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Author Topic: Bickering about bicycles, now with occasional tips about motorised vehicles  (Read 242144 times)

edwinalink

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Its a Cyclocross bike. Doesn't mean I have any intention of racing cyclocross. I just want a bulletproof bike to use as a car for 3 years. and my Dirt Jump Bike is too dang heavy.

its getting a flat bar to!
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The Seldom Killer

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Stick with the drops for a bit. Cyclocross bikes generally have wider bars and you may well find them more versatile than flat bars.  It's not like you'll lose out.
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Akima

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I ride clipless, though I normally use pedals that allow me to ride comfortably in uncleated shoes if I want to. Shoes with recessed cleats (usually sold as "mountain" something) are pretty OK to walk in anyway; just watch out for slipping on cobbles, and don't walk on polished wooden floors in them. Although all clipless systems take a little getting used to, the modern SPD-style (if properly adjusted, kept clean, and lubed) make it pretty easy to release a foot in an emergency.

Stick with the drops for a bit. Cyclocross bikes generally have wider bars and you may well find them more versatile than flat bars.  It's not like you'll lose out.
Or consider touring or "randonneur" style drops (less drop), or "moustache" bars (much less drop). Flat handlebars can be good, but it depends what you mean by "flat". The typical straight "mountain bike" style bar that bike-shops tend to fit is not a good idea for road riding IMHO. They force your arms into a rather unnatural "elbows out" position that can become seriously uncomfortable after a few hours of riding. People fit bar-ends and other extras to alleviate the problem, but I don't think they're a good idea for riding in urban traffic, because you can't cover the brakes from a bar-end riding position. A better option is one of the M-shaped handlebars that used to be typical of traditional utility bicycles. These are sold under various names, including "North Road", "Town", and "Sweep". They're the same tube diameter as standard straight bars, so fully compatible with brakes, shifters etc.

Which brings me to a final point. Bicycle parts are subject to many annoying historical standards and incompatibilities, and handlebars are no exception. Drop handlebars are typically made of different diameter tubing from flat bars, and swapping from one to the other can mean that your stem, brake-levers, and gear-shifters will not fit, so you can indeed "lose out". Some types of brake-lever are incompatible with some types of brake mechanism. Some gear systems come with shifters that will only fit one diameter of bar, or will only fit on straight sections of tubing, and this can constrain your other choices. Going from drop bars to straight is usually easier than the other way round, but fiddling around with handlebars can become a frustrating pass-time. Do not ask how I know this...

There's a good article on handlebar choices here.

Edit: Rereading the above, I realise that I am a huge bicycle nerd.
« Last Edit: 22 Feb 2011, 15:59 by Akima »
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jhocking

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Walking to the train this morning, at two intersections a car turned in front of me while I was crossing the street. And as if that isn't annoying enough, I live near a school so there were crossing guards holding Stop signs yelling at them.

I swear, if you run your stupid ass out in the middle of the street when you do not have the right of way in any sense of the law, and I hit you, I will not feel bad, and I will not feel bad about not feeling bad. Get your ass back on the sidewalk, go to the corner, and wait for the light.

I would feel bad for the dog.
« Last Edit: 22 Feb 2011, 16:57 by jhocking »
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edwinalink

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I don't need to stick with Drop bars for a bit. I've experienced them plenty of times for a long enough amount of time to know that



with a little trim off each side is gonna keep me happy in the long run.

same for pedals. I came to that choice through experiencing many and settling on that.

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David_Dovey

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How novel!
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calenlass

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My bike has pedals too! Also some handlebars. It has a seat, but the seat is old and uncomfortable, so I think I will get a new one. I will probably go to a bike shop somewhere and sit on them to test them out!

BIKES
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Lunchbox

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Can we post pictures of our own bikes yet




This is my bike
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Something Witty

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Lunchbox

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Mine's prettier
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Although she got stolen, so



But then someone stole his seat while I was at the gym so now he looks like

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my babby



she has a flat tire right now though, is very sad.
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I just have a mountain bike from Target. It's probably a Schwinn or something.

Awesomeness

 8-) Nice Vulcan. 800-ish?

I wanted to buy a CB360 last fall but unemployment meant no disposable income. :( Now that I have a job my attention has turned to four-wheeled clapped-out deathtraps.

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My bike has 8 cars and a house in Ireland.
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Inlander

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my bike has pedals. I put my feet on them

Also because you're in northern Europe I'm going to assume you brake by cranking them backwards.
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redglasscurls

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For some reason the only pictures I have of my bike are in my parents' basement.


