Most promising cycling developments ever.

 Promising encounter 2 trillion 789.

• Stability of the pelvis makes relationship to the pedals predictable and without it the legs cannot cycle. If for whatever well intended reason, letting the Torso and the upper body help, or trying to do the job of the legs, you allow the pelvis to move, the legs cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot figure out what to do. 6 years have been lost to this I think. Tho we've learned a lot and gotten good exercise.
• 100%, 110%, of the responsibility for cycling energy is from the legs.
• It is also the responsibility of the legs to cycle in such a way that they ask from nothing, for nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, from the waste or the torso.
• However the waste and the Torso can ask the question and respond, how can we position ourselves that nothing is asked of the waste or the Torso and the legs are empowered?
• The legs can help themselves a lot by being aware of the mid thighs as an indicator, not a Thrust point, but an indicator and secondarily the feet. By doing so the legs are empowered to seek an amplitude and other minor Corrections that ease and smooth their job.
• Being aware of the momentum of the mass that is the moving vehicle and torso through space particularly the very lower torso can be extremely empowering of a smooth sustainable rolling action by the legs and feet even encouraging them to decrease in effort so as not to create unnecessary acceleration. Very empowering.
• And the next day more:
• Nothing from the back, neither except nor demand anything from the back, other than the center of the pelvis up to the first vertebrae as an object to push against the seat.
• Do not abuse the legs. Ask nothing more from them than they are able to give at the moment.
• All movement of the legs, rolling movement, is to be initiated by and completed by the legs. Listen to them and adjust posture of the Torso accordingly. Pay particular attention to being forward enough in that posture that the balls of the feet don't have to go looking for something to push against at any point. Make sure that it's always there for them.
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Update, nope. Cycling. Cycling, finally, after 6 years? Quite likely.

Was today extraordinary because recent days have been so hard? Possible but I don't think so.

Why is the Rubik's Cube not five times greater in each dimension? Because it would be so many variables that no one could make any sense of it.

Cycling is just the right amount of variables, not too few, but not too many. Guess what James has been trying to do for 6 years? Have an infinite number of variables to manage, almost literally, and he didn't realize it of course.

Some things that have been developing in the last weeks converged today into this realization and some other factors. In no particular order:

* cycling becomes possible when the Torso provides a sufficiently stable environment, even as much or more than the right relationship to sol.

* three points provide the environment where the legs can cycle. The very very lowest point of the spine or pelvis, about 3 in up from there in the spine, and the point in space where the toes would almost reach full extension but instead experience the place where they should slightly drop, a null space.

* the first two points when the upper point is slightly ahead of it provide a vector and a backboard if you will against which the legs can extend.

* it is entirely not the function of the Torso to provide any of the energy toward the pedals, it only confuses and introduces infinite variables and locks up the legs when it tries to do so.

* it is 100% the function of the Torso to provide the structure that frees the legs to cycle.

* one of the features of cycling is constant Cadence and in this case constant contact with that null space described above as the objective point and synchronizing point, the timing point, for the cycling.

* output has not been better in years. Perceived effort for output has not been better in years. Enjoyability has rarely been so good ever.

* an attribute of cycling is proactive initiative, the legs, need to feel proactive and somewhat in control and the above provides that, and the slightly aggressive tilt of the angle of the first two points, roughly the pelvis, is essential to the legs finding and having that initiative.

* 100% of the cycling is a convergence inside the triangle defined by those three points.

* update: It seems impossible to overemphasize that the starting and ending point is keeping the Torso properly occupied so that it is not trying to do the legs work and leaving to the legs the work of the Torso which is to create the frame of the cycle.

* and anchoring the bottommost point of the three at the base of the spine against the back of the seat so it can be pushed again, there may be nothing more important than that.

* and it is the opportunity of, it is needed of, the Torso by positioning it's own weight and gravity to cause all the energy to be within the triangle and not to escape.
 

* the opportunity of the Torso is to fulfill a proactive I've got you to the legs. The opportunity of the legs is a predictability for the torso. The focal point being cycling of the feet out to the no point.

