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HELLCAT

Hellcat. Alleycat bicyle event. Oct 22nd. Close to Halloween. Dress funky if you're spunky. Meeting location: Behind Racy's/Eau Claire Bike & Sport. Start time: 1pm. Bring the shit you need. After-party to follow. Price: $10 or the scalp of your nemesis (proof of nemesis status required).

BIG FALLS RIDE

Big Falls Ride!

Leisurely pace...16-20mph. Leave behind Racy's/Bike and Sport at 6pm or 6:15 from Gordy's on Birch (where we shall get supplies). Meet at whichever spot is convenient. Big punctual, we may leave early if we're all ready to go.

Bring swimwear, beer money, lights (it will be dark on the way home) and whatever else you think will be needed. Most or all of the beer will be hauled in the Big Dummy.

JULY 7TH!

Valleycat

http://valleycat.org/

ICE RACE 2011

ICE RACE! We'll be doing some races at 2pm. We'll set up the course on Friday at 5pm. Come help shovel and design.

GOLDSPRINTS FOR WINTER 2011

Regular Goldsprints events for the rest of season.
These are all Wednesdays from 5-8pm The Mousetrap, 311 S. Barstow.

FREE!

Jan 5th
Jan 19th
Feb 9th

Mar 30th - New Belgium (Fat Tire) and Evolve Wellness sponsored!

GOLDSPRINTS round two

Goldsprints! Dec 15th, 5-9pm at the Mousetrap. 300m qualifiers for the first couple hours. 600m final four tournament. If we get enough ladies we'll do a female bracket. Drink ticket prizes. We'll do a couple beer races, some 1000 to 2000m races for fun. We had 15 people last time. It was definitely a good time.

GOLDSPRINTS

GOLDSPRINTS at the Mousetrap. Free.
This is the start of a regular event for the winter. We'll determine the interval after this event. For those that don't know, Goldsprints is an electronic timing system for roller racing. Two identically set up Giant Bowerys on the Kreitler Roller Racing station. We'll do 250m qualifying sprints for the first two hours (so if you can't get there by 5pm, that's okay). Get as many runs in as possible. Best four times with go heads up for 500m in the last hour.

All equipment is provided, just bring yourself.
Spectating is encouraged but at least give it a shot!

Stage Sprint of Doom

This is not an alleycat. You will have to choose the route between checkpoints but you will only know what the very next checkpoint is. We may also hold off on telling you while waiting for a few more racers. Some people may also not find out what the next checkpoint is, but don't let that stop you. Your mind should be challenged as well as your body. Do whatever it takes to keep rolling. Checkpoint monitors will be informed of the final checkpoint (after-party) when we have our first racer in and everyone can converge. No manifests.
$10
Prizes (including a Deep V with DT Comp spokes to an All-City hub)
Beer.
Meet at Demmler park to register. You'll find out the first point a few minutes before the start. Race shall start at 2pm so get there before then to register.

Don't feel like riding or have a friend that can help out? We need checkpoint monitors. Let us know.

Schedule Change and Ronde Vas Bastardia

My work schedule changed so don't expect me on Thursday very often/ever. Balls.

But in other news there is a 70 mile ride the weekend after the Valleycat.

Looks like it would be fun. I know I would enjoy doing it. Too bad I have to work that weekend.

Valleycat page

Valleycat

Seriously. Be there.

TNR 03/25/10 - Fucking Losers

Great ride. Plenty of people. Up and down and around. LA beach, down and around, Sherman creek fire, bar, $20 off the floor.

Valleycat has a good amount of sponsors. Be there.

The world is coming to an end

Valleycat + Updates

Valleycat! May 15th. Race starts at 1pm, get there early to register. Rod and Gun Park Pavilion. Bring a bag and your wits.

TNR last week we went to the secret beach and made fire. Bare feet in the sand.



Week before.

STOLEN!

I'm sure everyone knows, but Mag's Sekine was stolen. It looks like this only with flat bars. Probably be on the look out for parts. Machined orange Deep V's, Sugino RD2 cranks, and Eggbeater SLs.

Update... Ice Race

Ice Race.... Feb 13th, 2pm on Half Moon. Meet at the Birch picnic area below Carson park on the east side by the road. Course will be long, short, or both depending on lake conditions. Bring a couple bucks. Drinking beer later as well. Self studded tires are highly recommended. We'll likely have a tire studding clinic the night before.


Anywho... TNRs.... some bad turnouts but then on this Thursday quite a few turned out to roll in a darn cold night. Rode bikes, did awesome stuff, made fire. Saw vehicular destruction. If you missed it, you probably couldn't have hanged anyways. Stupor bowl next weekend. I won't be there but others will.

Snow Day

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

Gutterballs TNR 12/03/09

Rode around downtown, Banbury (David got a flat), east side, south side off roading, then down to the Civic center for cookie break. Then to the Last Chance.


Christmas lights. I met the guy at the Bike shop the next day. That's an actual bike up there.

