Jim’s Tech Talk
By Jim Langley
This week, I’ve got some catching up to do and am sharing a couple of comments that came in related to recent articles. I also want to tell you about a video I thoroughly enjoyed that brings together four industry luminaries, Jim Gentes of Giro Helmets; Craig Calfee of Calfee Designs carbon bikes; Keith Bontrager of Bontrager and Trek; and Jim Turner of Optibike ebikes to discuss how they influenced cycling and where they see the industry going in the future.
Let’s start with Lon Haldeman of PAC Tour’s letter: https://www.pactour.com/. He’s replying to an Ask The Coach article from early May, in which a reader asked, “How do I say no to someone I don’t want to ride with?” RBR Editor Stan Purdum penned the answer and a lively discussion followed in the comments section.
Lon asked that I add his response:
“Hi Jim,
I have been at Desert Camp in Arizona and Cycling on Historic Route 66 the past 3 months. When I left home in February there was a snow storm in Wisconsin. Now it is 84 degrees today in mid May.
I didn’t get a chance to respond to the question about the fellow who had a neighbor who wanted to go riding with him. It sounded like the fellow was a little annoyed that riding with his novice neighbor would disrupt his training program.
When I read their story I could relate to the situation because I was a novice rider at one time. I had a lot of enthusiasm… but not a lot of knowledge about bikes and training. I was eager to learn and I was always asking “real bike riders” about their equipment and how to train.
Today, it’s the “real bike riders” who took the time to ride with me and share their cycling knowledge that I remember best. I have been lucky to develop as a rider and experience over 100 tours and races across America. Whenever I am asked by a new rider about suggestions for training and equipment I am honored they are asking my opinion. Maybe someday they can pass down their knowledge to some other new novice riders.”
Wing Warping and human-powered flight
Also from a May newsletter, we received a comment about our article on my visit to the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. I have an interest in how their bicycle business and them being bike mechanics influenced the building of the first successful airplane.
One of their keys to success was an invention called “wing warping.” Until the Wrights came up with this, they could take off but they could not control the plane to keep flying. In the article is a video of wing warping in action.
A viewer of the video named Leslie Reissner shared in a comment some great trivia about wing warping that I hadn’t heard and want to share. He wrote:
“Wing warping as a method of control was never suitable for large aircraft structures. Amazingly, it made a comeback in human-powered flight with the Gossamer Condor in 1977. Ailerons would cause too much drag for such a slow aircraft but wing warping turned out to be perfect and was used again in the English Channel crossing by the Gossamer Albatross in 1979.”
If you haven’t heard of the pedal powered airplanes, the Gossamer Condor and Albatross, they are an incredible testimonial to the power of pedaling. You can learn more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacCready_Gossamer_Albatross.
Video: From Dumpster Diving to the Tour de France
Lastly, I could be prejudiced because most of the cycling celebrities that are interviewed in this video are friends, but I think you’ll appreciate and enjoy learning more about their backgrounds and their extensive contributions to the sport. While it’s a long video at 2 hours and 44 minutes, the stories held my interest throughout.
For example, Jim Gentes, who invented the Giro helmet, the first truly lightweight, well-vented yet still safe helmet, reminds us that before his helmet arrived, professional racers were quitting cycling rather than complying with the new UCI helmet rule. From Craig Calfee of Calfee Designs, we learn that he’s as excited about his bamboo bikes today as he was building custom carbon bikes for Greg LeMond and his teammates. He talks about new square bamboo tubes being grown in Japan for use on his bamboo tandems too. Who knew that was even possible?
From Keith Bontrager, come stories of wrenching for a motorcycle team before he got into bike building and designing components and how he got bought by Trek and went on to become a household name. Now in retirement, he’s busy working on an electric commuting machine that resembles but isn’t really a bicycle because it doesn’t have pedals. Here’s Keith talking about that: https://medium.com/@keith_bontrager/some-progress-on-the-privateer-sl-ev-prototype-bb18f40dcbda.
And last is Jim Turner, who I met for the first time in the video. He’s the brother of Paul Turner who founded RockShox. Jim worked with Keith back in his motorcycle days and is now running Optibike, an e-bike company offering very unique bikes you might want to check out.
Enjoy the show:
Jim Langley is RBR’s Technical Editor. A pro mechanic & cycling writer for more than 40 years, he’s the author of Your Home Bicycle Workshop in the RBR eBookstore. Tune in to Jim’s popular YouTube channel for wheel building & bike repair how-to’s. Jim’s also known for his cycling streak that ended in February 2022 with a total of 10,269 consecutive daily rides (28 years, 1 month and 11 days of never missing a ride). Click to read Jim’s full bio.
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