Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Bicycle

Been riding the bicycle. Breckenridge, Glenwood Springs, Yellowstone. It feels good.

It’s never perfectly flat. Not in these places. Flat is easy. Downhill is easy. Uphill is a little slow. I don’t mind the uphill though. It’s an investment. The energy you’ve put into it is still there when you get to the top. It’s just stored as elevation gain. Elevation is power.

I’ll spend the stored energy on the way back down. Let gravity take me back to where I started. What makes me crazy though, is to have to apply brakes on the downhill. Hard-won energy stores wasted on friction generated heat? Not what I want.

I want regenerative braking on my bicycle. I want to store and reuse all the energy I put into it.