FedEx Invoicing

You need a range of 600% or 6:1. But the fine steps resulting in dozens of gears are ridiculous. I always overshift 3-6 gears, sometimes more. In rough terrain you have to ride that way because else shifting takes too long.

There is a very good hub transmission (Rohloff) and it's heavy. Serious riders like myself are not very concerned about weight, they just want cast-iron reliability and sturdiness. However, the Rohloff is also around $1500 just for the transmission.

As for shafts there is nothing commercially available in the world of full suspension mountain bike. Only the BMW GS120 Dual-Sport motorcycle has that. My mountain bike buddy rides one.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg
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The lack of a shaft drive being marketed for bikes would seem to indicate the lack of demand rather than the lack of capability. On a motorcycle it would be heavy but a motorcycle can handle it. On a bike to most, even a few pounds is excessive. But like I said, the shaft wouldn't be too big a problem. I saw a carbon fiber canoe paddle once and it was amazingly light weight! It worked fine as long as you are just paddling. But paddles have a way of becoming crutches or the like and the very thin carbon material they usually use won't take that abuse. I think they carry the lightness thing to an extreme sometimes. Heck, that paddle could blow away in a strong wind!

On a bike it would be a stronger design, perhaps a composite of aluminum or plastic and carbon fiber. Sandwiched materials can be hugely strong.

But you still need the gears. A range of 6:1 isn't hard, but you didn't say how many gears you want. Would 6 be enough? Motorcycle clutches can be pretty small, not sure about the gears. Heck, you may not need a clutch if you can speed shift without a lot of pressure on the gears.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

See, that is what I'm talking about. You are talking about making a once a week shipment. That is not much of an impact on the "environment" really. Especially compared to the huge impact you make just by being alive and keeping warm and cold. Most of the energy we use is for "environmental" control, lol. Don't sweat a simple trip to ship a package. Then there is all the pollution created by the lube for your chain... You may think 12 ounces a year is no big deal, but if I poured that much oil on the ground I'd go to jail around here.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Sure there is. By now I ride 3x as many bicycle miles as car miles.

Warm: Wood stove, less than 1.5 grams of particulate matter per hour. Propane furnace use is down to zero.

Cold: Evaporative cooler. A/C use is down to zero.

Not that the governement or tax authorities understand any of this but that can't be expected of bureaucrats anyways.

Not in our hourse.

It might surprise you but a lot of oils and brake fluids for bicycles are actually biocompatible. For car they generally are not.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

For me, yes. Other riders are ... ahem ... wimps when it comes to gear ratios and they seriously think they need 15% steps. I am perfectly happy with 5-6 gears along a 6:1 total ratio. Total ratio is all that counts for me. 500% would be borderline for the mountain bike, 400% not acceptable. Just like it wouldn't for hardcore offroaders.

Bicycles don't have clutches, don't need them. Sometimes my clutch is the rear tire :-)

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

With derailleur gears you don't need a clutch. With no chain you need something different, unless.. that is why I mentioned speed shifting without a clutch. If you release the pressure on the mechanism (easy to do with your feet) you can get by with the abrupt speed change with a gear shift. 6:1 with five steps is a 43% speed change per gear. I'm not as familiar with the construction of the gear box of a motorcycle, but it certainly can be made a lot less substantial with only a fractional horse power motor driving it. Perhaps no metal is required. Again, composites could be made small and lightweight, possibly fitting in the hub of the pedals.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Why is that good? Wood is not a remotely clean energy source.

Oh, you use a lot more energy other ways?

Care to share details? What oil does your chain lube use?

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman
[...]

Thank you for the very valuable information

Reply to
Steve Wilson

It is if you use a modern multi-combustion wood burner like we do. They cost more but the effect is stunning. Once I stood up there preparing to clean the pellet stove chimney. Leaned over ... phssss ... OUCH ... burned my arm on the wood stove flue. I had forgotten that the wood stove was running and standing very few feet next to the outlet with my nose I could not smell anything. No smoke.

Later in the day I wanted to clean the wood stove chimney, took off the cap, looked inside and saw ... a faint layer of gray dust and nice shiny stainless steel. There was nothing to clean.

Also, our wood is from almond orchards and thus renewable. Cut when trees fail or are too old and new ones are planted. So as long as you guys keep eating almonds we have an almost natural supply.

No, a lot less energy and in winter renewable "biomass". In the summer we use under 500W for cooling versus >5kW for all the others with their big fat A/C humming away. It can easily be generate with solar.

I am not sure what's in there but many are environmentally friendly just like many bar and chain oils are for chain saws. Brake fluid from Shimano is essentially similar to baby oil.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

Sounds great, but that is still not an indication of a clean fuel.

I guess that's good for you, but a very limited resource. Not very practical for most. Almonds are good though.

That is enough to make a weekly trip to a shipping facility insignificant. BTW, I seem to recall you mentioning travel to customer's sites, including the third world. How does that compare to your package drop off savings?

Environmentally "friendly" does not equal "smells nice". In fact, it is a meaningless term in general. What about the impact of making the oil, packaging it and shipping it? It's easy to focus on one small aspect of our lives, but hard to take in the grand impact.