Cycling. Is the recumbent seat back there to drive me insane?

I've had mostly cycling that felt wonderful for this last month or so as I frequently reported, each day better than the next. And beginning with the climb out of Boulder I knew nothing about cycling. I could make no sense of it. It's been Brute Force ever since. Not complaining, but frustrating and a bit discouraging.

2 days ago was a monster climb up through Rocky Mountain National Park. Magnificent. Taking nutrition before leaving at 5:40 in the morning, was totally forgotten. 3200 calorie day. Over 12,000 FT elevation at the top, oxygen deprivation.

About 3/4 of the way up, when every recalled technique was just not flowing, a new thought occurred. James, all you want is for this to have the intuitive Simplicity of a conventional bicycle, correct? Correct. Does the conventional bicycle have a seat back? No, it doesn't. Would you have wanted it to have one? No, I wouldn't. Then why do you want to use it on this recumbent bike? Because it's there? Maybe that's not a good answer james. And for the rest of the day where there was still a lot of peddling left, and yesterday in an hour's ride, it had the intuitive simple elegant nature of a conventional bike.

My recollection of the years I spent on a conventional bike, is now that the exertion is not between the back of a seat on the bicycle that doesn't exist, it is between the very lower part of the spine and the toes and everything in between.

All this brings to mind Jodie Foster in the movie contact where finally she does what doesn't make sense, she releases the safety belt of the seat into which she has been strapped. And all of a sudden things make sense.

Attempting to use the seat back for some sort of leverage in this recumbent sets up a thousand variations that change from instant to instant which means different body mechanics are required instant to instant. All occurring while the body is desperately trying to contribute energy to our travel, exhausted. It comes close to driving me insane everyday. By instead focusing james, your starting and ending point is the very base of your spine, the lowest part of your pelvis in the rear, the simplicity just was what it should be and the body could focus on what it needed to do, and the output has never been better, the cardiovascular workout has never been better.

Two or three hours of cycling is far from any proof. But James is not without some optimism.

Learned to Cycle Sol, this week, maybe.

1. Reload,

2. Each arch,

3. To carefully protected home voin close to perineum. 

New best cycling day ever

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   Torso experienced as nearly perpendicular, perineum angled 10% forward.
• Hiking with a heavy pack on the shoulders pressing directly down. Selfishly cycling in such a way as not to move the shoulders up and down but rather allow the imagined heavy pack to compress the shoulders down slightly.
• Hiking down a very steep Trail not up.
• Two maybe three inch lumbar curve supported with a eight layer rolled up thick towel. Turns out that curve provides gigantic feedback to the system and acts secondarily as a guidance and spring adjustment mechanism.
• Each stroke allowing for a ever so slight drop down the imaginary Mountain.
• The metrics were as good as we've ever had in the last year or two.
• No conscious effort, attention, or exertion in anything outbound from 3-in thigh stumps. Those extremities take care of themselves.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/o34BRWMpWFStj3NB8

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bEZMimnfamtbcAJi9

That vehicle shouldn't be built, it defies the laws of physics, the engineer said 17 months ago. Khanh Dam's Sol has..

