Today me and John spent about 3 hours cycling as different speeds up and down Lakeside, measuring our speeds and distance travelled when we stopped peddling.

First we found a bit that was flat, or at least consistently uphill. Then we found a marker at the start of this flat patch where we would stop peddling.

Cycling back about 100 meters, we sped towards the marker at a ‘constant’ known speed, stopped peddling then measured the distance it took us to stop.

The recumbent always went further, although at lower speeds the difference was less marked.

Today me and Steve went climbing for the second time this term. I have got a year’s pass and so want to make the most of it, but time is often not on my side, and on Steve’s side less often.

After spending a few minutes in the bouldering room, and realising how little strength I have in my arms we moved onto the roped walls and zipped up a few. I like to set myself challenges and so zipped up the wall at lightning speed. Well, at least so fast that I had to stop halfway up for Steve to catch up belaying!

A few walls later, I realised that I had my new phone, which has the ability to take pictures. So I took a few photos (despite the signs in the sports centre which say ‘No photos without the permission of the management’). Unfortunately I do not know how to get my computer to talk to my phone, and so have to use windoze to extract the photos via bluetooth. There must be an easier way which doesn’t mean having to remove the battery and memory card.

The dude from the climbing centre came up to us a few minutes before we were about to leave, and said that he was not prepared to let us climb with the equipment we had, as Steve’s belay was too small for the ropes we were using. After pursuading him to lend us one, we did a few more climbs before heading off.

After climbing I got changed and went to rev, with chalky hands and tired arms.

Today me and John bought some bamboo canes from Homebase, together with some cable ties and twine and made a frame around his upright bike.

We had a basic idea of what it would look like, but it is quite hard to think about where cross members shouldn’t be, as they tend to get in the way.

After getting most of the way though the construction of it in my bedroom, we realised that it had to fit through the door and so shaved a few inches of a couple of bits ‘just to make sure’.

When we finished it was dark outside, but we took it out anyway. It was strange to ride, and it felt like driving a bus. Corners had to be taken wider as this frame stuck out both in front and behind. Due to the quality of engineering that went into making it, your feet often got caught on a structral part which was a bit awkward. Getting on an off was a pain, and nearly resulted in me in a hedge. Other than that, it rode fine and did not impair the riders visability in any way.

This was a myth that I had been intending to explore ever since I visited Eastgate backpackers hostel when cycling from Lands End to John O’Groats in the summer of 06.

Armed with three strong onions, I carefully placed a peice of wrigleys extra gum in my mouth and began to chew. I proceeded to peel the onions, and lo and behold no tears. That was the myth proven.

However, most people do not cry when peeling onions – it is the cutting that causes the pain. So I started to cut, and cut, and cut. My eyes started watering, and my nose started to run. But amazingly, my eyes were not stinging.

I have tried a number of techniques in the past to avoid looking teary eyed when slaving over the chopping board, including wearing my scuba gear (which also worked) but I think chewing gum must be the easiest, although after a while your eyes do water and you start to strugle to see where the onion ends and your fingers start.

It worked for me I suggest you try it. Now it is time to eat the chilli con carne that I was making. Yum.

Three onions were harmed in the making of this blog article.

The writer apologises for any distress caused.

Today I tried to use my mobile internet card on the train as I was travelling from Coventry to Manchester. In the 2 hour journey, all I manged to do was send two emails and find out some train times.

The coverage in stations was not too bad, often I got UMTS. However, it took a number of seconds to establish connections, and by that time the train was pulling away.

When travelling, the signal was very inconsistant, much like using a normal mobile phone on the train. The data card seemed to lock up a couple of times, and I had to remove it and restart the software to kick it into touch. It also got confused about when to switch from GPRS to UMTS, and vice versa, presumably because the relative signal strengths were changing too fast for its little brain.

It is nice toy, and useful when I am at uni as the university wireless is intermittant, and they block useful ports like 110 and 25 which stops me using thunderbird. However, it is less useful when travelling due to lack of decent signal.