It barely ever gets ridden now, because I live on gravelly rural roads and fuck those handlebars.
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The Seldom Killer

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Is that a Peugeot?

If so it looks in farly good nick and probably worth flogging to a hipster and putting the proceeds towards a mountain bike with big comfy grips.

Also unused bicycles make little kittens sad.
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greenMonkey

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I have this thing:



Collegiate road season starts in a week.  I'm super pumped.  First race is going to suck though, it's at Rutgers University in New Jersey, I bet it will be super cold.
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The Seldom Killer

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Nice, what sort of distance will it be?
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redglasscurls

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@SK I mostly just hate trying to shift gears on it. They're at the center post bit, so if I'm down on the handlebars I can't shift without lurching left/right as I take one hand off to reach. I keep meaning to just rip out the stupid stem mounted shifters and replacing them with something a bit more klutz-friendly but I don't want to break things. So it sits for now!
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greenMonkey

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@The Seldom Killer

Collegiate races tend to be pretty short, because they have a lot of categories and a limited amount of time.  There's an ITT and a crit, the ITT is only 2.5 miles and apparently it's flat as a pancake.  The crit for my category is 25 minutes long, I can't seem to find a map of it though.
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The Seldom Killer

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@rgc - Shimano STI shifters are klutz-friendly (I've been doing a running test for six years).

@gM - That's a tiny TT. I'm guessing that the crit will be ten laps of the same course. Sounds pretty easy in terms of effort, what's the field size like?
« Last Edit: 24 Feb 2011, 07:58 by The Seldom Killer »
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greenMonkey

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Hard to say, depends on how many people are brave/crazy enough to show up.  I race in Men's D, the second lowest category, and there are usually around 100 riders in my category.  For the crit, the field will be split in half based on school/team size, so it'll probably be a little less than 50.

Just figured out the crit is a different course than the TT, an 0.6 mile loop with 4 turns.  I don't think either the TT or crit will be too difficult, although the crit might get hairy because even though Men's D is a step up from the intros, a lot of guys just simply don't have the bike handling or group riding skills yet.  But they still want to go as fast as they can.  Which doesn't always end well.
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valley_parade

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Collegiate road season starts in a week.  I'm super pumped.  First race is going to suck though, it's at Rutgers University in New Jersey, I bet it will be super cold.

Hey, does Williams have any "home" races? Wouldn't mind going to see one.
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The Seldom Killer

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an 0.6 mile loop with 4 turns. ... the crit might get hairy ....

Yeah, crits have a deservedly rough reputation. I guess you have to get in the front until it's settled down and hope for the best. 100 riders on such a short course is going to be messy though.

Hope you can get up to the C cat soon.
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greenMonkey

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Collegiate road season starts in a week.  I'm super pumped.  First race is going to suck though, it's at Rutgers University in New Jersey, I bet it will be super cold.

Hey, does Williams have any "home" races? Wouldn't mind going to see one.

Unfortunately, no.  The closest we get is a race at RPI in Troy the weekend of March 26-27, but that's over our spring break so I'm not sure if I'll make it or if anyone else on our team will.  Would be fun if it worked out though, I'm sure there will be some fun hills in that course.
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Akima

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This is my bike
Nice Peugeot mixte. Those frames make a lot of sense, especially for shorter riders like me, but they're hard to find down here. Don't let it go!

<Sadly stolen classic Raleigh Shopper>
I used to own a folding Raleigh Twenty. I sold it very reluctantly when I got my present bike because I just don't have the storage space, but it went to a good home and is still ridden regularly.
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Lunchbox

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Unfortunately it's from the 1970's and has never been restored so it's an absolute bitch to ride. One day when I get some spare money I want to send her off to be refurbed. For now, I complain every time I have to ride her, and get cuts and bashes all over my legs. And the gears are impossible for me to change whilst riding. And the saddle is awfully painful. I need to buy a new one.
« Last Edit: 24 Feb 2011, 17:12 by Lunchbox »
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Metope

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my bike has pedals. I put my feet on them

Also because you're in northern Europe I'm going to assume you brake by cranking them backwards.

I refuse to ride a bike that doesn't do this. Unfortunate they're rare in the UK these days, so I'm walking everywhere instead.
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The Seldom Killer

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Any reason you don't like hand brakes? I've been on bikes with them a couple of times and found them a bit jumpy and unreliable. Mind you, that's probable more from lack of familiarity.