The elderly senior engineer said it could not, should not, be built, 17 Mos ago. And maybe he was right. But my blood boils with such naysayers. And I have defied these my entire adult life. That vehicle shouldn't be built, it defies the laws of physics, the engineer said 17 months ago. Khanh Dam's  Sol has just arrived on the West Coast. Maybe I'm cheating in declaring Victory two days early but that's what I'm doing. It is too dangerous, the engineer said. Dangerous to whom? The pickup trucks or semis? I wouldn't make a dent. Too dangerous to the rider? Half a dozen times on a traditional bicycle, I would have been dead. So inconsiderate. No, I am extremely considerate, piercing lights front and back out of courtesy to drivers, carefully choosing my route and time of travel to avoid interfering with others, so that they would not be surprised. Pulling off every 0.2 mile if necessary to avoid people being behind and almost never that's the case. 10 honks of encouragement, maybe fifty, for every honk of anger. And I suppose this 70 year old stage 4 cancer survivor has defied the laws of physics as well. Is any of this important? I don't know. I just think when we're called to do something constructive we should not give up prematurely. Certainly not to be discouraged by the pitiful naysayers. And certainly not to do it to spite them, they are so pitiful, so not worth the effort. But not to be discouraged. Oh, and well over 99% of this journey was done on renewable energy, the solar array. And traveling across the country was never the mission. Attempting to stir the occasional Soul that still has any life left in it, with the example and the words of the man Jesus about how we might live as brothers and sisters to one another, that was and Remains the goal. And probably thousands of souls have been stirred by what their eyes saw and occasionally by the conversation they initiated in a parking lot or on the side of a road when they asked me to stop. Pitiful on my part, several Advanced degrees, lifelong learning and expertise. But better than anything else I can think to do. And joyful for me. Making otherwise unbearable life, bearable for me, this hell that we have created for our children and grandchildren. PS. In four years, just over 45,000 miles, today was the best day of cycling ever. Millennium Falcon, move over.

3/12 update. Cycling video log. I've been making an ass of me for 4 years? SMH.

Sat Mar 12:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/UDs6YUoZSD8am6ny9

• 170 W sustained for 2 hours today was easier than 100w sustained a week ago.
• Sucking your belly to create added room, James and focus on your lower lower spine as the place to push off from 10 until 2. 
• Think push-ups.
• Think reaching out from behind 10.
• Push it out, reach out, move out, from 10 at the lower spine as low as one in from the base.
• Savor The Impossible incredible power at half an inch from the base of the spine seated fairly squarely against the back.

3/11:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/PE2VCFfQiPTNhi8y8

• The perineum is the crank axle, the three in femur stump the crank arm.
• Press the point at 2 in on the femur stump forward with between 10 and 40 lb of pressure, from 10 until 2, repeat.
• That's it. It's heaven.

Yesterday:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZkqCZy8neMLN7E2X8

Notice: quite certain is James that he finally understands the biomechanics outlined below and in these videos. And he expects to be updating this particular Post in coming days, as opposed to issuing more new ones. Check back.

• Gently wind things in close. In a deadlift you pick up the pot close to your chest. You climb a rope right against your body. You wrestle your opponent really close in. Same with this cycling.
• The first 3 in of your femur is a mirror image of the pedal crank arm.
• To maintain the close tight relationship between your femur and your torso, accelerate, or sometimes decelerate gently, your velocity, Cadence.
• If you ask it, your body knows that there is only one part of the body that can possibly power into the pedal crankshaft, the lower Torso and first 3 in inches of the thigh. The extremities of the leg are critically important linkages, but no more than that.
• Luke, wage the 3-inch demer stuff with the Torso. You have nothing else. You need nothing else.avoid distractions, Temptations, get everything else out of the way of the femur stump  let them do their job, keep them coiled up close to the b e l l y. A slight lingering there give it reality and position to the Torso.
• Monumental importance. Awareness of the entire femur stuff awareness of the entire crank arm but ribbon is Pocus on up, I'll point the third up on East. A permanent relationship keeping track of that is not feasible or necessary. Focus on the points and drive the point on the femur stump forward it will understand its doing so is pushing the corresponding point on the track star further forward. Linear it can handle, curbing it cannot.

Cycling. I think we've got it.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/5KNShyhx5XvymEgZA

• The running, fluid, unrestricted pelvis, lower back, is everything.
• Running in place in water suspended mid-chest
• The tube containing the water is pointed from the pelvis to the crankshaft, and the height is the same height as the thigh.
• The feet have a mild sense that they are running in sticky mud at the bottom.
• The wonderful size like to get tents on the top, they need to relax, they need to be totally relaxed and fluid. It works.

Building blocks:

• Jogging, loping in place in thin sticky mud
• The fluid moving pelvis lower back sides are everything.
• Consciously placed and maintained center of gravity and radius of center of gravity.
• Continual awareness of the line between the top of the pelvis and the crankshaft, maybe an inch or two above the crankshaft.
• Slightly slouched lower back as necessary to achieve alignment of the narrow tube holding the fluid between the pelvis and the top of the crank.
• When resistance increases imagining that increased viscosity is the challenge for the body.
• Increasing velocity, Cadence, is another way to increase energy contribution.

