Rick Onanian <
[email protected]> wrote in message news:<
[email protected]>...
> On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 06:25:13 GMT, carlfogel <
[email protected]> wrote:
> >Any ideas for two equal-weight, same-volume balls, one as stiff as steel, the other squishy as
> >jello, different enough to give a dramatic result rolling down the same slope in broad daylight?
>
> I haven't got the balls for that.
>
> <G>
>
> No, really, I haven't got any balls to fit that description. Why don't we try it with bicycles,
> since that's what we're concerned with anyway? Approach a bump at a specified speed, and check
> speed immediately after bump (or check distance rolled before coming to a stop). Then, put a vise-
> grip or clamp on the fork, or if you have a lockout, lock it out, and repeat the experiment.
>
> That sounds easier than trying to come up with some sort of weird balls.
Dear Rick,
Your idea sounds reasonable, but I think that the differences are small enough that an ordinary bump
won't reveal much. Roll-outs are notoriously variable, due to dull things like the vagaries of the
wind masking the crucial details that we're pursuing.
My only practical experience is a rigid touring bike banging over four speed humps (eight-foot wide
humps, not bumps) at 20-30 mph daily on the the road behind the zoo. (The speed range is due to the
wind---usually around 24 mph.)
I pull up a bit and unweight a little as I hit them, mimicking suspension, but have yet to see any
noticeable change in speed--the effect must be small. (And using muscles is powered suspension, not
passive suspension, another complication.)
But a related test might work for lockouts.
Coast down a long slope on the rumble strip, with and without lockouts, timing alternate runs to try
to filter out the wind and other vagaries, such as whether you're running over the same part of the
scallops each time--sand builds up one one side.
That should provide plenty of reasonably repeatable suspension work that the rider can't affect by
pulling up on the bars or unweighting. Perhaps he should try to coast standing with his knees flexed
at the same angle? After all, sitting full-weight on a seat for a few minutes on a rumble strip
doesn't sound like much fun.
Unfortunately, although I have several miles of smoothly sloping rumble strips, there's no way to
ship them to someone with lockouts. And the frame and wheels might not finish the test in their
original state.
Hmmm, I've read about this sort of thing somewhere . . .
Lieutenant Scheisskopf longed desperately to win parades and sat up half the night working on it
while his wife waited amorously for him in bed thumbing through Krafft-Ebing to her favorite
passages. He read books on marching. He manipulated boxes of chocolate soldiers until they melted in
his hands adn then maneuvered in ranks of twelve a set of plastic cowboys he had bought from a mail-
order house under an assumed name and kept locked away from everyone's eyes during the day.
Leonardo's exercises in anatomy proved indispensable. One evening he felt the need for a live model
and directed his wife to march around the room.
"Naked?" she asked hopefully.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf smacked his hands over his eyes in exasperation. It ws the despair of
Lieutenant Scheisskopf's life to be chained to a woman who was
desire to the titanic struggles for the unattainable in which noble man could become
heroically engaged.
"Why don't you ever whip me?" she pouted one night.
"Because I haven't the time," he snapped at her impatiently. "I haven't the time. Don't you know
there's a parade going on?"
And he really did not have the time. There it was Sunday already, with only seven days left in the
week to get ready for the next parade. He had no idea where the hours went. Finishing last in three
successive parades had given Lieutenant Scheisskopf an unsavory reputation, and he considered every
means of improvement, even nailing the twelve men in each rank to a long two-by-four beam of
seasoned oak to keep them in line. The plan was not feasible, for making a ninety-dgree turn would
have been impossible without nickel-alloy swivels inserted in the small of every man's back, and
Lieutenant Scheisskopf was not sanguine at all about obtaining that many nickel-alloy swivels from
Quartermaster or enlisting the co-operation of the surgeons at the hospital.
. . . And the week after that his squadron made history by winning the red pennant two weeks in a
row! Now Lieutenant Scheisskopf had confidence enough in his powers to spring his big surprise.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf had discovered in his extensive research that the hands of marchers,
instead of swinging freely, as was then the popular fashion, ought never to be moved more than
three inches from the center of the thigh . . .
. . . Lieutenant Scheisskopf's first thought had been to have a friend of his in the sheet metal
shop sink pegs of nickel alloy into each man's thighbones and link them to the wrists by strands
of copper wire with exactly three inches of play, but there wasn't time--there was never enough
time--and good copper wire was hard to come by in war-time . . .
. . . And all week long he chortled with repressed delight at the officers'club. Speculation grew
rampant among his closest friends.
"I wonder what that Shithead is up to," Lieutenant Engle said.
--Catch-22, Chapter Eight
For translations, see
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr
With repressed delight,
Carl Vogelgeheirn
