His Stance On Discs

Nearly two years ago, a driver in China narrowly missed death when a runaway circular saw blade impaled the front of his car.

I was reminded of that today after reading about what happened to Owain Doull.

The Sky Team rider crashed with one kilometre remaining in the opening stage of the Abu Dabhi Tour.  Normally, that wouldn't elicit much attention--riders crash during races all the time.  What is causing controversy, though, is an injury he suffered and, more important, what he believes to be the cause.

When he was being treated for road rash on his back side, he pointed to his foot and showed a cut that was visible through a tear in his sock.  

It's unusual, to say the least, for  riders to incur that sort of cut on their feet.  Even if they are wearing flip-flops, they are unlikely to incur more than some scrapes, painful as those wounds may be. 

So what could have cut through Doull's shoe and caused such a wound?  He says that it was the rotor of a disc brake.  "If anything, I've come off lucky here," he said.  "If that'd been my leg, it would have cut straight through it, for sure."

In other words, by a dint of fate, he narrowly avoided--at the very least--the kind of injury Francisco Ventoso suffered last year in the Paris-Roubaix race.  The directeur sportif of Movistar, Ventoso's team, said "The cut was so deep you could see the tibia."

That mishap led to a temporary ban on disc brakes in the peloton, which was recently lifted "on a trial basis" according to the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale.  Disc brakes were allowed on the condition that the rotors' edges were rounded off. Marcel Kittel, the only rider using disc brakes in the Abu Dabhi tour, was using rounded Shimano rotors after insisting he wouldn't use technology otherwise.

Doull was asked whether he has a stance on disc brakes.  "I do now," he said.  "In my opinion, unless there are covers on those things, they're pretty lethal."

Others have expressed the opinion that "everybody or nobody" should use them in a race.  Whatever one thinks of disc brakes (I have never used them myself, and probably won't unless some compelling reason presents itself.), I think it's fair to ask why Kittel or anyone else saw the need to use them in pancake-flat Abu Dabhi.

Rubber Matches Leather?

Almost two years ago, I wrote about one of the funniest listings I've ever seen on eBay, or anywhere.  It expresses the seller's loathing for the saddle he or she was trying to sell:  a Brooks Cambium C15.

Now, I am not going to offer an opinion on it, or the C17, as I have never tried either.  I probably won't (unless someone offers me one for free), as I am satisfied with the Brooks saddles I have (Professionals and B17s) and don't want to change.

The idea behind Cambium saddles is, however, intriguing--and not new.  For one thing, Cambiums are certainly not the first saddles to come with canvas tops, though, when they were introduced a couple of years ago, they might have been the first such saddles in half a century or so.

More important, however, is what lies underneath that cloth covering:  a vulcanized rubber base.  That, too, is something that most cyclists who aren't collecting Social Security haven't seen before.  Rubber in a bike seat?  

Turns out, it was once fairly common, or at least not unusual. (Fifty shades of equivocation?)  I was reminded of that when I came across this:

Cyclists of a certain age will recall the name Wolber.  Until the '80's or thereabouts, it was the chief rival of Michelin in the world of bicycle tires.  In fact, to many cyclists, Wolber was even more highly regarded, as they made a more extensive line of tubular tires, which included one of the nicest pairs of tubulars I ever owned and rode. (I can't remember the model name.)  They also improved upon Michelin's "Elan", widely considered to be the first high-performance clincher.

So it's fair to assume that Wolber knew a thing or two about making things from rubber.  The saddle in the above photo was made by Ideale, the premiere French saddle-maker, from a "skin" Wolber fabricated.  The undercarriage appears to be the one used on the Ideale B6, which is remarkably similar to the Brooks B72:  the saddle that came with many classic English three-speed bikes.

A B6/B72 with a rubber top actually makes sense, at least in theory, for commuters and others who ride or park their bikes in the rain.  I wonder how long those saddles lasted.


Perhaps it's not surprising that another leading bicycle-tire maker of the time also made bicycle saddles, or at least the tops for them:

I don't know whether Dunlop made the carriages for their saddles, or whether--as  is apparently the case with Wolber saddles--they were made by a company that made leather saddles.  

Interestingly, Raleigh bicycles came with Dunlop tires, which were considered to be the finest quality (Riders did everything they could to extend the life of those tires!), until Dunlop stopped making bicycle tires in the late 1960s. To my knowledge, however, those same Raleigh bicycles were not equipped with Dunlop saddles:  Instead, they came with B72s or other Brooks models.  

Like the Cambiums, the Wolber/Ideale and Dunlop saddles were constructed of a rubber base layer topped with cloth that was treated with a rubber compound for waterproofing. The Cambium looks more cloth-like than the others--a conscious decision, I am sure, on the company's part.  The Wolber/Ideale has a textured appearance that makes me think of a cross between carbon fiber and leather, while the Dunlop looks like leather, at least from a few feet away.

Although Dunlop hasn't made bicycle tires in nearly half a century, they continue to make tires for motorized vehicles as well as other rubber products.  In the late '80s, Wolber absorbed Super Champion, then the best rim-maker in France (or anywhere else) with the exception of Mavic. (For a few years, Super Champion rims were marketed under the Wolber name.)  Then, a few years later, Michelin took over Wolber!

Did This Idea Ever Fly?

We have all felt, at least once, that we were "flying" while riding our bicycles.

In a sense, it always feels that way because we're not surrounded by walls or sheets of steel.  More often, though, when we say that we were, or felt as if we were, "flying", we mean that the ride was fast and effortless:  We were feeling good and spinning our gears while the wind pushed at our backs.

Most of us don't mean that we were literally aloft.  However, a few cyclists have gotten their wheels off the ground.  And I'm not talking about the kid on E.T.!

Nearly half a century before one of the world's favorite movies came out, a French inventor came up with this:

In the November 1936 issue of Popular Science, it was described thusly:

PROPELLER DRIVES NOVEL BICYCLE

A whirling, three-bladed propeller provides the motive power for a bicycle of odd design recently exhibited in Paris by a French inventor. Mounted at the front, the propeller is attached to a driving rod in a gear box supported over the front wheel by a metal frame. The gear mechanism is connected by a chain to the conventional bicycle sprocket wheel, which is pedaled in the usual manner. An extremely high gear ratio, it is said, enables the cyclist to drive the propeller at high speed. A hand lever is used to operate a rear-wheel brake, as in ordinary European bicycles.

As a cyclist who came of age during the 1970s--in the twilight of that decade's Bike Boom--I find the last sentence particularly fascinating.  I'm guessing that in 1936, most Americans had never seen or ridden a bike with a hand brake:  Most American bikes at that time were made for kids and had coaster brakes.  

I wonder whether that bike got off the ground, literally and figuratively.