I Don't Play Golf so Why am I Covered In Dimples?

It has recently been postulated that cycling is the new golf. This idea is in fact very plausible and explains certain things. Think of our friend Mr. Dentist who feels the need to get fit and decides on cycling because, similar to golf, it is a sport that you can spend exorbitant amounts of money on equipment in order to become marginally better. However the world of cycling may seem treacherous to one whose previous domains were quiet green fields and plush clubhouses. Just like the Italians brought spaghetti and Mafia Movies with them to America the new cyclists has brought with him certain aspects of his culture he left in order to make his new environment seem more hospitable. Case in point:Note how this particular group of ex-golfers are absolutely covered in dimples and argyle, both staples of the golfing culture.

What other benefits may dimples have other than helping with cultural transition? AERODYNAMICS!!!!! But, if you think that the dimples on Zipp's famous deep section wheels function like those of a golf ball, you are absolutely wrong. If you think about it, it is easily observed that the golf ball and the wheel have very little in common. First of all, unless you're riding close to 70 miles per hour, your bike wheel speed does not come close to matching the speed at which a golf ball travels through the air. This is important because a primary factor in aerodynamic similarity is the speed and size of the body traveling through the air. In fact at slower speeds dimples will actually create more drag, I even did this experiment as part of a lab last year and at 35 mph wind speed a smooth golf ball had less drag than a dimpled golf ball. The second difference is in orientation of the body, a golf ball can spin in any direction and has to be nearly aerodynamically similar in every orientation in order it obtain stable flight. The wheel however, while still spinning, is for the most part fixed in it's orientation.

Instead the section of a bicycle rim is much more closely related to an aircraft wing. And the purpose of dimples on the rim section is to prevent what is called 'stall'. Stall occurs when the angle at which the airflow hits the wing is at such a great angle that the flow separates and circulates on the downwind side of the aircraft. This creates massive amounts of drag and reduces lift, but lift isn't really a concern for bicycles. So dimples also have an aircraft equivalent. These equivalents are called vortex generators. These vortex generators are small pieces of metal attached to the top side of wings, they disrupt the flow over the top of an airfoil, which allows the flow over the airfoil to remain attached to the surface longer, which in turns allows for a greater angle of attack before stall results. Zipp claims that most of the time a rider is riding into at least a slight crosswind. This is important because in an ideal situation where there is no lateral component of wind, the dimples on the wheels may actually create more drag than a smooth surface.
So the dimples prevent stall in crosswinds which is the main culprit of form drag, but the dimples also increase the skin friction drag over the wheel which may have a adverse affect on the net drag of the rider not riding into a crosswind. Bicycle races are won by the smallest margins, so every little bit helps, even if the benefit are really really tiny and serves a mostly marketing purpose.

New Project

Starting up a new blog. Not going to replace this old faithful, which is by the way just a year old. After viewing the ECCC's spiffy conference website and their 'blogosphere' I'm pretty sure the Midwest, being the second largest conference next to the east also needs a blog sphere. Except with my plan It'll be cooler, have pictures, race results, race reports, videos, race fliers, and a cooler name. It'll also be run by several people, so not just me blogging it up all the time. Look for updates soon. Give me suggestions for what you'd like to see on it or possible names.

It's Official

After a 5 hour class and $35 it's official: I'm now a Catagory C USA Cycling Official. Well, maybe it's not really that official, I still have to wait on confimation of my test passing and time for processing by USA Cycling, but it's about 99% official. I went to the clinic with the full intention to nod off through most of it, but was suprisingly captivated for most of the 5 hours. Our clinic host was Mike Hanley, who has not only been an official for longer than I've known how to ride a bike, but he was also a mechanic for the 7-Eleven Pro Cycling team in the days of Andy Hampstead. Most of the clinic was Mike telling war storries from officiating and being a pro mechanic. One story from the Tour de France where, as a mechanic for 7-Eleven, they were giving Andy Hampstead a wheel and had pulled off to the left hand side of the road. Scrambling out the car to make the change the passenger side door was left open, and the DS and driver for the Panasonic team car decided to smash the living crap out of the passenger door of the 7-Eleven Car. It surely had nothing to do with the 'stupid Americans'. Moral of the story, don't pull off to the left, even if you're in the TdF (or think you are like most Mr. Dentist Cat.5's out there). Before leaving Mike and I had a discussion about how awesome Paul Martin is, and with him being our Team Director our team is most likely going to win every single race. In the end we all got our licenses and now no longer have to pay out our collective asses to have the proper number of officials at our collegiate venues. That, and I can probably make a little extra green at some of these races I travel to over the Summer.

