to a right angle. Hopefully with less friction than before.

Indexing relies heavily on low cable friction to avoid variation in cable pull between gear changes. Particularly when changing to higher gears.[i.e.Smaller cogs.] Which relies entirely on the tension of the rear changer spring to pull the cable back through the entire cable run. Changing down, to larger cogs, relies only on the finger strength of the rider to pull on the lever. Though even here the ratchet pawl will trip and release the cable if the resistance is too high. Apart from any friction in the lever itself there is the length of outer following the handlebars. Then the downtube adjusters take their toll along with whatever is used to bend the cable around the bottom bracket. Finally there is the chainstay stop and the loop to the rear changer.

Modern gear cable outers are lined with a low friction hose and usually have longitudinal reinforcement instead of the usual steel spiral. This is to achieve tight control over outer length so that it does not affect the indexing through unwanted backlash. All inner cable movements are subject to the total length remaining as fixed as possible to achieve absolutely fixed steps in cable movement per gear change. The more gears available the smaller the allowable variation before the chain rattles on the next sprocket or overshoots it.

The image shows how the angle of the cable changes depending on its route. The route over the BB [green] is better in one sense but the pull is from off to one side due to the seat tube intervening. The lower route, [red] under the BB, climbs at a steep angle but approaches the arm straight on. Neither is ideal since non/perpendicular cable pulls will produce variations per click over a complete stroke of the arm. Oblique angles of cable pull will load the arm and its pivot with unwanted forces. Flexing the arm sideways, with an oblique pull, may easily cause variations of pull per click.

A small pulley behind the BB could help to straighten the lower route back to a nicely horizontal pull but might add friction. While  moving the arm on its pivot further back will reduce both cable approach angles at the expense of further complication. A much longer arm could be pivoted from a clamp fitted above the front changer. The slope of the seat tube ensures the arm moves steadily backwards with increased pivot height. The downside is a more "untidy" appearance unless the clamp can be made much less visually intrusive. 

The extra weight of a longer arm is too slight to be worthy of further consideration. One obvious advantage of the longer arm is that the spacing between the cable clamps is much wider for the same ratio change. So that the clamp bolts will safely clear the chainstay. The arm could then be made to hang much closer to the chainstay if required. Which would further reduce the obliquity of the cable pull. The image [left] was from an earlier trial to see how a longer arm would look and behave. The sagitta of the arc is also shallower with a longer arm. Further reducing pull errors across the entire stroke. A black pivot clamp might look better since it would match the front changer clamp. All this could be avoided with pulleys but those too have their own disadvantages. I have still to seriously examine the idea of a pair of pulleys to avoid kinking the cable sharply around the present clamps on the arm. The shorter arm does not lend itself to such pulleys. The pulleys would have to be made woefully small to avoid overlapping.

One can easily understand why the manufacturers demand the user stick to one group of their own products to optimize indexing. Those who, like me, decide to change that rule don't have a leg to stand on if they start complaining about the resulting gear change. It is incumbent upon Shimergo fans to make certain that we carefully optimize whatever combination we think will work. We must pay particular attention to the geometry of lever pull ratios, lateral changer movement and sprocket pitch. Hoping for the best, while breaking these most basic rules, will lead to bitter disappointment or even broken equipment! Set up is even more critical to avoid a rear changer in the spokes or the chain jammed fast outside the top gear sprocket. Even a single missed gear can be life threatening if one is sprinting to avoid a fast moving vehicle! Let's be careful out there!

Just a short, hilly ride in the middle of the afternoon returning after dark. It was quite windy by then. My loudly whistling tinnitus has lasted all day today without a break despite an oiling of my left ear. Only 10 miles.

Click on any image for en enlargement.

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16th December 2015 Just another day in paradise?

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Wednesday 16th 37-39F, 3-4C, wind suddenly moving the trees, heavy overcast. Another empty promise of sunshine? We shall see.

A parcel, sent from a UK cycle dealer, has been sitting, untouched, for FIVE whole days in Denmark. It is being tracked by the UK Parcel Force service but the cryptic message once it met Danish shores gives no clue as to the new carrier. Nor where in tiny Denmark the parcel may now be resting. Christmas rush? Or mere incompetence? The dealer made it priority/signed for by default and charged for that service. The rest was left to chance. Many online dealers rely on rapid dispatch to attract repeat customers. All their business plans are held to ransom by penny-pinching carriers relying on low wages and rapid staff turnover to maximize competitiveness. It turned up today in a GLS van. 

And, now, in today's breaking news: One in 7 Danish farmers were caught by surprise inspections with illegal pesticides in 2014. Showing a steady increase year on year but resulting in pathetically small fines given the potential seriousness of their crimes. Some farmers don't give a toss about spraying around schools with children out playing in the yard.

Or even around a packed seashore campsite in mid-summer which I noticed on one of my rides. There were dozens of children playing around and in the pool as an octogenarian landman rattled around the campsite fences on a rusting tractor. He was towing an ancient spraying machine with the arms spread at shoulder height and the drift cloud clearly visible for many yards in the onshore breeze. I could smell it too and left the scene as quickly as possible! I was fortunate to have that luxury. The innocent holidaymakers? Better ask the farmer!

