Beautiful Bokeh

B-ice-cycle Racing

The idea of a bike race on a frozen lake is intriguing. I know that mountain bikes with studded tires have great traction in ice and i was envisioning something like a criterium...just on a frozen lake instead of downtown streets.

Brenda and I went out to watch the bike race which was held as part of the “art shanty projects” festival on Medicine Lake in Minnesota. Turns out that while it was definitely a bike race on ice, it was a lot crazier than we expected. There were indeed some bad-ass ice racing machines in the mix, but overall it was more for fun than for real. The whole shanty project thing is very strange. It’s a bunch of artists who’ve created art inside, outside, and sometimes out of little structures on top of the frozen lake. Neither of us could quite figure it out, but it was pretty fascinating. There was a post office shanty, from which one could evidently send and receive actual mail, there was one that was built to resemble the last half of an airplane (?), there was the obligatory robot shanty, one that could be driven around.... it went on and on.

Regardless, it was pretty great for gawking at all the crazies who seemed to be having the time of their lives, and it was also the first-time out for my new telephoto lens...good practice shooting moving targets for the safari to come.

Simplicity from Complexity

“I would not give a nickel for simplicity this side of complexity, but I’d give a year’s wages for simplicity the other side of complexity.”

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

I hate mountain bikes. But I’m in love with a mountain bike.

An advance in shifting technology, the Rohloff planetary gear hub has completely changed my attitude and I’m back in the all terrain business.

In the early eighties when I became a cyclist, I was a road cyclist first because at that time there were no mountain bikes. The first bikes I ever loved, 80s road-racing bicycles, were the picture of simplicity. And while there have been several huge technological advances in road bike technology (clip-less pedals, index shifting, STI/Ergo, carbon fiber frames, etc.) the overall feeling that these are very simple, elegant machines has never left. They are, of course, more complicated now than they were in the 80s. It’s no longer the case that an average person can completely disassemble every component with a few wrenches for example. The number of moving parts has skyrocketed. But the complexity has been added in ways that make the overall experience of the road bicycle less complicated. For example, before index shifters, shifting quickly and effectively was extremely difficult and almost an art to pull off consistently. Index shifters were more complex internally, but greatly simplified the task of finding the correct gear, and even helped decrease wear since the chain was now always in perfect alignment, minimizing friction.

The story with the evolution of mountain bike technology has been different in some important ways, however.

The early mountain bikes were pretty simple. They were pretty much just beefier road bikes, with straight handlebars, stronger brakes, and knobby tires. They were sleek, clean, svelte-looking beasts. I liked them. But between the advent of full (front and rear) suspension systems, and the race to add the most ‘speeds’ (cogs) to the bikes, they have evolved into something I find disgusting and contrary to everything I enjoy about bicycles, aesthetically and otherwise. Rear suspension in particular I find to be an abomination but alternatives...”hard tail” bikes have continued to be available.

Unfortunately there has been no solution to the other, critical problem with modern mountain bikes: The 9-speed derailleur-based drivetrain is simply ill-suited to off-road use in my opinion. To permit such a large number of cogs, several sacrifices were made. The chain had to become impossibly thin, making it vulnerable to quick wear (amplified even more by the hypgerlide cog design to allow shifting under load). And the cogs themselves wear rapidly due to the very nature of the fact that shifting involves forcing the derailleur to wrest the chain from one cog and force it up to another especially under force. It’s really a violent act.

The Rohloff hub is a fascinating alternative to the derailleur+cogs shifting system that in my opinion corrects almost every single problem and makes the mountain biking experience infinitely simpler, but it does it through introducing a far-more complex shifting system.

In short:

— Only one chainring and one cog. Like a single-speed. That means the chain is never at any angle other than optimal, wear is minimized.

— Permits a dishless and therefore much stronger rear wheel, which means fewer broken spokes.

— 14 evenly distributed speeds, covering exactly the same range as a standard derailleur mountain bike.

— The planetary gears are sealed inside an oil bath and require no maintenance. Ever.

— Heavier hub, but this is offset somewhat by the components which are no longer needed (derailleurs, multiple chainrings/cogs, etc).

— Far simpler shifter, immune to damage during a crash. It doesn’t even have springs since all the “indexing” is done inside the hub.

— Almost silent operation offroad given the total lack of “chain slap” and clattery derailleurs.

— Able to change gears while stationary (this sounds trivial but off-road it’s pretty great since sometimes you come to a complete stop on a climb and need a lower gear fast)

— Dirt, mud, ice & snow can’t affect the ability to shift with this hub.

The thing is an absolute pleasure to ride. I got mine from Grand Performance bike shop in St. Paul and it came inside with a Moots frame which was specifically designed to accommodate it.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating of course, so I reserve the right to change my mind about this thing, which at present seems like the greatest thing to ever happens to mountain bikes. I’ll be riding the shit out of my new rohloff equipped 29”er mootox over the next year, and if it fails, I’ll let you know. But so far it’s fucking awesome and if it does live up to it’s promise, it’s more proof that sometimes to find simplicity you have to look for a certain kind of thoughtful complexity.

The Orrery Has Landed!

It’s here!

It was several months in the making, but the waiting was worth it. The Orrery has arrived and it is absolutely stunning.

Eugene did an amazing job, and I think he had fun making it because he’s hinting he may make another one, perhaps to sell, so if this sort of thing interests you he can be contacted here.

The bronze gears in the main gear stack looks awesome when it’s in motion. It’s really fun to crank! The motion is incredibly smooth, but a chart for oiling points was included (being a cyclist, oil is always handy so no problem. Besides, it’s not like this thing is going to be cranked non-stop).

