Big Pulley Wheel Keep On Turning

With the New York City area languishing in a state of hot sogginess I have been sticking to the road as of late, braving the precipitation and concomitant grit astride my Milwaukee:

Note diminutive filth prophylactic instead of full-coverage fenders, as in summer I prefer to keep my wheels unadorned to facilitate offroad detours:

Note also the photo is blurry as my camera lens got all schmutzy from the rain in which I got caught.

As things sort of maybe start to dry out I look forward to resuming Jones testing, but lamentably I've totally fallen off the back with regard to following the Tour de France.  This is too bad, because it looks like it's really getting good:

Froome was very angry: “Fuck you!” @BorjaCuadrado @ProCyclingStats @DiarioMarca_ @diarioas @CiclismoInter @teledeporte @esport3 @pedrodelgadoweb @Eurosport @antoalix pic.twitter.com/2JEFpjCneM

— Albert Secall (@albertsecall) July 25, 2018

I know how upset I am when people fail to recognize me as the World's Greatest Bike Blogger and lavish me with praise and discounts, so I can only imagine the indignity of winning the Tour de France five times and then getting tackled like some Fondo-riding plebe.

Of course every Tour has its little bit of signature tech, and this year even I've noticed that it's these fidget spinner derailleur pulleys:

Like most hop-ups of this nature I never really stopped to contemplate the reasoning behind them, but here it is:

“The biggest advantage is friction reduction, or increasing the efficiency of the drivetrain,” says Smith. “There’s a couple of ways the OSPW reduces friction. In other words, it’s part of a system. The biggest factor is the larger pulley wheels. The less amount a chain has to articulate as it engages and disengages the pulley wheels, the less friction is produced. The next thing is on the larger pulley wheels, the bearings spin slower so you don’t have as much drag there.”

Sounds reasonable enough...but then you get to the price:

If it sounds like we’re only focusing on CeramicSpeed, there’s a good reason for that. Few other companies are offering oversized pulley wheels and its OSPW are, by and large, the pulleys of choice in the pro peloton.

Even with CeramicSpeed’s system, you can run into some problems. First and foremost, the upgrade doesn’t come cheap. But the $500 price aside, it’s possible your shifting performance can suffer due to the lighter derailleur tension.

Amazing.

I'll wait until next year when they release the $750 ovalized version.

And no Tour de France would be complete without an article from a mainstream newspaper about the science behind it:

The big revelation?  Being completely surrounded by people blocks most of the wind:

According to a new study published in the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, riders in the belly of a peloton are exposed to 95% less drag than they would experience riding alone. Which explains the sensation all riders describe of being sucked along by the bunch while barely having to pedal.

You don't fucking say.

Here's another science fact: by sitting in the peloton and using an oversized derailleur pulley you can actually exceed the speed of linear time and arrive two to three seconds before the riders who are physically ahead of you.

Anyway, you can have confidence in the wind resistance study, because they used "three billion calculation points:"

The study took Blocken’s team a year and a half, in part because of the computing power required. The 121-rider simulation involved a staggering three billion calculation points, Blocken said, in order to reflect every dynamic right down to the 1-millimeter pocket of air that surrounds each rider. The results were confirmed by four separate wind-tunnel tests, including one that featured quarter-scale models of 121 cyclists in race positions.

Calculation points are to studies as engagement points are to rear hubs.

Or something.

There's only one problem:

“We have a problem now,” Blocken said when he finished the study, “because no one is going to believe us.”

You're wrong on that.  I'm a career wheelsucker who buries himself in the pack like a tick on the back of the knee.  You're not telling me anything I don't know.

Finally, further to my last post, not too long ago I made a snippy tweet about a helmet giveaway:

Gotta condition the next generation of victim-blamers.https://t.co/q2AzVzuDze pic.twitter.com/fE4y5Pf07C

— Bike Snob NYC (@bikesnobnyc) July 18, 2018

And then today I was sickened to read this:

"The day before the fatal crash, Somerset police spotted the boy bike riding with his father and gave him a gift certificate to a local ice cream shop because he was wearing a helmet. 'I guess it's kind of ironic in a very sad way,'"https://t.co/DIrZaKqDed

— Peter Flax (@Pflax1) July 26, 2018

Fuck.

This is exactly why all these helmet articles and giveaways and all the assorted propaganda are so infuriating: every ounce of energy and attention we waste on it helps make sure we'll never focus on the real problem, which is that our streets are so unconscionably dangerous that riding a bicycle (and on a bike path in this case) is a death sentence for a child.

And this???

“I guess it's kind of ironic in a very sad way,” said Somerset Police Chief George McNeil. “(It’s) just a tragic accident.”

Ironic?  It's fucking tragic.

And it happened on your watch--in a place you knew was dangerous:

It isn't the first time a bicyclist is hit by a car at that section of Poppasquash Road.

There have been five incidents of bicyclists being hit by cars during the past 17 years; however, none of the bicyclists were seriously injured.

Ironic my ass.