From facebook: Today, moving Sol, was as easy as, well, riding a bike. And more enjoyable. And it's only taken me three years, about a thousand days of attempts, hundreds of log entries, to recreate three years ago when I happened to be participating in the one-week Ragbrai bicycle event across Iowa and the 1 week sprint of 100-mile days to get there in time. I think I can hold on to it this time. Time will tell. It was a real Joy. To increase the odds that James won't lose this again, he'll be beginning to write this up in some detail he expects, but today's video logs outline it quite well.. He's quite certain there are some pre conditions that were met only in recent days that opened up this possibility of rediscovery for him. Moving the seat so close that his knees are within a third of an inch of the crossbar, but that's fine, the key was first dropping his heels instead of pointing his feet, which in effect increases the clearance otherwise to that crossbar. Silly, but it changed the game, it opened up this rediscovery. Also within the last couple of days, deciding to provide the body the feedback loop that a conventional bicycle provides by avoiding use of the throttle rather using the cycle analyst and torque sensor on a setting of 1x, 1 watt from electrical for every one watt human and just letting that be regardless of climbing or descent so that the body would get a reliable feedback mechanism for how it's doing. Not as crucial as moving the seat forward by dropping the heels, but very helpful. And using a ratio of only one to one fixed, getting the body closer face-to-face grappling with the mass of this 600 lb machine, 750 with James, which again increases the tactile real-world feedback that the body could intuitively grapple with, and learn from, and it has. And all of this enabled by a gigantic lesson that experience taught James climbing through the Appalachians and elsewhere, James, you think that your power is in your legs, ankles, calves, feet. It feels that way. But none of it is there. It's in your torso front and back, and the first half of your thighs. That was nice to know, but without today's Discovery James didn't have a way to harness it without driving himself crazy. And today, for the first time in three years, it was as easy as, riding a bike.
