On Wed, 07 Apr 2021 07:36:14 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/6/2021 9:43 PM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 6 Apr 2021 10:03:02 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/5/2021 10:32 PM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 5 Apr 2021 08:03:52 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
wrote:

On Monday, April 5, 2021 at 1:53:37 AM UTC-7, Sepp Ruf wrote:
jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, April 3, 2021 at 4:32:13 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/3/2021 12:57 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

I think it was Jay Beattie who suggested the 800 lumen number. I
merely stole it from him. I agree that 800 lumens probably too much.
However, if such a high power dynamo product ever arrives on the
market, there will surely be a lumens war among vendors to see who
can advertise the largest number. At that time, 800 lumens will be
reserved for purists and regulatory agencies.
This is how a low and high beams, 400 dynamo, optional 400 extra battery
lumens, conversion looks like:
https://www.velomobilforum.de/forum/index.php?attachments/pxl_20210121_153046943-jpg.231317/

The beams look better in reality than they appear on youtube, but I cannot
recommend the upgrade to Jay because he seems mortally afraid of further
increasing his dynamo system's sunk cost (and because a Luxos not considered
watertight).

Mortally afraid is more like "it would be stupid." I have enough lights.

Yep, safety inflation is real.

Since when is being able to see "safety inflation"? Let's go for a night
ride sometime, you and your bottle dyno and light, and me and my whatever
light I chose. I'll wait for you at the bottom. On flat roads and the
bike path through South Waterfront I can get by with a little flea-watt
flasher or a clip on flashlight from 1968 -- or my old Wonder Light. But
that is not where I do (or did pre DST) most of my riding.
Frank is not acquainted with Portland's exotic rain-forest, mountain-bunny
routes. If you are interested in a regular contest, ask a local, like your
son, to take the dyno lamp. Make sure you use Specialized's prototype Zn-C
matrix battery fork for extra power!
Everything
involves a descent, often on old broken concrete roads. I've done those
on dyno only, and its inadequate except at a creeping pace.
When will you finally invite a few fixie-riding antifa for a blissful summer
of subbotnik road repairs?! Oh, wait, repairing and recreating historic
concrete plates is horrendously "CO2 emissions intensive." If you aren't Al
Gore, you simply won't get a permit.

They don't re-do concrete, at least not often in town -- it gets asphalt. One of my routes was repaved in the last year or so, but I think some of neighborhoods don't want repaving because the broken concrete roads act as natural speed bumps. Two, essentially parallel streets: https://tinyurl.com/4n2dfzp8 and next door: https://tinyurl.com/kdrfm2t8
Look out for the manhole down the street: https://tinyurl.com/8a8w383f

I have no idea why they paved one and not the other. I rarely go down those roads -- they're part of the return route from anywhere east, and my pre-plague commute home. I creep up them, LUXOS B blazing the way. This is where I see people's feet before the people -- or their dogs with lighted dog vests.

-- Jay Beattie.

I would comment that those are appallingly poorly built roads. It
appears that they simply laid concrete over an existing, probably,
dirt road. I would guess that the residents bitched about a dirt road
and so the highway department slapped some concrete down and said
"There! A paved road".

Apparently that happened here.

Our County Engineering office always has a booth at the annual county
fair. One year I asked about that - about the process by which farm
roads that were once gravel on dirt got paved.

The young engineers staffing the booth looked at each other, then
explained that long ago (maybe the 1950s or 1960s?) the guy who was
county engineer got re-elected by suddenly paving a huge number of
roads. But the "paving" was just dropping asphalt on top of existing
gravel, with no preparation at all.

I know our county is notorious for potholes. It's not unusual to follow
an ex farm road across our county line and see a huge difference in
pavement smoothness and quality.

I'm not any sort of Civil Engineer but I worked for a while with a guy
that built roads for a living and according to him the underlying
foundation is the most important part of a road, particularly allowing
for water drainage. He also said that these design criteria have been
know since the days when the Romans were building roads :-)


Many of which are still in use. Roman engineering is not
fully appreciated; roads, yes but especially their concrete:

https://www.history.com/news/the-sec...roman-concrete

They also used fake stone facing on concrete buildings as concrete was
considered as rather plebeian while stone was very upmarket :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.