Cycling. Oh, we are dancing partners, and I thrust from the seat back, swing your partner...

• Dancing partners with me in the lead.
• Entirely an operation of the back just like a deadlift standing, that's where the strength is, unless one wants to blow out the knees. Not necessary.
• Head back.
• Pressing the back, the shoulders, into the seat, acts like a throttle, informing the outgoing thigh the power that it has to deliver.
• Two dance Partners, not one, because of the constantly training changing lateral Horizon of the vehicle, this t r i k e.
• James must find a dance each moment, each segment, each day, that is supposed to his liking and also acceptable to his partner. It can be done.
• A shallow, flat, modified w continues to emerge when things are going well.
• There may be a place for slow cadence in finding the relationship but it is also necessary to go to High Cadence to find the spinning nature of it.
• 85% of the energy is from the outgoing thigh No More Than Three in thigh stump, the role of the indrawing thigh to position in height for the next outgoing thrust.

Cycling. I think I just woke up [literally] to what's been killing me with this vehicle?

1. A conventional bicycle is a Stern Taskmaster, if you don't get it rolling and keep it rolling you fall off. On a recumbent trike if you don't get it rolling smoothly it couldn't give a fig, it just laughs at you while you build deadly habits, driving yourself crazy digging your own grave.
2. I spent three months out at Mount Whitney 3 years ago and I became addicted to 4 hours worth of climbing up anywhere between 6 + 15% grade all day long. At 1 mi an hour. It has taken me three years to recognize and to begin to shake that addiction.

 

Cycling. Am I there yet, after four years? Could be.

 It would be wonderful if someday some extremely accomplished cyclist, maybe an extremely accomplished recumbent cyclist, try to move this vehicle. Would they find it a snap? Would they find it a nightmare? The latter I think. Profoundly difficult. But maybe we arrived back home today.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/fNvLaTwDHQZBvKLg6 

• James, of the hundreds or thousands of cycling legs on this blog, stay with this one unless you absolutely need to go to the others.
• The essence of conventional cycling is that with the perineum on the bicycle seat, the first three or four inches of the thighs launch down toward the crankshaft, no? How did it take us four years to grasp this?
• Launching four in smooth pulses through the rail that is the spine pointing, through the perineum, just above the crank axle, where the weight of the legs born Oz at the feet and a few pounds 3 inches out on the thigh, on that imaginary rail.
• 
  

Cycling today was pretty easy, and 25% more powerful. WTF?

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/3wiKbGb7qpiZzqVB7

• Let the uprising leg totally fend for itself. It will.
• We are a smoothe running engine 90% in the back, 75% of which is in exactly the lower back and buttocks that walk a heavy package up the stairs.
• Everything Beyond of the two and a half in thigh stump is linkage that we keep out in the entanglement at the pedals. Relaxed, limp, just there.
• Any and all stress in the knees, drop it down to the buttocks, back, and possibly heels.
• Underhanded grip pulling the legs through.
• Dropping the shoulders way way way back to get the stress off the knees. Imperceptible but it has an impact.

Cycling. Take 2 [trillion]

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zreuJYVBdH3Mk6Rt8

• On the back, slid under the crossbar.
• Particularly under stress, a interlocking gear mechanism jealous of every single tooth engagement, from the shoulders down to the first inch of the femur stump.
• Especially under stress, the gears along the back from the shoulders to the first inch of the femur stump.
• Averaging probably 95 Watts human per hour, only mild discomfort in the knees. Possibly pretty Optimum for a seventy-year-old, five or six hours per day.

Cycling update. We are the small gears at the perineum turning the turbine their forward.

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/jexNDkKH4oB6JkWA6

One good, one bad, way too inform the legs.

