Joe Gross

The good thing about a ride starting at 9:30pm is you don’t have to get up early for it, like most other cycling events. The bad thing is you’re just about ready for bed at 9:30pm and then have to ride for another 22 hours before you get to sleep.

Even though my start time is officially 9:30pm, I don’t want to be in the first or second wave since they’ll likely be speed demons. I’ll shoot for getting there about 8:45 and get in the third or fourth 90 hour wave.

I’m now going to attempt a 7 hour nap before I get up, shower, throw on all my layers and head to the start area with Lorah around 8:30pm. The weather is looking like sprinkles into the night, but otherwise seems pretty good.

You can track my progress at
http://www.paris-brest-paris.org/EN/index.php?showpage=64
using frame number 3311.

I’ll be back here early Friday morning. Bonne route!

I just finished the final prep for the ride, including repacking my drop bag and bike stuff. While going through it I made a list of the stuff I’m bringing. Never let it be said that Randonneurs don’t travel light!

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Today is when the first official event, bike inspection and registration, occurred. It had a distinctly different character than the previous few days.

While the last few days were relaxed and most of the people around me were from the US or Canada, the true international feel of PBP started to shine. Today is Sunday so most of the local stores are closed. Lorah and I went to lunch at what seemed to be the only restaurant open nearby. It was filled with cyclists of all nationalities enjoying a huge plate of pasta.

While until today I had overheard conversations mostly in English, French, or Hebrew (many of the 8 Israeli randonneurs were staying at our hotel) now it included German, Japanese, Italian, and a slew of other languages I didn’t recognize.

After eating I changed and rode to the gymnasium to have my bike inspected and receive my rider packet. I found out as I was leaving that they weren’t actually inspecting bikes due to rain, but that they’d still enforce proper lighting at the ride start.

As I neared the gymnasium I was greeted by some very cheerful older Frenchmen who directed me toward the underground tunnel that bypassed the large roundabout. These guys were clearly having a good time and even though we couldn’t understand each other we enjoyed a short conversation about my heart rate monitor that involved mostly each of us clapping our hands on our hearts saying “ba-bump! ba-bump!”.

As I rolled through the tunnel I ran into another Frenchman who lived nearby and he immediately asked me where I was from. When I told him he said he loves the US and San Francisco and is going to spend 5 weeks vacation wandering through the western national parks. If only people in the US could do the same!

Inside the first thing that struck me was the enormous sign that listed all the registered nationalities and where they should go for their packets. I think this is one of the most telling indicators of the worldwide flavor of PBP, and one of the great things that brings people here.

It took me a few minutes to find my table, and when I did I was greeted by a very friendly German woman who spoke very good English. She handed me my packet which included the very important Brevet booklet and my mag stripe card. I could lose everything else I carried, but without those two items, I’d never get credit for the event. She cautioned me to keep very good care of them, and I promised to return them safely before Friday.

I then picked up my jerseys and water bottle, bought a tshirt, and headed back outside to check out the neat bikes that were all over the field.

Randonneurs are a creative bunch and they come up with great inventions all the time, most of them involving creative way to mount their lights or other equipment. For example, I saw two bikes with Campy Carbon Record Groupos ($3k, not including the frame or wheels) that had cool homemade light mounts attached to their bars. It’s clear that these randonneurs know what’s important, which is both having a great high end bicycle setup, but also having it be functional for their own needs.

Of course, some people also feel the need to have something fun on their bikes. I saw more than one mascot as well.

As I left, the skies opened up and I found myself in the middle of a huge thunderstorm. I threw on my jacket and headed back to the hotel, of course it only lasted about 5 minutes and was over just as quickly as it started.

It’s probably going to be a wet PBP, but with the wet qualifiers this spring I’m not worried. At least here the rainstorms only last a few minutes, rather than hours or days in Northern CA.

Off to dinner now. I might post something else before the ride starts, but if not, bonne route!