Also, I am very humbled to be mentioned in the blog of the Purdue Cycling Club president for my mockery of his statement that for him "hills don't even exist anymore". Good luck with that Brian, besides isn't criticism the highest form of praise? Or was blog title imitation, I forget.

PezCycling again has confirmed its place as the coolist cycling website with their article celebrating the traditional 32 spoke as non-aero as possible wheelset. It's a great article particularly because of the stereotypical Italian shop mechanic they somehow found to build up the wheels in his shop that is filled with odd tools as old as time. It gives more evidence supporting the fact that the traditional wheel which has gone through a hundred some years of evolution and refinement, still has something to offer over the tech-marketing driven wheelsets that have only just developed in the past 20 years. There are no FEA codes being run on bike wheelsets that I know of, so any wheel designing going on now is just as thorough as those taking place in the time before computers.

Bikes Galore

First of all I rode outside today in SHORTS and it was freaking amazing, however the bad part about near 60 degree days in February is that they are usually caused by some pretty strong weather systems which result in some pretty strong winds. Joey and I appropriately rode out to the wind farm near Oxford (the country one). The wind was at our back and it was warm so there was little concern about the waining daylight...until we turned around. After overcoming the shock of being smacked in the face by a large headwind, we did an hour and a half long pursuit to beat the sun to it's finish line, we rolled in just as darkness arrived. It is a good thing that this warm weather has arrived,even if it only gives us a few days break from the dark winter days. I had become so depressed from riding inside I had turned to the bottle.

Also a few weekends ago we had our first team meeting for the Panther/RGF Super Duper Elite Team, and even got to ride bikes. The team meeting went well, and the level of organization on this team is more akin to an actual business than a bike team and probably greater than the vast majority of amature teams out there. We even got to ride some of the very exciting road around Columbus, which were very much like the roads near Purdue but there the largest climb was a freeway overpass (GPS confirmed, by the way: all you fellow Collegiate races better watch out for %grade updates at every possible moment during race season).

We drove away with some sweet Hammer Nutrition stuff, some soccer RGF jerseys, white bar tape (hells yeah), and 1/2 blining bike.

How can you have one half a bike?Yup, only a frame and lonely seatpost. The Fizik seats are back ordered in Italy, along with the Ultegra SL components. However even without these components the bike is still blingtastic.

Yes sir, more bling. Also note that this is the 'Sprint' frame. Not every member received a sprint frame, which leads me to the only possible conclusion that I now am one of the team sprinters. Not only that but I believe the sprint frame has more aggressive steerer tube geometry. Oh yeah y'all better be watching out.Oh, hmm, no headset, not really all that blingin'. Apparently Felt can't make headsets fast enough. No need, real men don't need headsets.And if you didn't believe there could be any possible need for me to own more bikes, you were wrong. The OVCX series better look out next year cuz Chris Uberti just bought a CX bike. I got the bike off eBay for a reasonable price. It's a Jamis Nova built out of steal and it is very heavy. That's ok, I usually equate large weight with a high factor of safety, just like in the airline industry. Airplanes have .032" Aluminum skin which has a factor of safety of 1.5, this bike frame weighs about 10 lbs and probably has a factor of safety of 50. To me, this doesn't mean an unnecessarily overbuilt bike, but one that will last FOREVER. I even bought a tubular wheelset, for my sweet CX bike.In retrospect the tubular wheelset was probably not the wisest investment due to the number of wheels that will be magically appearing in my possession soon. I even learned to glue tubular tires with these wheels. The first glue job did not go well. There's even a video of it, but it contains way to much profanity to be blog appropriate (more likely because I bad mouthed other peoples gluing jobs, and yes I stretched out the freaking tires before putting them on). Anyway the second time round for the front tire was a picture perfect mounting job, so at least it's a quick learning curve. So if anyone would like to be my next tubluar gluing subject feel free to contact me, one of your tires may be glued way better than the other.

Ugh

So, I don't have any time for a full update on things, but a monster blog post is in the near future, including the video of my attempting to glue a tubular (which is very sad), pictures off all the kicking new bikes I have, and an update of the Panther Team meeting.

And project moustache failed. Three weeks in and its spotty beginings still had to be examined with a microscope. Oh well, some people were born for things. I'll stick with the long hair as my main hair growing hobby (that anyone knows of)...

Also we will be getting our profiles put up on Felt's website soon.