 Best ride ever yesterday.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/fJCWZxuBzLLwwuzPA

• Properly positioned perineum pointed in crank Direction. Creating the effect of the conventional bicycle seat which is of instrumental information content to the body, the legs, what their range and direction of motion is, profoundly freeing and empowering. The alternative way of informing the legs range is to use the pedals as a reference and this has been four years of disaster. And James has no recollection that the pedals is what was used on a conventional bicycle, no, the perineum.
• Linkages between femur Stump mid-thigh and crank top and bottom. Thigh stump is not nearly precise enough.
• Smooth running, taking the initiative; can be fast.
• Positioning such that the end of the stroke is never encountered.
• A synchronicity between-the-legs such that they thought I can return more quickly than the leg extend.
• Smooth run the size, the femurs, forward and back next to one another.
• Feedback aligned approaching 90 degrees to the line of the legs to the crankset .
• Smooth running. 
• Running correlates with not missing a small tooth on the gear for power.
• Experiencing the power at the Crossing Point between the femurs.
• Remembering that any pressure port weight belt be on the femur stuff is subtracted from the total energy delivered..
• Constant tension gentle in the abdomen boarding some of the weight of the Torso off of the back of the seat so that the uprising femur always has something to pull again. Much better balance of the system.
• And torso and femur stumps in constant relationship spatially to the outgoing and returning CRAN CK period
• We are the small gears after perineum that was run forward to turn the turbines forward.
• We are the 4 inch long femur stump that smooth Runs small beers at the perineum that drives forward the turbine that is us.
• Centering our weight on the coccyx so that the pelvis is free to enable the femur joints to free smooth run.

This assembly above is driven by a number of factors including the need to feel competent, the need to feel psychologically satisfied both that we are contributing to the magical power and that we are a thing that we make sense that we understand what we're doing that we have some level are the master of what we're doing as opposed to a slave of sol as wonderful as sol is. We also, what's above also is the fruit of the need to be able to cycle for between 4 and 6 hours or more per day feeling comfortable and not damaging tissue and never with the possible exception of Iowa which may be impossible for such a wide crankset now and that's fine this is the well this is the best we've found and it's good enough if we can repeat this. Einstein said I'm not particularly bright I just stay with problems longer than most people James apparently is dumb as a rock just staus with important problems for the long longer than most. Voice typing while cycling hopefully not too many errors Google.

Cycling. Lessons I hope I carry forward when resuming tomorrow.

• The power of the small sprocket, the screw driving the car jack. Don't lunge James, don't miss one tooth of one gear.
• All power emanates from the Torso.
• Posture torso such that the legs are clearly out of control. Passive linkages, wonderful, essential, but out of control.
• Power is in the constantly moving muscle, not enforcing, clenching, gripping.
• Lumbar support.

Cycling. Take 3 quadrillion + 1. It may be that if you don't properly align your trike seat you may spend four years dealing without full success with the consequences.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/3RUrMxJEyxg9aK7i7

 

Cycling. Take number 2 trillion and 1. Our last logs?

 https://photos.app.goo.gl/mngvE3SrqTySnEtH8

If you look in the photo archive for this day there are a couple more extraordinarily important bonus videos.

Cycling. The ride of a lifetime. Gift of a lifetime to have lived to experience it.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/B2Hvwk54rVH2ioSE6
 

1. What James has the opportunity to do is distribute and you're sure, momentum at constant velocity, energy leveraging his body and the mass at his back and butt that are Sol.
2. His leverage for this is not in his legs as he has always thought, it is objectively about one and a half inch out on his femur. No Revelation has been more important then this regarding cycling. Have often been so close, but never grasped it.
3. As he briefly found going north in Michigan, early summer, he can establish the terms, not what's going on with Sol. In fact, he probably must. In the form of 2 3 inch high mass momentum loops at his femur stumps that are oriented to the High leverage chamber at the crank. But their purpose, their function, is to deliver energy to the flywheel directly under the seat.
4. His job, His function, his opportunity is to establish those high-mass loops weighing A pounder so each, and to adjust everything accordingly including his velocity, and the effective weight and resistance of Sol.

Monumentally important video logs in the archive link to at the right on at the top of this blog regarding the mission, cycling, and a few other things. You can lead a horse to water....