I really love the fins on the feet. I hadn’t seen those until it came out of the box. I also like how the muscular aluminum frame contrasts with the hyper-precision of the CNC-machined bronze gears. There is a small shaft to the right of the main shaft which turns at one revolution per moon orbit around the earth. The moon orbits smoothly on extremely tiny 2.5mm diameter ball bearings.

We definitely made the right decision on the cranking ratio...one fortnight instead of one moon orbit. It’s extremely easy to turn and still gives plenty of planetary motion satisfaction.

Sarah Moore, a student in Arkansas, found out about what Eugene’s been doing the past few months and documented it and made a nice little “making of the orrery” video:

So now we have an orrery. Sweet.

Willow River Weekend

I talked to Rob just before he left for Scotland and he recommended that we explore a state park in Wisconsin called Willow River. We did and it was awesome, but unfortunately the lighting was terrible for photography. We had the cameras so we shot a bunch anyway and had a blast.

Brenda found a frog that was frozen solid and argued that it will “come back to life” in the spring. I didn’t believe her naturally. But after some googling, evidently some frogs actually do freeze solid and then reanimate in the spring. WTF!?

Photo fun at 5º

Here we are, in the coldest place either of us has ever lived and winter is hitting hard now. I have felt temperatures this cold before but for some reason the feeling of wind blowing when it’s around zero is always shocking. Always.

It’s been incredibly cold here in Minneapolis and Brenda and I have been trying to stay sane by going outside a lot anyway. A few blocks from our condo there are some really cool ruins of a Mill that exploded a long time ago. It’s right on the Mississippi River and because it’s down at water level and in the shade of buildings most of the day, the only way to catch it with good lighting would be to get up at the crack of dawn.

We forced ourselves to get up and trudge over there and we were able to catch it in the sunlight and take some pics. We didn’t last long, but neither did the sun so we went to brunch of course.

Visiting the Orrery

Here it is, our baby, almost-toothless orrery.

That’s Eugene’s hand pointing to the toothless gear which will ultimately drive Mars. The shape of the main structure is very clear now. That’s the crank on the left.

While we were in Arkansas visiting my little brother and his wife & new baby, we also stopped in to check out the orrery progress in person. The thing is really coming along!

There are a few planetary gears left to be made, and a lot of teeth cutting still to do (earth’s gear has 294 teeth for example). Also the planets are just white blobs right now, but it’s definitely taking shape and it’s easy now to visualize what it will be like when it’s done.

It was great seeing Eugene again after all these years, and after we ogled at and drooled on the little orrery-to-be, we walked around his farm with his mother Sid and petted the goats. Their farm is beautiful.

Eugene thinks he’s found his rhythm now and expects to wrap sometime in December. Getting the orrery for christmas would be awesome so I hope he can do it.

He also says he plans for the feet to have fins. Fins.

The first-ever photograph of someone holding both an orrery and a rooster at the same time?

Eugene at the helm of the CNC machine.

Breaking Ground on an Orrery

Remember that room in the Dark Crystal with the huge machine that made the planets all fly around? Did your grade school teacher use an electric model of the solar system to show you how Copernicus kicked Ptolemy’s ass in the who-revolves-around-whom fight?

Those things are orreries and we want one.

Brenda and I have commissioned our first work of art, and it’s an orrery. We’ve hired a very old friend of mine Eugene Sargent to design and build it. He’s an artist now working out of Northwest Arkansas. He’s never built an orrery but it happens he’s just taken delivery of a brand new CNC machine and he is itching for a project to try it out and this is perfect.

The reference images we gave him included some actual orrery replicas but also good portions of sci-fi, steam/clock punk stuff as well obviously.

Working only from a verbal brief and a collection of reference images (above), he’s passed the designing phase and bits and pieces of it are starting to come together. We gave him a ton of freedom to make it his own, as we wanted it to be original and not simply a quasi-replica of an ancient one. However we did impose one restriction in that we wanted it to be hand-cranked, not motorized in any way. He did some calculations and we agreed that the goal would be to have one crank be equivalent to one fortnight. That would keep the speed of the “planets’ under control, but would still be fast enough to make it fun to crank.

Well he’s been at it for a while and we just received an update along with some photos he took of the gear designs. It’s looking awesome. We definitely went to the right guy for this...there is a shitton of math involved in making this work, and Eugene’s brain is as adept technically as it is creatively. Get this: He’s not even using CAD software (!) but instead has written his own C++ programs to generate the “G-Code.” Presumably “G” is the kind of “code” CAD machines need in order to make badass orreries.

Incredibly, he’s even forging the bronze himself. The disks you see on the left were liquid metal until he cast them into shape. Unbelievable the amount of trouble he’s going to to make this thing.

The rough plan, evidently, is for each planet to have its revolution speed set by a unique, large cog, and all the primary planetary cogs will be arranged in a kind of stack. With their unique cut-outs, that should make for interesting patterns when the planets are in motion.

Speaking of planets, how far out should we go? We’re not sure yet. Poor controversial Pluto is almost certainly off the list. Most of the original orreries didn’t go out that far obviously since those outer planets were discovered later, and they revolve so slowly it would be pretty boring to include them anyway. It’s looking like Jupiter or Saturn might be as far as we go. Saturn is a pretty slow revolver itself but you know....it has rings. So maybe out to Saturn. We’ll see. Part of it depends on what Eugene thinks makes sense based on the design he’s selected.

Another topic we’ve settled is whether there should be a moon orbiting the earth, as it orbits the sun. We have decided there should most definitely be a moon. It just doesn’t seem like an orrery without at least one orbit-within-orbit goin’ on.