欧州自転車レース追っかけ日記 Bike Races in Luxembourg

Streamlight JR™ First Generation?

Tour de Luxmbourg (Skoda Tour de Luxembourg) 2024
September 18th (Wednesday) to September 22nd (Sunday)

I am now enjoying this stage race in Luxembourg.

Streamlight JR (Junior) (perhaps) the First Generation Incandescent
I recently bought (an eBay auction) a flashlight claiming to be the Streamlight JR™. It will arrive in around 2 weeks, I guess.

According to the brief search study on the Net, the Streamlight JR™ seems to have started back in the late 1990's or very early 2000's. I found a YouTube video (uploaded 15 years ago = 2009 or so) introducing the LED version of the JR.

I paid only 3.5 US dollars for it. Of course I had to pay for the shipping and the import tax (or VAT) in addition. In total I paid roughly 27 US dollars.

The listed item was not guaranteed to work. The seller had not tested it. The seller wrote that the bulb was missing. I was interested in it and decided to bid. I won.

It seems that it was the original (first) version of JR series. Someone (Reddit user) described it as a "rare" item in a way. In other words, this version was not popular and short-lived before being replaced by the second generation (still an incandescent version). Obviously the LED version introduced around 2009 came out after these 2 models.

One of the photos that the eBay seller uploaded seemed to show fragments of etched letters. I thought there was Norris(town - town part is not visible at all) written on the body. Streamlight started etching "Eagleville, PA" after moving there in 2001. This was the reason I assumed that the first generation must have started back in late 1990's or very early 2000's. I will see the actual etched letters to see if I was right.

I am not sure if it works at all. I am not sure it is complete.

The past summer during my 2-week trip to France. I used my old (from early 2000's) Streamlight Clipmate (black body and green LED) at night. It broke. Some small plastic parts (of the twist switch) broke off. I liked its gentle green LED light.

If it works, I will use it in the tent at night.

(image 1)

(image 2)

(image 3)

(image 4)

(image 5)

(image 6)

(image 7)

(image 8)

Images 1 to 4 are clipped images from the eBay seller's listing.
(image 1: Etched letters seem to be (STREAMLI)GHT JR™ and Norris(town, PA))
(image 2: The reflector and the empty hole. Where's the bulb?)
(image 3: The bottom cap/switch. Is the threaded plastic broken? Is the spare bulb there?)
(image 4: Is the + terminal/bulb holder showing?)

Images 5 to 7 are taken from the various images on the Net.
(image 5: This seems to be the same model)
(image 6: This one is also an incandescent model. Is this the second generation?)
(image 7: This one is the LED model. Is this the third generation?)
(image 8: Expended view of the guts. Are these parts present?)

In Japanese:続きをどうぞ
[Streamlight JR™ First Generation?]の続きを読む

テーマ:自転車ロードレース - ジャンル:スポーツ

National Championship Luxembourg 2024

National Championship Luxembourg 2024
Sunday, June 23rd 2024 it was sunny and warm. I drove to a town called Harlange (in Luxembourgish Harel) to see the road race.

In Luxembourg the National Championship held in a very different way from the ones held in many other countries simply because the population is so small. I can say so because I used to live in Germany and went to see its version of national championship events were huge. I remember at least two events that I went to.

Many riders, a lot of audience, a lot of team staff with team buses and cars, a lot of media coverage and a lot of Police officers.

In Luxembourg, several categories are held together. For example, today there were three races, earlier in the morning junior, female/male (male junior?, female elite x 2, female masters) around noon and male (pro elite = paid by the team and non-pro elite = amateur) in the afternoon.

So I saw 3 female and 1 male podium sessions early in the afternoon and 2 male podium sessions in the evening.

Not many riders are there (the afternoon race had around 30 riders?) and there are gaps of pace between categories. So there was maximum of ten to fourteen riders in a group in the beginning and there was a small group (5 or 6) in the end. Other riders are scattered in two or three riders groups.

There can be up to two or three riders from a team (professional or amateur) so there could be no team tactics at all. All riders had to be on their own. In other words, no teammates would be your windshield or would be your sprint train.

I took my beloved Hannah and my Brompton with me. I enjoyed the day and the race. I could complete the course (18 km) on my Brompton. The course is a bit hilly one with almost no flat stretches. You either climb up or down all the time.

GeekBench 6 scores
I downloaded this application, Geekbench 6, and ran it on my Mac Pro 6,1 (A1481, Late2013 or Trash Can) and got some results. On the Geekbench 6 chart my scores are not bad at all for this particular model.

I think Mac Pro Late2013 owners are not so keen on learning the potential of their ageing machine lately. They are not actively uploading the benchmark results.

They were uploading some results when older application, Geekbench 5 or earlier?, was in wider use, I suppose.

Anyway, my machine's result is really low in modern age. The multi-core score of this trash can can be easily surpassed by some single-core scores of most of recent CPUs. Amazing is the pace of technological advancement.

The reason why I used this benchmark application is not what you may think it is.