A cynic might suggest that this is why they had to close all the Danish, village schools. Not to save money, by centralization, but to protect their own children from the toxic delights of industrial farming. My morning walks along the field tracks resulted in extreme dizziness earlier this year. By coincidence, a highly toxic pesticide, which has never been allowed in Denmark, has been found in watercourses on Fyn. Denmark already has by far the lowest area in the EU of natural countryside-. i.e. That which is not cultivated. Yet the habitual liars politic-ooze have just relaxed the rules against the cultivation of a protective zone beside water courses. They have suggested "unimproved" land should be ploughed and wild flowers planted completely against the advice of the experts. They have also relaxed the rules against development building along the coast. Denmark already has a problem of public access to the shore thanks to chain building and ring fencing by summer house owners. Many existing harbours have been converted to marinas and have blocks of disfiguring flats built right on the water front.

Meanwhile my neighbours to both east and west are competing for the density of their brown chimney smoke from burning illegal, demolition waste as firewood. Including old [lead painted?] and plastic coated plywood, chipboard and old beams. Easterly winds we lose. Westerly winds we lose. Their nearest neighbours have a baby which must live under this constant toxic smog. The moron's smoke is easily seen wrapping itself around their neighbour's house and then crossing the road. The neighbours put their house up for sale but nothing sells in this area. Not until it has had a tour through the compulsory auction system and been given away for peanuts after literally years on the market.

The Odense Council members have just been criticized for holding a lavish feast in their own honour at rate-payer's expense. Obviously modelling themselves on the Chinese Corruption Party, they have been [illegally] cutting services to the bone to save money. Presumably to afford such lavish feasts with a very well stocked bar. Now the same council is having to employ ridiculously expensive temps to handle the huge backlog of social cases which were illegally ignored as cost-cutting measures. But then what are the needs of a few hundred problem families compared with a vitally necessary, well stocked bar?

The Danish tax authorities wrongly gave away literally billions of taxpayer's money to billionaire offshore crooks. Meanwhile they send tax inspectors around at the weekends to flea markets held in private garages, to demand a contribution from their "profits." The habitual liers politic-ooze claim masses of cash allowances on their "secondary jobs" then cut housing allowances for already impoverished pensioners.

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The appended images above and below show how twin pulleys could be used to achieve the 1:1.38 pull ratio to match the Campag Chorus levers to the Shimano XT11 rear changer. At the top are the two raw pulleys and a 34.9mm pulley clamp alongside the Jtek Shiftmate. Which, despite its excellent construction, liked to chew cables. The small pulleys and the bends they force on the cable, are just too tight for the gear cable's limited flexibility. The middle picture shows the [nominal] 35 and 45mm pulleys placed vertically behind the chainwheel. This arrangement needs a cable guide for the final run to reach the cable stop under the chainstay. Or a chainstay cable clamp to move the stop up on top. Which would probably help to reduce friction compared with any likely means used to reroute the cable around the chainstay. There seems to be enough room and the pulleys are well protected in this position.

This final image shows how the pulleys could be arranged to mimic more normal cable runs. The downtube run of bare inner cable meets the smaller pulley and is wrapped around it. Then it will climb a central, but eccentrically fixed pulley, before finally crossing over to the largest pulley. Where the cable will take another turn before exiting to the rear changer via the underside of the bottom bracket.

Both are possible pulley arrangements with their own advantages and disadvantages. The larger diameter pulleys will ensure kinder treatment of the cable without the sharp bends at my present clamps on the lever/arm. If the cable should slip on the pulleys in practice I am thinking a conical bush could be placed on a bolt piercing the middle [ramp] pulley rim to clamp the cable without damage. The alternative would be to turn much deeper and narrow grooves in the pulley rims to achieve a self-jamming effect. I would need to grind a suitable profile tool. Measuring the effective radius would be difficult. None of my calipers or vernier calipers can reach into the grooves on the rims of the pulleys already. Deepening the grooves would make them even more difficult to measure directly. Probably best to wrap a cable around the groove and measure the diameter. Then subtract half the cable diameter to find the true pulley radius.

I walked past the lake/pond on the marsh to disturb lots of Shelducks and Mallards. [Not deliberately I might add.] There just isn't any cover on the shore so the hunters can shoot at the wildlife much like a funfair shooting gallery. The resident herons took their usual tour around and settled gently back down again. A flock of some 200 very restless Greenfinches moved between two trees. Even with my deaf left ear I could hear the whir of wings as they took off en-masse and moved as a tightly packed cloud to the next perch, where they all twittered loudly again. The wind was cold on my hands even in my jacket pockets. I tried the GripGrab winter cycling gloves on a previous walk and my hands were never warm until I took the gloves off! I tried to photograph the huge flock of swirling [mink] gulls in the air but [unusually] the image failed to focus.

Only a short ride, mid afternoon, under a leaden sky with a gusty headwind. Ran the gauntlet of the follow-my-leader commuters on my way home in the dark. All of them terrified that they will lose their place less than a car's length clear of the car in front. 7 miles. I have only a fortnight left to do another 100 miles to reach 6000 for the year.

Click on any image for an enlargement.
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