Eines meiner Lieblingsdinge an Wien, besonders im sommer, ist das sehr kalte Wasser. Aber warum ist es so kalt? Die Erklärungen sind nicht zufriedenstellend. Es ist schwer zu glauben dass Wasser aus einer Alpenquelle so lange so kalt bleiben kann. Aber natürlich wird es nicht künstlich gekühlt... Kann mir jemand eine detailliertere Erklärung geben?
I’m presently building up a Cannondale frame that came with one. They seem to be well regarded enough, with at least one online source claiming that their presence on Merlin frames is actually what gave titanium its reputation for ride quality in the early days of titanium framebuilding.
Can any cyclists riding back in the early to mid-90s speak to the safety of these forks? It’s bonded aluminum and quite a bit thinner than one is accustomed to aluminum forks being, which is probably why reports of ride quality tend positive relative to other forks.
I’m a big, strong guy, and I don’t entirely love the idea of a flexible metallic fork that is not steel, but I can’t tell whether it’s something I need to replace ASAP or something I should just keep an eye on and consider swapping to a good steel fork in a bit.
For me it’s got to be the Specialized Sirrus X 5.0. No way would I ever spend carbon frame money on a hybrid, but 10 years from now when they’re around for €500 I’d love to pick one up that’s a size down and put drop bars on it. Anyone else thinking the same thing about other current offerings?
I'm looking to make a lightweight Teva-style sandal. Soles are pretty easy, Vibram from extremtextil.de, but where do I source high-density EVA foam for the midsole?
Trying to find a fork for a Sobre Versatile frame that comes without one. Manufacturer recommends 395-405mm and 40-50mm offset, and the fork they sell on their own site is 398 long and 50mm offset. I can get a new condition 2018 Specialized Diverge fork for pretty cheap, but it's 390mm long and 55mm offset.
My understanding is that more offset lowers trail and makes handling twitchier, as would a shorter than recommended fork through a steeper head tube angle. Is 5mm toward that direction on each figure enough for me to really notice? I'm looking for more road-like handling anyway, and lower trail can't hurt since I like front loading, but I don't want to make a mistake.
Looking to buy a cheap fork for a frame that comes without one, and someone near me is selling one from a Cannondale Topstone 1. Crown race looks a little bit strange, the angle is very shallow compared to most tapered forks I've seen.
Per Cannondale it's a normal 1-1/8" to 1.5," and I think I know what's going on: they've kept the diameter small for as long as possible for the sake of compliance. But can anyone confirm that it's a normal 45-degree crown race? It looks it, but I know Cannondale pulls all sorts of foolishness with standards.
In S4 the conflict is between those who want to ensure there's a reason to stay and expand Mars colonization and those who want to bring the asteroid back to Earth. OK, sure, makes sense: they're putting the greater good of securing mankind's expansion into the solar system over the convenience of companies that want to mine the asteroid. In S5 mining the asteroid has completely changed the world for the better. Green energy is possible, global warming is reversed, Earth is totally dependent on the iridium. The conflict is between the people who work there and the corporations who want to automate their jobs away and bring them back to earth.
Here's my issue: Mars is still a bad place to live and I don't believe anyone cares this much about their right to live in a company town underneath a desert. 9 years have passed between S4 and S5, and what have they got to show for it? Pretty much nothing. The tunnels are a little bit nicer, they have a couple little domes they grow a few crops in, and there's a little Deep Space 9-looking shipping container town - that's it. Say they put a big dome over a crater, pressurized it, terraformed the inside a bit, and had something like 20,000-30,000 people living and working in a self-sufficient base. That would constitute an actual Martian society that I would buy people caring about the independence of. As it stands they have a large high school's worth of people with zero cultural institutions who are totally dependent on Earth supplying them.
That really renders the independence movement's motivations bizarre. Sure, in S4 part of our cast was agitating for better conditions and the other part was trying to safeguard space exploration. Those are both reasonable and achievable goals. But now I'm expected to sympathize with people who are holding an incredibly essential resource that billions of people depend on hostage, not because they think everyone's going to quit going to space but because they want to keep living in a Martian shantytown. And then they're all totally shocked and appalled that Earth responds to that by deciding to quit sending them food, then sends the military up there to get the iridium flowing again? Literally what did they expect to happen? Sorry, everyone, but Earth's economy has to collapse because the Mars base has been hijacked for the second time in order to safeguard 5000 of the Solar System's worst jobs?
To me it seems obvious that the Kuragin perfidy, the murder plot, and the trigger-happy Peacekeepers were written in order to give our protagonists something to actually be upset about. Without that there's no reason for them to be fundamentally opposed to Earth's plans. They could have even made the exploration idealism a relevant factor by writing some reason for Mars to be a better base for outer planetary missions, but it's clearly only an advantage if you already have an old ship there and are trying to beat a mission launched from Earth.
For those unfamiliar, in 1994 Eros Poli, a 194cm 87kg sprinter usually part of Mario Cipollini's leadout, found himself with a 17 minute lead on the Montpellier-Carpentras stage after catching another breakaway. He calculated how much time he would lose when he hit Ventoux, built his lead up to 24 minutes, and ended up winning with a 4 minute lead over the rest of the peloton.
Now, I don't watch enough cycling from both now and then to have a robust and complete understanding of how things have changed. Obviously this is a historically unique performance, but why? If sprinters can theoretically build up such a break that their actual climbing performance is irrelevant, why aren't they doing so more often?
Here's some explanations I've considered, and counterargumants:
Spinning is just that much better than grinding, which was still the dominant strategy in 1994. Maybe so, but isn't that generalizable to all cyclists, i.e. a heavy cyclist will benefit just as much from more efficient pedalling as a lighter one?
The peloton is a lot faster and you couldn't make that big of a break now. Maybe, but isn't the reason highly related to aerodynamic gains, of the kind that benefit solo breakaways just as much? I can't find any hard statistics on how long temporary breakaways are these days, just ones that people managed to make stick.
Solo breakaways like this are only permissible under weird circumstances. My understanding is that Poli basically didn't have a job to do since Cipo had skipped the tour that year. It was apparently a really hot tour and the peloton was taking it a little easier in the flat too, with the assumption that it would be decided on Ventoux anyways. This seems most likely to me, but surely this perfect storm isn't so perfect - there have been other times this has happened too, surely?
Cycling now doesn't put this kind of guy in that kind of situation any more. My understanding of the mid-late 90s is that it was the heyday of teams organized around a big sprinter like Cipo or Zabel, but the leadout trains weren't as disciplined as they would become in the days of Cavendish. Did this mean that GC contenders of this time were better time triallists than climbers, thereby raising the chances that someone capable of a giant solo breakaway could find themselves in this situation?
If anyone more knowledgeable about cycling tactics in the 90s compared to now could chime in, I'd love to learn from you.