Monthly Archives: March 2019

Cermanic Speed is the future of road bike drive trains….WTF??

Dear Rouleurs,

MMT is still grappling with time poverty and sleep deprivation. With Bubba Mark 2, only 3 months away, MMT is beginning to think this will be a tough year. As harbinger of things to come, MMT watched Richmond’s AFL premiership hopes for 2019 nose dive last week. Alex Rance hobbled off the MCG with a season ending ACL injury. So AFL may not be a source of solace for the coming winter either. MMT digresses.

When MMT feels this out of sorts, thinking about buying a new bike always cheers MMT up. In the deep contemplation of road vs commuter vs gravel bikes as alternate replacements for MMT’s Venerable Wilier Laverdo, He re-discovered last years announcement from Ceramic Speed, a Danish bike components company.

Sometime in September 2017, ceramic Speed released a prototype road bike that contained a radical new drive train. This drive train based on a drive shaft rather than a chain meant that its power efficiency could reach 99%. That’s damn impressive and could give a rider a very significant speed advantage over his chain equipped competitors.  According to Ceramic Speed, a standard chain based drive train, like Shimano Durace has a maximum efficiency of 97%.

All of this is achieved by a pinion style drive shaft system. A total of 21 bearings play a crucial role in the functionality and efficiency of Driven. The bearings transfer torque from the front ring through the drive shaft, then onto the 13-speed rear cog.

Engineering aside, it looks amazing, like something out of a science fiction movie. MMT …sooooo… wants a bike that has this. No doubt this will cost big bucks when its eventually productionised and available to mug punters like MMT.

MMT could imagine Dave Brailsford, Manager of the team formerly known as Sky, signing up for this. One wonders how Shimano, Campagnolo and SRAM will respond to this incredible looking piece of engineering. All of this speculation cheered up MMT no end.

Until Next time, Ride safe

MARV

Agile work practices are killing my blog…sob

<whinge mode>

Dear Rouleurs,

It’s been a while, since my last blog. Unfortunately the day to day drama of working in an agile workforce has become a sinkhole of wasted time. Oh well they pay me I turn up. C’est la vie…

Unfortunately, this has meant much less time to work on this blog. It’s also not helping that my adorable half pint daughter is not sleeping through the night…. Sigh. So this means much less available time and energy to do blogs and generally reflect on MMT’s experience of cycling. Happily, MMT’s weekly kilometres ridden has stayed fairly consistent since Christmas.

With the exception of a couple of minor colds and a deeply peculiar skin virus, MMT’s health has been very good. A quick glance at MMT’s Strava account reveals a steady average of 170 Kilometres a week. Hooray, MMT supposes, that for a near 50 year old man this should be cause for celebration.

</Whinge Mode>

Anyhow, enough wingeing and onto the subject of this blog. MMT spied this awesome piece of…. Street art or philosophy on the Gill’s Diner sign last week and thought it was worth putting pen to paper to publicize it.

MMT doesn’t know who chalked this memorable quote but they clearly have a strong grasp of theology. Hopefully MMT will be feeling more chipper and write a less self indulgent blog next time.

Until next time ride safe

MARV