None of this makes much difference. If nothing else, you buy materials and food from sources that are far from zero polluting. So your very existence is a smudge on the planet. Back when man was a hunter gatherer the impact was insignificant and had little lasting effect. Now we have such a huge impact that it not only impacts the use of the earth for other species, but for ourselves. It boggles the mind that we have polluted the waters so much that we are told what fish and how often we can eat them safely. The oceans are truly immense! How could we have polluted something so large?

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

How much cleaner does it have to get? The EPA has a strict eye on those stoves and in order to be certified to a certain category all the pertinent pollution parameters have to be within tough limit. Not just the particulate matter. The methods aren't much different than with combustion engine pollutants.

More of a resource than one thinks. For example, it is very tough to get rid of digger pine. Usually that wood is simpy dumped or left to rot. A neigbor had to fell a large one and everybody in his circle of friends waved off. We took it. Hard work because it splits very stringy but due to the post-combustion burning in our stove we can burn it cleanly.

That's how most people think and then they never begin anywhere. Because the 2-3 trips to the mailbox are then also "insignificant", and that to the hardware store, and that to the restaurant, and that to the friends across town, and ...

See where this is going?

All my trips this year were by cyberspace. Go-To-Meeting, Zoom, et cetera. It's the future.

It uses a few moving electrons, that's it.

I never said those substances smell nice. They don't smell at all.

Therefore, it would be good for you to think how the fuel gets to your gas station. This includes prospecting, logging, drilling, transporting the crude, refining, transporting the gas.

Phhht. Not only does it make a difference, it does so in many more aspects. If everyone would cycle a few thousand miles per year our nation's health expenses would be a fraction of what they are now.

Yet even the tax guys don't get it. In Europe I could deduct mileage for business bike travel. Here I can't. Obviously there is a cost and that is about 0.10/mi for the road bike and $0.25/mi for the mountain bike.

If nothing else, you buy materials

By sloppiness. The Romans already started that. A classic example was their Cloaca Maxima. They dumped all their sewage into the sea, as is.

We can all educate ourselves to minimize our footprint. We recycle just about everything that can be recycled. Yes, even separating the plastic parts of packages from the cardboard. Everyone can do better though and so can we. In your case I'd seriously re-think motor vehicle use. Every mile less makes a difference. Saying "Oh, that's just 10 miles!" gets us nowhere.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

You haven't said anything about what is regulated and what is not. Wood fires release everything in the wood into the atmosphere and it's not all carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

You are saying because doing a *lot* of driving is bad, doing the driving that is most useful is also bad? We started with you saying, "AFAICT all places that use to take outgoing Fedex packages in our community no longer do so. Strange, considering it's pop

20,000 and has some industry." Then we found "your community" is defined by your need to bike there. So the places which are an easy drive have become inaccessible simply because you prefer to bike for no particularly important reason.

Was that someone else who talked about debugging equipment in some "third world" place? I guess I got that mixed up.

But the shipping itself burns far more energy and creates more pollution than the drive to the store. How far is it, five miles?

I meant that as a euphemism. The point is the term is meaningless. You don't know the source, you only know what is printed on the can. What does "environmentally friendly" mean exactly? Nothing.

That is my point!

You are confusing your lifestyle with driving to drop off a package. You seem prone to taking everything to the extreme. We are not talking about changing anyone's lifestyle. We are talking about your self-imposed limitation to using a package dropoff that is 5 miles from Cameron Park.

None of that means diddly. To reverse the impact we have made will require a complete change of thought from putting our own comfort first versus the condition of the planet. It will take more than a little recycling to do that.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Yes, TriFlow (I use the drip bottle) is wonderful here in Seattle . There are some motorcycle sticky things that have adherents (but I don't want my trousers to adhere, if you know what I mean). It's not clear that a dusty dry ride would be well served by these, but for a nine month rainy season, they're both good.

Reply to
whit3rd

Of course one isn't supposed to burn poison oka or oleander in there. Just like you aren't supposed to run you car on racing fuel even though that might make it the hottest ride in the neighborhood.

If it's avoidable then it is bad.

No, community is defined by the map. It says where a town or community ends.

I never said inaccessible because they are accessible. I prefer to do so by bicycle because it's healthy and environmentally better than using a car. What I do not understand is how Fedex can erode their own business potential so much. What would it really take to have a local 3rd party place under contract to handle package reception?

Yeah, probably. Hey, no dipping into the egg nog yet, that's for tomorrow :-)

Around 8 miles. To me every mile counts. If something needs to be shiped then it needs to be shipped. It ride-shares inside a truck with myriad other packages so that's efficient. One lone package motoring along in the trunk of a car is not. Same for the empty ride back. Doing this by bicycle is nice for the environment and for my health. Ever since I got back into cycling my fitness has gone way up.

Sure it does. It means that it won't foul up the environment when it leaks into it. Which it always will.

Then why are you defending the use of a car where a bike suffices?

It is not self-imposed, Fedex Corporate decided that. When a measurement series takes past the pickup time for our location the only wy to get the package our for overnight delivery somewhere else is by bringing it to the next Fedex place.

