hed 3 track use - review

For some reason Hed3s are not popular on the track here and I found it difficult to find any information/postings by people that have tried them. As a community service announcement I am therefore posting this message about the wheels.

For the record I am very (very) light, not a big sprinter. I am a masters level rider. The wheels I have raced are the clincher, aluminium-rimmed version.

Build quality: The carbon work on these is very sexy, no two-ways about it. An ugly carbon-weave immitation sticker at the hub disguising the interface between the fabric and the hub body was poorly applied. The hubs spin very smoothly although the non-drive-side rear hub outer shell is not quite round. This does not effect the rolling in any way but it shows poor manufacturing tolerances. The wheels are not quite true but they are very nearly so – good I think for this kind of untruable wheel!

Conditions: I have raced them front and rear on an outdoor concrete velodrome with Vredestein Fortezza tyres (700x23) and latex tubes in a couple of scratch races, 500m ITT, flying 200m, and a single match sprint.

I have also raced them front and rear indoors on the boards with Continental Supersonic (700x20) tyres and latex inner tubes in the team-sprint, 3000m individual pursuit, 3000m team pursuit and in one very fast scratch race.

Speed: These are fast wheels! They have a terrific runaway-hell-train feeling when they are up to speed.

Wind: Outdoors in the wind these wheels are much easier to handle than a full disc. If it is blowing a gale, leave them at home, but a breeze is no problem as long as you concentrate on holding your line.

Flex: I never noticed any flex under power or at speed through the bends indoors or out. The front wheel took a little getting used to though – I was not well prepared for my first team sprint run indoors on the wheels and as I hit the bend at full tilt the steering of my bike was not quite as I expected it – practice on these before racing on them or you won't hug the measuring line ;-)

Weight: The clincher version especially is not the lightest wheel on the track. This might be a problem in getting up to speed, but the aerodynamics might overcome the disadvantage. That is a tough call to make! I suspect that the longer the race, the more the aerodynamics will be of assistance. Conversely, the more rapid accelerations you must make, the more the weight will be a hindrance. Whether or not these are suitable for a particular race will depend on your racing style as much as anything else.

I find these terrific. At the price (compared for instance to the Mavic IO) I think these are fantastic.

gnome

Before gardens there were garden gnomes. As they couldn't be proper garden gnomes without a garden, they invented one, the garden of Eden. The gnomes filled it with all manner of flora so that they would have somewhere to sit in the shade. As well as various animals, they put two dullard giants in the garden. The first was made from earth, Adam, and the second, made from his rib, Eve. Adam and Eve then misbehaved and were kicked out of the garden to live in a world where they had to make their own gardens. Nevertheless, to this day the gnomes keep watch over them and their offspring from various vantage points around suburbia.

cataclysm

A sunny afternoon was smothered by a billowing black blanket this last Saturday. What a downpour ensued! Massive hailstones punched holes in cars, windows, roofs and smashed vegetable gardens across Melbourne. The wind drove torrents across the velodrome in pursuit of those who only seconds before had been dashing for the line... a sprint that was called to a halt as the canvas gazebo, uprooted by a violent gust, was sent collapsing across the finishing straight. Riders scampered clumsly from the track through the gate, shouldering their bikes and clambering in cleats for shelter.

This morning's ride down the bike path in the aftermath was something of an obstacle course. The icy canonballs have of course melted. Still the evidence of their visit is everywhere. Trees appear to have been whipped through a blender. Roads, gutters and paths are covered in a shredded litter of leaves and twigs. Drifts of mud set traps for narrow tyres and dam puddles of black. Riding through them creates artistic café latte patterns as the mud is stirred... and destroys them as the rear wheel follows the front. My bicycle needs a wash!

All this gave me cause to check the maps available on the Bureau of Meteorology website. Here I discovered a map type I hadn't seen previously (see above). This map indicates the percentage of the mean rainfall that has fallen in a particular month. Pretty good! It clearly depicts the areas of above and below mean rainfall. I am very pleased to see they didn't just run through the usual (ugly) range of hues available whilst maintaining a constant (usually full) saturation.

ultimate wheel?

Start with a bicycle. Remove one wheel. Remove the saddle. Remove the frame and handlebars. Remove the brakes and drive-train. Jam the pedals into the rim and what have you got? A penny-farthing with only the farthing?