When I moved back to uni, I visited Tescos and bought all the neccessary bits and peices of food for the next week or so. I came to cycle the 1.5 miles home, and found it a bit of a strugle. A large backpack with all my uni stuff in, and bags of food hanging off every surface.

On the way back, when I was not fully occupied keeping the bike balanced I realised that a trailer would be a helpful addition to my random collection of bike parts, and decided to look into making one.

When I got home I did some research on the legality of using trailers on bikes, and there did not seem to be much, other than reflectors and lights being needed at night.

Then my attention turned to ebay. There were new bike trailers selling for £30 + £10 postage, and I did not think that I could make one for less than that even with the generous amounts of bike parts in my back garden. It also came complete with a towball, and had a rating of 50kg. Now I will not mention names, but I have a small female housemate who weighs in at 45kg, so even she could sit in my trailer, being pulled around like a dog.

A few weeks later, and a very large parcel arrives from Germany. Carefully unpacking it yeilded a large grey box, lots of steel tubing, two wheels and a pile of bolts. The instructions that came with it were useless, and I resorted back to my intuition and managed to get something that looked roughtly how it should. The bolts that were supplied were of very poor quality, and I sheared a lot of the threads off when tightning things up. I was not using a torque wrench, but I know that bolts should not be loose.

The next problem was the towball. It was all nice and shiney, but I could not figure a way to fix it on. After hitting it with a large hammer, I got it to fit around my seat post stem. However, when the trailer was loaded it tended to bend the ball downwards, putting a large force on the locking screw keeping the trailer fixed to the ball.

About a week later, I realised how the ball was meant to be fixed on. Of course it needed some modification to work, but it was a much better solution. All I needed to do was saw through the 3mm steel bracket with my junior hacksaw with 50p blades. Needless to say, the blades took most of the impact and my trusty swiss army knife saw to the rest of the bracket. Once I had taken the right amount of steel off (and replaced the poor quality bolt that had sheared) the bolt was threaded though the seat post bolt, and the bottom of the bracket rested on the top of the A frame, as shown in the picture. This resulted in a horizontal ball that was fairly sturdy. However, now the beam of the trailer could potentially interfere with the pannier rack, and so I lowered the back of the panier rack to give plenty of clearance.

I have used the trailer for quite a few shopping trips, and have found it very useful. It allows me to save on plastic bags, as the items go straight in the grey box. However, the trailer does have some problems associated with it, which I will now consider.

When you have a load in the box, perhaps greater than 15kg you can feel the affect on your bike brakes. The trailer wants to continue going forward and if you primarily use your front brake to stop yourself (which you should!) it creates a moment above the center of the rear wheel, and so helps you go over your handlebars. If the trailer was fixed onto the bike at the centre of the rear wheel, as in the photo on the right you would still have to brake harder but you would not get the turning moment to help you over your handlebars.

The grey box is loose, and it rattles around a lot, especially when ridden on the lovely Coventry roads. I fixed this issue with a few bungie cords strapped around it, which also help stop your shopping dispensing itself on the road.

When you are cycling with it on, you have to be constantly aware that it is there – otherwise you could find yourself stopped abruptly by a bollard. There can be no weaving in and around traffic, and you have to be careful when turning because it turns a little later than the bike does and tends to catch on things. I improved the design slightly by insetting the capped nuts for the wheels by a few milimeters, just to take them to the inside of the main sidebar. This reduces the amount of paint I knock off things when I get too close.

The final problem with the trailer is keeping it. When I take it shopping I have to take two locks with me, as my one D-lock is not big enough to go around both my bike and trailer.

Despite the problems, the trailer is very useful to me and although I get some funny looks when it is attatched to my rear end it was well worth the money in novelty value and usefulness.

On friday I talked to Colin about taking the recumbent out on the road to get a feel for it and make sure it still worked. He rang someone or other who did not sound keen, with distinct muttering of ‘public liability insurance’ audiable.

