This Year on Bicycles

Most of the shops I've been in have been ****ing and moaning about not being able to get bicycles. But most of them don't have any floorspace which is covered by the Chinese made bikes. The entire lower ends of the Trek and Specialized Brands.

Because there have been so many failures of the carbon and aluminum bikes the pro riders are losing faith in these materials since they know that one major spill at the speeds they are going is likely to end their careers and they sure don't have any pensions coming.

Word is that steel is showing up again. The Waterford custom "Racing" would probably assemble to the UCI minimum weights. And there are English and Italian custom brands that could do the same thing.

The only carbon frameset I have total faith in is Time, and those things ride to damn stiff that they must have 28 mm tires on them. The latest models mix layers of carbon fiber with layers of Kevlar which has very long strand threads with the same strength as top end carbon fiber. This keeps their frames from breaking.

There are many companies attempting to make long ply graphene in large sheets but whether that would actually improve carbon frames I couldn't say, though it is stronger that steel for its weight, I don't see how you can make a 2D material without imperfections. That is why graphene tires have graphene dust in the rubber compound and not graphene sheets. What the hell this could accomplish I don't know but my Vittoria Corsa graphene tires have extremely low rolling resistance and I haven't worn one out in the last two or three years.

On Monday, December 21, 2020 at 2:59:55 PM UTC-8, Tom Kunich wrote:
Most of the shops I've been in have been ****ing and moaning about not being able to get bicycles. But most of them don't have any floorspace which is covered by the Chinese made bikes. The entire lower ends of the Trek and Specialized Brands.

Because there have been so many failures of the carbon and aluminum bikes the pro riders are losing faith in these materials since they know that one major spill at the speeds they are going is likely to end their careers and they sure don't have any pensions coming.

Word is that steel is showing up again. The Waterford custom "Racing" would probably assemble to the UCI minimum weights. And there are English and Italian custom brands that could do the same thing.

The only carbon frameset I have total faith in is Time, and those things ride to damn stiff that they must have 28 mm tires on them. The latest models mix layers of carbon fiber with layers of Kevlar which has very long strand threads with the same strength as top end carbon fiber. This keeps their frames from breaking.

There are many companies attempting to make long ply graphene in large sheets but whether that would actually improve carbon frames I couldn't say, though it is stronger that steel for its weight, I don't see how you can make a 2D material without imperfections. That is why graphene tires have graphene dust in the rubber compound and not graphene sheets. What the hell this could accomplish I don't know but my Vittoria Corsa graphene tires have extremely low rolling resistance and I haven't worn one out in the last two or three years.

It appears that I will finish off the year with tomorrow's ride before the real rains start with 3,600 miles and 132,000 feet of climbing. Last year when I could do my normal distance and climbing rides I finished with 4,700 Miles and 210,000 Ft. In 2018, It was 4465 miles and 165,000. I probably put all of the earlier years starting from 2012 into index file boxes and up on the garage storage shelf. Before my accident I had 3 years of 10,000 miles a year and probably a half million feet of climbing. I remember riding to Lake Tahoe and the next day around it and then returning. But I couldn't tell you what route I could possibly have taken since the only times I went up there since my injury there didn't seem to be any route that wasn't a high speed highway.