Meet Joey - he’s a 18-hands Clydesdale and a member of the Express Clydesdales Team.
When the team visited Durham last weekend, we were lucky enough to know where they were staying. so we got a special, personal encounter with these amazing hoses. (see below)
Looks like I’ll be retiring my trusted Simonelli bike sooner rather than later. Last week I was preparing the bike for a ride to work, when I noticed that the frame is damaged. Those fat off-road tires I like, wore a hole in the frame! The side of the tire was rubbing slightly against the frame and I fiddled with it for the longest time to get it to stop, but eventiually I gave up. I figured that the rubber would eventually wear off. Instead the steel frame wore off!
That and the saddle stem that’s fused to the frame and the worn out gears and chain now had me come to the conclusion that the time has come to retire the old bike a start shopping for a new one. The frame is now 17 years old and I rebuilt the bike in 2000. We have been through hell and high water together. Snow storms in France, sand storms in Morocco, a rough encounter with semi and another one with a chicken. The two of us have been around the block a bit - I rode this bike in Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, as well as in North Carolina and Florida A girlfriend left me because of this bike.
So retitiring this bike is not easy. But there are some very cool new bikes out there. right now I have my eyes on a Gary Fisher 29er (the Rig) for roughly a thousand bucks. Seems like great bike. Although I don’t thik I’ll ever have as great a time on a bike as I did with my old Simonelli.
[update 12/2: added the pic of the bike on Fes]
A huge storm is brewing in the North Sea. The Dutch and the Brits are closing their imposing coastal barriers to keep the water away from their cities. The largest seaport in Europe, Rotterdam, is closed for a day, and oil rigs have been evacuated. The coastal residents in Britain, Holland, Germany, Denmark, and Norway are bracing for gale force winds and a 12-foot storm surge - similar conditions in 1953 killed more than 2000 people.
The storms in the North Sea are still truly frightening. These storms used to be the time when the coastal residents had to pay the price for harvesting the bounty of the Sea. Countless ships were lost to the ferocious winds and frigid breakers. I read somewhere that more ships are unaccounted for in the North Sea than in the infamous Bermuda Triangle.
In the late 80s, I lived for two years on Norderney, a German coastal island in the North Sea, and I experienced several Winter storms. One was especially ferocious, and I remember watching huge breakers crashing over the 20-foot concrete dikes that surround the main town on the island. Some of the streets were flooded, and I remember that the water cut an inlet across the eastern part of the island, where it is about a mile wide (1-2 KM). The docks in the harbor were under water, and we were completely cut off from the main land for several days. Unlike hurricanes, these storms can last for days and days, and can reach sustained wind speeds of 50-60 mph/80-100 KpH.
I really hope that these barriers work. For most, this is the first real test. And I hope no lives will be lost in the storm. Good luck to the sailors on the ships that have to ride out this storm!
Green Flight Int’l last month completed what they claim was the first-ever jet flight using pure biodiesel:
RENO, NV. (October 5)… Aviation history was made earlier this week in the high desert at the Reno-Stead Airport when an L-29 military aircraft piloted by Carol Sugars and Douglas Rodante succeeded in completing the world’s first jet flight powered solely by 100% biodiesel fuel. The Czechoslovakian-made aircraft is rated to fly on a variety of fuels including heating oil, making it the preferred platform for testing biodiesel in jet engines.
Renewable jet fuel is also the focus of a collaboration announced by Boeing, Rolls Royce and Air New Zealand. I guess they’re beginning to smell the humus - with the fuel cost being a major component of airline operations cost, tapping into renewables is becoming a serious business proposition. And a marketing bonus.
The demonstration flight is planned for the second half of 2008 using an Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400 equipped with Rolls-Royce engines. Boeing is in discussions with fuel-source providers around the globe to identify potential biofuels that are available in suitable quantities for laboratory and jet-engine performance testing and in compliance with stringent aviation requirements.
Boeing, Air New Zealand and Rolls-Royce Announce Biofuel Flight Demo, The Green Car Congress, 28 September 2007
My understanding is that one of the challenges of using biodiesel as jet fuel is cold-flow at high altitudes. The fuel tanks are not heated, and so the fuel, when exposed to the low temperatures at high altitudes has to have decent cold-flow properties. That’s why kerosene is used in aviation and not cheaper diesel. Biodiesel has generally poor cold-flow properties - depending on the feedstock, it can gel as high as 40 Deg. F/ 5° C. Other than cold flow, Biodiesel, petro-diesel and kerosene/jet fuel are pretty much interchangeable. In addition to the better emissions and renewable qualities of biodiesel, there is also a safety dimension to using biodiesel. The higher flashpoint should reduce the risk of fire for emergency landings and crashes.