Cheap Brook's Saddles

Normally I wouldn't advocate purchasing bicycle parts from anywhere except EC Bike and Sport, but these are stupid cheap. Ben's Cycles (Milwaukee Bicycle Co) has some no box Brook's saddles for half off... which puts them lower than cost. The only thing is it mainly on higher end titanium rail models, women's saddles, and dual rail springs that require a straight seatpost.

I got my black Ti rail Swallow today for $225+tax w/free shipping. It was supposed to come without a box but it came with one and with the proofride, cloth, and rain cover. I also weighed it. 360 grams on the nuts, just as advertised.

Dynamo Powered Light & USB Charger

So some of you know that I've made a few dynamo lights. My latest creation is one with a switch that changes from the 600 Lumen 4x Cree Q5 leds to a female USB out producing 4.96v that charges your cell phone, iPod, GPS.... whatever you need (Yeah... GPS on a bike. Taking touring to the extreme. Turn left here.) It's a solid continuous voltage supply as long as you're going faster than 5mph or whatever. If you slow down below that it shuts off. It's regulated with an LM2940 regulator so you can't fry whatever electronic you put on there.

The schematic. It's a combination of two designs available on the internet. The general dynamo light design is from Pilom. The USB charging is available on the internet if you do some searching. I'm not an EE so I'm not that great at designing this stuff, but I do understand it. The dynamo is a 0.5A current source. It produces AC (alternating current) voltage. A full bridge rectify is use to convert the AC to DC. That's what the four diodes are doing. Diodes only allow current to flow one direction. Since AC is a wave that goes positive to negative, the diodes direct the positive voltage to the positive side of the circuit and the negative voltage to ground on both waves. It effectively takes the normal wave and takes the negative potential of the lower half of the wave and makes it positive. Schottky diodes are used to reduce the voltage drop across the diode. Then C1 cleans up the row of humps so it is a flatter line. This is how flicker is reduced in the LEDs. C2 and C3 are acting as a voltage boost. The resistor just biases the capacitors since they are polarized. Then on the light side it just puts the positive through the LEDs and goes to ground. The reason it must be converted from AC to DC is because of the LEDs. LED stands for light emitting diode. As explained earlier, current can only flow one direction through a diode. If you put a diode in backwards it goes into what is called breakdown and it is no more. Putting a capacitor in backwards makes them explode.
The USB charger side of the circuit is pretty simple. C4 and C5 are just noise filters and the LM2940 is a voltage regulator. It will output approximately 5v. Only one side of the circuits need to be switched. The ground can be shared since there is no potential without a complete circuit.


You can see the full bridge rectifier in the center of the board. The metal rectangle is the LM2940. The three big cyclinders are C1, C2, and C3. C4 and C5 and hidden by the LM2940 in this pic.
The four LEDs epoxied (using thermal epoxy) to an aluminum disc. My dad cut these out of some scrap aluminum he had laying around. Thanks Daddy. The disc is a heatsink so keep the LEDs alive for longer. They don't produce as much heat in this application because the dynamo limits the current to 500mA. Many battery powered lights use 700mA to 1A. This creates a bit more heat. The bolt is what I call the spine. It holds the LEDs, then spacers go on and the electronics go on there and then the bolt goes into the housing and supports everything. The cap puts pressure on the optics to support the front.The LEDs. The rectangle is the actually LED with a primary optic. They are put on a 16mm star board to give them a better base.

Secondary spot beam optic on the LEDs.

The underside where all the soldering happens. It's pretty messy and not done in a manner that would be considered proper but it works and reduces the amount of wires needed to connect them. If I was going to manufacture these I'd want a pre-printed board so I would just have to solder in the components. Maybe go to the extreme of having a chip made with all the capacitors and diodes integrated into the board.

A little better view. You can see C4 and C5 now. They're the little yellow bulbs. It's another style of capacitor usually only used on smaller capacitors. You can see about half of the resistor between the capacitors.
This is the On/On switch.


All done. The white nub is a cover over the switch. The black bosses are waterproof bungs for the wires. The brown goes to the dynamo and the black is the female USB plug. The metal piece is the mounting bracket. Everything is siliconed together after everything is tested to make it more water resistant. I wouldn't submerge it but I haven't had any issues in the past year using dynamo lights. It's kinda messy of a method but it works. The LEDs with an optical grade lexan lens siliconed into the cap. The cap used to have an S in it for Salt.
So now you have an idea as to why they're so big. They should be cut down about an inch shorter but it would effect the strength of the housing (the end of the can has a lip that gives it structure) and also make it difficult to push the wires in since the spacer for them would be less. Obviously it can all fit in a much smaller area. My first light is in a small candle holder. The electronics could be remotely mounted in a project box as well with just two wires feeding a small housing with the LEDs. In this case the housing could be about an inch, inch and a half deep with just the aluminum disk, LEDs, and secondary optic.

TNR 11/19/09

Little late but whatever. Rode around, got a case of beer... acquired some chips... went to the beeramid.

Then went and had a little fire. It was a good time. Lots of riding around to do dumb stuff. I threw up at 5:20am from eating too many cheetos.