Part of my job is like the ER. I get a sick prototype and its urgent. Often super-urgent. So I work my tail off to find out why, make the mods, pack it all and off it goes again. That cannot always be completed in 4h or whatever turn-around time I have.

The bicycle has one major advantage here: I cannot become stuck in traffic on Highway 50 because I can take old Lincoln Highway which is off limits for motor vehicles except to a few farmers. So I know exactly when I'll be at the Fedex store. It's amazing. Other places where I need to run errands in Folsom are much farther away, >15mi and some hills. I can still time my arrival to within five minutes.

To those who understand it does.

I do not subscribe to concepts like "Oh, my impact is too small anyhow so let's just throw in the towel".

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

Be careful. My mountain biking buddy likes to use motorcycle chain lube. Because as a dirt bike rider he's got it and and because it is so deceivingly easy. Phhhhhhssssssssst ... done. However, one sunny day his chain became mangled and snapped during a ride. No problem, we thought, I got tools in the panniers, so we just shortened the chain and put the spare link in there that I always carry.

It took me several days of daily showering, scrubbing like crazy and some harsh chemicals to bring my hands back to a presentable condition without black oil streaks. It was nasty. I can imagine that if it ever gets onto trousers or socks they are done.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

The point is you have no evidence that this is any better than any other source of heating energy.

Well, you can avoid anything you want including breathing. But each choice has tradeoffs. You seem to be making some strange ones.

The point is you can easily get to the shipping drop off without harming the world. End of story.

I thought you said you *didn't* go there because it was too far. How is having a multi-ton truck pick up your package than to drive it there in something much smaller which can be combined with other needs?

It's not efficient if the truck has to go where it wouldn't otherwise. I don't have any trouble getting to a shipping drop off once a week when I do other errands.

But this is getting silly. Use your bike or call a truck, no matter to me. But the realities of it are neither way is at all remotely environmentally friendly. You are shipping a package some considerable distance, it *will* release carbon and other nasty toxins into the environment. Your car vs. bicycle is of minuscule significance.

How is "foul up" determined. It's all BS. I can say my motor oil is environmentally friendly. How is that call made and who enforces it?

IT'S ALL the SAME in this regard. The tiny amount you are trying to save is insignificant!

I had the impression you were saying you *didn't* use the bike because the place is too far away! You said there were no longer any drop offs in "your community" so you call for a pickup. I don't give a rat's ass if you bike vs. drive. I thought you were saying you *didn't* bike because it was too far.

Those who understand know that it makes no difference what an individual does if nothing changes the other 7 billion people. I think that would make your efforts 0.000000014% effective at solving the problem.

Yes, it may make you feel better, but in the end it means nothing. You are still here, creating nearly as much of a problem as the other 7 billion people on the planet.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

It's renewable. That alone makes it a better source. Even with all the fracking oil and gas are not. To warmingists the fact that wood is to a large extent carbon-neutral should also be of importance.

Preferring a method of transportation that is clearly better for the environment and for my health is ... strange?

As I said, no egg nog yet :-)

The Fedex truck picks up 100 or more other packages on its route. In my car my package would ride solo the whole 7 miles. However, that's not the point. The point is that when it rides on the back of my road bike the negative environmental footprint of that ride drops to almost zero.

If it rides a 27mi partial singletrack loop on the rack of my mountain bike which als leads to the same Fedex place the benefits are even better: Total fun during the ride plus the system in there gets a top notch shaking for quality testing.

Huh? If my package would be the only one going from the El Dorado _Fedex_ center to Mather Field they would certainly close that places soon. In fact, the truck is usually full when it leaves. I was sometimes there cutting it really close.

That's wrong.

If everyone thought this way nothing would ever happen.

You do not know that just a few drops of motor oil can contaminate a gallon of ground water? Seriously?

Yeah, right, let's all just go on wasting the environment because we can't make a difference anyhow. Heck, why not use the 10-cylinder Diesel to bring the package?

Your impression was wrong. Yes, I do call in a pickup if there is time because the truck comes through here anyhow. Past the cut-off the package must be brought to the now farther away store. I prfer the bicycle because it is environmentally better and healthier. And there is a good pub next door ... actually two.

Very wrong.

I sure don't. We have it in writing that our non-renewable energy consumption is very small compared to nearly anyone in our neighborhood. As evidenced by electricity and propane bills. If everyone did that instead of just pressing that little A/C button on the wall the world would be a better place. The math is very easy.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

Used to be the EPA would test stuff, but next year there will be changes there.

seems you're playing a dictionary game. Either it's clean or it's contaminated. but there are degrees of contamination.

used engine oil if full of random CHON molecules, so is probably bad stuff in several different ways.

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Reply to
Jasen Betts

The rules regarding pollution out of chimneys and tailpipes will likely stay. It's just that the most egregious overreach would be tackled.

The problem is, oil dripping from engines is normally always used :-)

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

Learned that with biking- now I use a white grease that is non-staining for bike chains. I think it's mostly animal fat. Probably not as good performance as the red Mobil 1 synthetic grease- use that for packing gearboxes, garage door lube etc.

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Spehro Pefhany

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