More pictures are at
http://img.stimpy.net/pics/bike/pbp2007/inspection/

Today I went on a route preview ride hosted by the Davis Bike Club. There were about 70 randonneurs from all over the country joining us on the ride.

I was told earlier that it would be the first 37 miles of the PBP route. I wasn’t looking forward to working that hard today but I was convinced to join them anyway.

The pace was pretty fast and I worked hard to keep up. At some point I was glad I forgot my heart rate monitor strap in my hotel room since I probably wouldn’t be having nearly as much fun knowing how hard I was probably working. I thought, “These guys are doing a 1200k in two days and they’re flying down this course. What did I get myself into?”

Fortunately, only 37 KM later we were at the town of Gambais and took a quick break.

I thought we may stop for lunch but it was only about 5 minutes later that were off again for a fast return with a nice tailwind.

I don’t have any advantage on the flats, and between my heavy bike and my heavy me, we don’t have any hope of having an advantage on the climbs. One thing I can do well, though, is descend. I was really working hard to keep up with the group on the rollers but found that if I worked a littler harder on the climbs to keep from losing too many places and then put a tiny bit of power in the descents I would gain time on the descents and slowly worked my way toward the front of the group. In this way I was able to turn the endlessly rolling hills into an advantage just to keep up with this fast group.

Not that this was a race, far from it, but it felt good to know that somehow I was keeping up with this group of extraordinarily talented cyclists, many of them previously having done this or other 1200k events.

I’m told that the route is mostly rollers just like the ones we saw today. If that’s the case the route should be much easier (though much longer longer) than the Northern California qualifier brevets.

More pics are at
http://img.stimpy.net/pics/bike/pbp2007/davis-preride/

We did a short walking tour of Paris on Friday. I’m a terrible tourist so we just walked around the iconic landmarks rather than going in them.

The major intersections in Paris have “bike boxes” where they bikes are supposed to move to the front of the line of stopped cars.

We also saw a few of the Paris community rental bikes. They look pretty nice, although the reported $750M cost over 10 years could have probably been spent on making a better/cheaper system than what they have now.

The Arc de Triomphe was also pretty impressive. I had no idea it was that big.

After wandering around Lorah and I stopped at a cafe to share some wine and cheese, as one should always do in Paris.

More pics are at http://img.stimpy.net/pics/bike/pbp2007/paris/

On Thursday I went for a ride around town to find the start/inspection area and then go on a 90 minute or so ride just to stretch my legs. It turned out to be closer to a 6 hour ride.

It was fun finding my way out of town and just wandering around. The drivers around here are freaky-polite. It’s actually a little disturbing since I’m not quite sure what they’re going to do. I saw at least one driver stop their car at a green light to have me go ahead against the red at a cross street.

I went through a few cute little towns that only lasted for a block or two. I saw at least one neat Chateau along the way.

Of course I got lost getting back. Fortunately Lorah had picked up some GSM SIMs earlier that day so she was able to talk me in after about a dozen calls. French roads make it very hard to tell where you are since all the intersections (roundabouts, mostly) just have directions to towns or other landmarks.

I was packing late into the night and thankfully found that my bike fit (barely) into the bike case. About 25 zip ties later the bike was well secured and ready to go.

After a long flight we arrived in Paris. The back half of the plane was filled with Randonneurs. Lorah commented that it was a really dorky looking group of people. You know you’re on a plane with cyclists when people bring a can of Perpeteum as carry-on.

The first thing to do (after checking into the hotel) was to put together bikes. We all had a bike building party on the patio of the hotel.

Now what kind of crazy man would have put so many zip ties on their bike?

There’s a bike room off the lobby of the hotel where people store their bike cases and bikes.

It’s a great social area because everyone frequently stops by to check out the creative innovations that people come up with for their bikes.

More pictures are up at
http://img.stimpy.net/pics/bike/pbp2007/arrival/

Rider tracking info is now available by frame number at http://www.paris-brest-paris.org/EN/index.php?showpage=64

My frame number is 3311.