After a servicing, which consisted of adjusting all the brake pads and tension, fiddling with the derailurs, greasing up the chain guides, replacing a missing bolt in the left crank and putting some air in the tyres she was set for her first run.

Me and John wheeled her over to lakeside, and attempted to stay balanced on the bike. Going in a straight line was not too much of a problem, but turning was difficult as me knees were getting in the way of the above seat stearing.

I managed to get the hang of turning, and both me and John were surprised how fast it was. I was cycling along at a reasonable rate on the recumbent, and he was having to really put his foot down on his upright bike just to keep up. I would guess it is to do with the difference in frontal area. Take a look at this next shot.

All in all, it was a nice bike to ride although there were a few problems with it:

• Knees got in the way of steering, making turning difficult. It also meant that you had to keep hold of the handlebars when cycling, as if you knock the bars when your knee is on the way past you would end up somewhere you didn’t want to be
• The aluminium seat bars extended a bit too far forward, making it uncomfortable for me to sit with my legs on the floor. Somone with longer legs might not have that problem.
• It was impossible to change gear because of the position of the gear levers – right between the legs, a long way from the hands.

Conclusion: I want one (I have added it to my wishlist!)

On Monday 30th October we went to see one of the guys in engineering, and he took us to see a couple of recumbent bikes that had been the subject of previous projects. They turned out to be two blue bikes – one seriously modified, and the other seemed fairly original.

Today we went to get the bike as we now had the relevant hardware to secure it in our newly allotted workspace. After setting up a backdrop and tripod, we took lots of photos of the bike, and of me on the bike with my feet in various positions.

When all the photos were layered, they made a nice picture showing the area that would need to be enclosed to allow room for feet.

Today I tried to connect my phone to my laptop to get all my messages off it. However, when I came to plug the serial cable in I found it lacked the neccessary parts. (A similar thng happened a few weeks ago when I grabbed a floppy disk and tried to find where it went, and realised that it didn’t have a 3.5″ drive).

So, the laptop was out of the question and I had to use my desktop. However, my desktop does not have windows on it, and the software to connect to the phone is windows only.

Looking at the mobile programs for linux, I descovered quite a few. I installed kmobiletools via the Ubuntu software manager and tried to get it to talk to my phone via the serial port, /dev/ttyS0. The screen on the phone dimmed (as it always used to, don’t know why) but the software did not connect. I tried to change the software ‘port’ to /dev/ttyS1 and ended up making the software refuse to run – and I could not run the software to change it back. I then deleted all the files in my home directory that had been created by the software, and in addtion deleted the relevant files in the /usr/share/ directory. After reinstalling, again via the software manager I reran the software on /dev/ttyS0. After changing a few settings, I still did not manage to make it work and gave it up for a bad job. When I get time I might try out some of the other programs.

Moral of the story: Don’t buy dodgy serial port phone connectors off ebay.

As part of my mechanical design coursework, we have to analyse a component using old modelling techniques and assumptions, and then analyse the same component using finite element analysis, comparing the two techniques.

I decided to look at a normal upright bike frame as we have been told that we cannot get credit for the same peice of work twice, and so cannot submit coursework that has also been submitted for our project. Looking at the stresses on an upright bike will be interesting and give me some insights into why they are designed as they are, but I will reserve modelling the recumbents for my project.

Rather than modelling the frame as a 3D structure, I decided to simplfy the frame of the bike into uniform solid rods, of known radius solidly merged with no fillet. I measured up my bike and the angles concerned, and a few minutes later on solidworks had something that resembled a bike from the side.

Given that we were told COSMOS was not in the student version of the software that I have, I somehow managed to use it to analyse the forces on parts of the bike. I assumed that the wheel hubs were fixed, and that a load was on the handlebars and seat post. The stress pattern and deflection of the parts of the bike were very interesting.