I just watched a student attempting to ride one of these a few metres. It was the most inelegant thing I have seen for quite some time! Darn funny though. I wonder how long before somebody tries to cross the Nullabor plane on one unsupported.

acmi : independent games festival and hand dryers

Today I visited the Australian Centre for the Moving Image to see (and play) the "best of" the Independent Games Festival 2009. There were a few games simple enough even for me. My favourite was Machinarium (illustrated), a click-and-drag Flash interactive game by Amanita Design. This had me puzzling over discarded pieces of junk, climbing power-poles, crossing draw-bridges dressed in disguise... all to enable a cute little telescopic rubbish-bin android to explore a lusciously illustrated industrial planet. I was hooked! Sadly I had to relinquish control of the game after I became stuck on a puzzle and a queue of onlookers gathered. I will download a copy for home^h^h^h work use.
Osmos (Hemisphere Games) was visually striking although not as rich as Machinarium. The game play was reminiscent of asteroids... pilot a ship (well, in this case a biological cell with a little "rocket" thruster) around an asteroid field (well, in this case a soup of larger and smaller cells) and attempt to collide only with smaller cells. When any two cells collide, the larger one sucks the smaller one dry for nutrients. Your aim is to grow (really big) by consuming cells smaller than yourself, without being sucked dry by larger cells. Simple, fun, lovely to look at (for awhile) but not particularly deep.
Being an old man, I couldn't quite master the controls of a couple of the other games, as enticing as they looked. Blueberry Garden by Erik Svedang was lovely to look at and fun to play... as far as I got (not far!)... but I see it is available for download from his website.
Upon leaving the screen gallery I visited the toilet. After washing my hands, I dried them... using a wall-mounted blow-dryer with a built in screen!!!! The screen unfortunately played an advertisement for a soap company and blared horrible distorted music at me over the sound of the fan. An amusing, appropriate (and slightly annoying) thing to find at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

ricky swallow

I had no preconceptions about what I would see at Ricky Swallow and was thrilled by what was there. The only downside to the exhibition was that there wasn't enough of it!

Despite appearances, the work at left, Peugeot Taipian, Commemorative Model (Discontinued Line), PVC Pipe, Plastic Sheeting, epoxy, 1999 scale 1:1 (photo by Kenneth Pleban) only just came to my attention a moment ago and wasn't what drew me to the exhibition. In fact, this work wasn't in the exhibition at the NGV Ian Potter Centre. Instead, The Bricoleur exhibition contained a fascinating collection of non-cycling related wood carvings, bronze sculptures and some works on paper. The carvings in particular were spectacular investments of time and energy and evidence that the craft of art-making is held in high esteem by some. A 1:1 scale dining table still-life, littered with seafood and other astonishing adornments was the largest and most striking evidence of this fact, but not my favourite...

The signature image of the exhibition was Tusk (2007), two disembodied, skeletal arms, their hands clasped as they hang naturally from the wall as if on a shared stroll. I didn't mourn for the long-since decomposed couple, whoever they were. They seemed content to wander throughout eternity in this bizarre form. The work improves upon the arrangements of bones I have seen around the European tourist sites (such as the Sedlec ossuary in the Czech Republic). It takes the human fascination with mortality and twists it out of range of those who would terrify followers with threats of hell. So often in Italy for instance are the churches scattered with momento mori of similarly bony form, yet what seems to be an opposite message.

Fig 1. (2008) was a naturally finished wood carving of a skull wrapped in something that might have been brown paper. It reminded me at once of my lunch and a museum artefact wrapped for storage in a musty drawer. Without the wall-plaque it was not obvious what was hidden within the paper wrapping... a mystery object that, perhaps would have been more interesting left unspecified. The wood lost its solidity. I expected it would make un-crumpling sounds if I touched it.

The bronze Caravan (2008) was a great idea... barnacles growing on balloons. But the choice of material didn't work for me. It said nothing about balloons' vulnerability or their short lifespans. In fact they hardly felt like balloons at all.

Unbroken Ways (for Derek Bailey) (2006) was a free-floating arm, hanging limply down the wall. While the bronze balloons didn't work at all, from a distance, the texture of the wood in this piece was so gently carved and texturally reminiscent of flesh that I had to look twice to be sure of what I was seeing. Although a slightly different pose, the limb hangs in a way strongly reminiscent of that belonging to the freshly murdered Marat in the famous work by Jacques Louis David (1793). Swallow's work was really beautiful in this case. The arm appeared to possess a pulse. Had it reached out towards me as I left the gallery I would not have been surprised.

the butterfly and the bicycle

How many butterflies died in the making of this Hirst-Armstrong-Trek bicycle? I prefer Damien Hirst's shark, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991). The shark shows some understanding of the essence of life (and death) and fear and decay and nature and the sublime... lots of things really.

The Trek is something a little girl might do with her first bicycle and a sheet full of butterfly wing stickers from the supermarket. It is unimaginative and completely ignores the form of the machine. It is considerably less than I would expect from an artist of Hirst's reputation. It is of course big news (it even makes it onto this blog for instance) because it is a Hirst, and an Armstrong, and for "a good cause". But not because it is good. Disappointing.

This Marc Newson TT bike really works I think. For the most part the bike has been left alone, but its disc is rounder than round. At first I thought the design a little gimmicky but it is growing on me. It doesn't interfere with the bike's lines (which I have to say, coming from Trek are not in and of themselves anything to write home about – Trek should look at Pinarello or Ridley or even Specialized dare I say it, to see how to make a lovely and fast TT machine) but it adds a kind of rolling oomph to the machine, like it is being propelled from the rear towards warp speed. Whilst quite geometric, the design is simultaneously very organic. A good crossover point between the human and his machine. I love this one!