Last weekend I finished putting together the dual Schmdit+Cree LED light. Lorah and I went on a 4 hour night ride and the light output rivals her $400 battery powered HID light. To say I’m never going back to the dual E6 lights would be quite an understatement.

I couldn’t have wished for a better result.

It’s constructed as two completely independent units to simplify the physical design and give me some redundancy.

I started with an aluminum tube and a piece of thick angle iron to use as a backing/heat sink for a Q5 bin Cree LED. The LED has thermal epoxy holding it onto the heat sink backing. I put threads in the backing and it screws to the inside of the tube with heat sink grease. The Lens is a Ledil smooth spot that fits perfectly inside the tube.

The electronics start with a Schottky full wave bridge rectifier, an on/off switch, high/low switch and nFlex constant current controller.

I used a high powered TIP3055 shunt transistor with 27V zener diode to keep the input voltage to the nFlex below its rated 30V. The tube itself works as a nice heat sink for the transistor. In testing I found the shunt kicks in at about 25.5V and at that point the LEDs have been at full power for a quite a while. I’ve run up to 8W though just the transistor on the bench with heat sink and it only gets slightly warm to the touch.

I didn’t use a capacitor to smooth out the rectification since even with a huge 1200uF capacitor I couldn’t see any difference in flicker with or without out. I figure one fewer part to fail on me.

All the internal connections are somewhat sealed and protected with heat shrink tubing so it’s unlikely that a solder join will come free due to it bouncing around. The parts are also packed so tightly inside that I don’t think anything even has room to move in there.

Here’s the schematic

My test rig involved having my wife’s bike and my own upside down with her rear wheel up against my front wheel. I was able to hit 40mph in the living room before my arm got tired.

Total cost for each complete unit was about $75 for parts and materials. Of course, I spent way more than that getting various other parts to test with, and smoked a few items before I got it all right.

At 300mA output each light consumes 1.25W. At 1000mA output each consumes 4.5W. I only see the full 1000mA above about 25-30mph, so I leave them on high and they come up extra bright for descents.

The device should be rainproof. The switch caps are waterproof and the switches are sealed. I used silicone to seal the lens and strain relief, and JB Weld to attach the back cap. I haven’t tried dunking it yet. Maybe after PBP.

Update: After 3 days of rain on PBP I can say without a doubt that they’re completely waterproof, which is more than I can say for just about every other part of the bike

The beam pattern is about 15 degrees of solid white light with no hot spots that reaches about 100 feet in front of me. There’s a sharp falloff to the left and right of the beam pattern but there’s still plenty of spillover available to read signs and see around corners. I’d say about 80% of the light hits the pavement so it’s a very efficient pattern.

As with the E6 lights, having it on the fork allows me to see bumps and shadows easily.

I have a Cree helmet light that I used with the E6 lights to see outside its very limited trapezoidal pattern and on descents but with the Cree LEDs I didn’t feel the need to use it all.

Since it’s generator powered I can’t easily do an outdoor shot but here’s a beam shot as well as I could do indoors.

It flickers a bit between 2-4.5 mph and kicks in fully at that point. At 15mph its much brighter than my Light and Motion HID light.

The light is good enough that after PBP I’m going to leave it on and use it instead of my HID.

I was a little worried about it overheating but with the airflow from riding and the cool night air it’s cool to the touch even after long fast descents.

Additional assembly pics I took along the way are at
http://img.stimpy.net/pics/bike/creeled/

I’m still going to bring one of the old E6 lights with me in case something terrible happens, but I’m pretty confident that it will work out well.

Bonne route!

Joe

Today we’re heading to the Paris for me to participate in the Paris-Brest-Paris 1200k brevet. The clock starts on Monday 8/20 at 9:30pm and ends 90 (or fewer) hours and 750 miles later.

This special event only occurs every 4 years and will have about 4500 Randonneurs from all over the world participating. I’ve been training all year specifically for this event and it promises to be an amazing adventure.

More later!