I opened the "Activity Monitor (macOS's standard utility software)" and watched the CPU and GPU load. I noticed that only one of AMD FirePro D500 graphic chips (I have two of them) was used and the other one stayed inactive all the time.

I knew that one was meant for graphic output purposes and the other was for computing (or crunching numbers). So it is normal for one of them to stay calm while no number crunching is needed.

I wondered if two of them would get active when I ran the benchmark text. This was one of the reasons why I wanted to run it.

The other reason was I am planning to upgrade the CPU in the future just for fun (not for practical purposes).

I wanted to record the current performance before I changed the CPUs so that I may have a solid evidence that the CPU swap helps improve the performance.

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [National Championship Luxembourg 2024]の続きを読む

テーマ:自転車ロードレース - ジャンル:スポーツ

Festival Elsy Jacobs 2023

Luxembourg Festival Elsy Jacobs

This year this race was held as a two-day stage race (April 29th and 30th / Saturday and Sunday). It had been held as three-day stage race as far as I can remember.

I have to assume that dwindling financial support from the local sponsors forced the organizer to reduce the scale. It is sad but it can not be helped.

I missed the Saturday stage because I was not careful and forgot about it. I visited the official site and knew that the race was upcoming. I just did not write it down on the calendar app. My bad!

I noticed the race was on Saturday for some reason and was determined to be there on Sunday. I checked the site and downloaded the start list and the technical guide (so-called roadbook) and then examined the course.

Who were there? Some big (formerly WorldTour) teams, middle (formerly Continental) teams and smaller teams. The defending champion is Ms Marta Bastinelli (UAE TEAM ADQ). I remember her dominating the race last year. She was good at the individual time trial, which gave her a decisive advantage before the following stages. Gaining even a few seconds should make a significant difference when the following stages are likely to end in a mass sprint among the favorites.

This year, as the prologue-ish ITT was gone, she failed to obtain this decisive advantage.

Sunday's stage was held between Luxembourg's Stadium (maybe the biggest one) and Garnich (a small town near the Belgian border). I first went to the finish town of Garnich and the GPM area in the morning.

For the last several years, the construction of the tram transport system has been going on. It has been making a slow progress. For the moment the tram line is completed between the Lux Expo (an exposition site) and a tram stop near an institute of some technical stuff. The line is expected to connect the airpot (Findel) and the mall called “Cloche d’Or (golden bell?)”. Or so I thought (or heard).

I found the tram rails extending to the entrance area of the Stadium, which is less than a mile away from the mall. Soon the tram system will connect the airport, the railroad main station and the big stadium.

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [Festival Elsy Jacobs 2023]の続きを読む

テーマ:自転車ロードレース - ジャンル:スポーツ

National Championship Luxembourg 2020 (Road Race/Time Trial)

UCI had very kind (and new) pages for race schedules

(https://www.uci.org/road/calendar)

I checked the FSCL's site for information but they did not (don't as of now).

I thought maybe UCI (the governing body of cycling federations all over the world) had at least the dates and some additional information. I was right.

According to the information provided by the UCI's site, all the time trial events will take place on Thursday, August 20th and road race events will take place on Sunday, August 23rd. The venue of the event is very likely around Mamer, a community near Luxembourg city because the event is hosted by the cycling club based in Mamer.

I have been to Mamer for several times. A 3-day stage race (female) is normally held there. This year it was, I think, cancelled so they had extra money set aside and decided to host the National Championship, maybe.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsy_Jacobs)

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [National Championship Luxembourg 2020 (Road Race/Time Trial)]の続きを読む

テーマ:自転車ロードレース - ジャンル:スポーツ

Festival Elsy Jacobs UCI WE 2.1

Festival Elsy Jacobs 2019

I began to check its site more frequently as the date draws nearer. The latest update on the site is that its Twitter link. I followed it hoping that I was right guessing that this would be the proper way to get the latest updates.

The teams participating the event update their information (roster or so) there so that the organizer has less work to do to reflect the latest development on its site.

I quickly learned that Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig is not participating the event as Bigla Pro Cycling Team announced it planned roster.

Lazy as I am

I am lazy. I want to change this lazy life. A help is on my way. I am so close to having a cat with me as a companion (at least I am led to believe so).

With a cat living with me being lazy or staying in bed late won't be an option.

My iPad mini 2 needs more storage

My iPad mini 2 (second hand found on ebay) has builtin 16 GB of storage. Some of it has been taken by the system (iOS) so I have less space than than of course.

I have TomTom Go Mobile on it (as I was a TomTom Western Europe application user and I got this free update). I am using Western Europe map on it and the map data is rather huge.

To accommodate the map data and leave some empty area for updating the map occasionally, I deleted some apps before. The map data seems to be constantly growing and recently I had to delete more and make some apps offline (delete the apps but keep their data).

I will be shooting a lot of movies (cat movies to be exact) on it so I need to make more room on it. Since expanding the storage is impossible (no possibility of inserting SD cards or others), I have to do something else.

How about this?