I've got a 200k bike ride tomorrow which is my first qualifier for Paris-Brest-Paris. Oddly nervous about it because although I know I can do the distance, I'm concerned about getting the qualification series out of the way.
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edwinalink

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I do love how clean a Coaster brake-ed Bicycle looks. But for the speeds and terrains I enjoy... they'd just be ludicrously unsafe.

but if a person has a mild commute. I say why not?
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I refuse to ride a bike that doesn't do this. Unfortunate they're rare in the UK these days, so I'm walking everywhere instead.

I am sorry my country has largely abandoned the outpaced technology of a century ago Kris. I am truly penitent!
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Metope

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Thing is, I'm so used to pedaling backwards to brake, so if I'm on a bike and have to stop urgently I do this as a reflex, if the bike I'm on has hand brakes then whoops! I've had quite a few almost-accidents because of that, so I'm not going to risk it.
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The Seldom Killer

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Best thing is to get out and ride lots and hand braking will soon cease to be counter-intuitive. Get out somewhere traffic free and go at it for a bit and it'll soon come together. I've found that visualisation works pretty well for me in changing instinctive behaviour.
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Inlander

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My main problem with pedal-brakes is that if I'm riding on the road and I'm stopped at a red light I'll usually pedal backwards half a rotation or so to get my right foot (because I'm right handed and so tend to favour my right side for all things) into the optimum position to push hard on the pedal for maximum acceleration when the light goes green. Also, and a little more oddly, if I'm on a long ride and I'm, say, going down a gentle slope where gravity is providing all the necessary forward momentum, I often find it good to pedal backwards a little bit, just to keep my muscles moving and keep everything circulating without having to expend energy on pushing against the resistance I'd encounter if pedalling forwards.
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pwhodges

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My bike in winter:


My bike in summer:

Yay! for floods...
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Something Witty

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Awesomeness

 8-) Nice Vulcan. 800-ish?

I wanted to buy a CB360 last fall but unemployment meant no disposable income.

The Vulcan is a 750. You can see where I put it down a couple of years ago on the exhaust, still. I have the disposable income to fix it, and even have the new exhaust to put on, but due to the job that gives me the income I don't have time to a: ride and 2: fix the exhaust. It's a horrible curse, I say. Having toys but no time to play, I mean.
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jhocking

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I somewhat randomly just came across two articles that are about traffic problems. One is a blog on nytimes that puts forward the question I asked earlier: do people act differently (specifically, like assholes) when driving than they do other times?

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/why-does-driving-bring-out-the-worst-in-people/

The comments on this post mention a book called "Traffic" that I am very curious about now.



The other article I just read talks about rear-end collisions caused by red light cameras:
http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/bedard-crashes

This is one example of the general principle that you should usually be leery of reported statistics because the numbers are almost always massaged according to the bias of whoever is reporting the numbers.

Akima

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The other article I just read talks about rear-end collisions caused by red light cameras: http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/bedard-crashes
This page doesn't actually offer any statistics, or even a link to where they might be found. It merely fulminates about what the author claims someone else's statistics mean. To be fair however the article doesn't actually go to the length of claiming that red-light cameras cause rear-end collisions, merely that there is a correlation. It does of course gloss over the fact that rear-enders at traffic lights (or anywhere else for that matter) are actually caused by drivers driving too close to the vehicle in front for the speed they're doing, and implicitly accepts that drivers should only brake for the red light, not the amber/yellow.

It's fairly standard motor-transport-advocacy-group stuff: "The NMA opposes the use of red-light cameras and proposes engineering solutions as the real fix for intersections with high accident rates." And there was I thinking driver behaviour might have something to do with accidents. How naive I was...
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bicostp

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Watch the light until you pass the point of no return (where your car can't physically stop if the light turns). After that I only watch other cars, lights be damned. What good does slamming on the brakes do if you're going to wind up stopping in the middle of the intersection?

Another fun story from Interstate 95: on Thursday some idiot driving a blue SUV was too busy with their friggin phone to pay attention to their lane position, and almost performed the PIT maneuver against my front end. 12-year-old domestic economy cars are just part of the landscape I guess. :|

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The other article I just read talks about rear-end collisions caused by red light cameras:

There were a couple of speed cameras (will go off if you are driving 11mph over the speed limit) on my way to work when I lived in Phoenix. They were one mile apart and when the first one would go off, the person would slam on their brakes, rather than going from 66+ to 55 (the speed limit) they would drop down to like 35-40.
This is really annoying and dangerous.
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jhocking

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My fiancee slams her brakes for police; she is mostly a great driver, but that behavior annoys me a lot. The worst is if I'm driving (a rarity these days admittedly) and she shouts whenever she spots a cop, causing me to freak out.

This page doesn't actually offer any statistics, or even a link to where they might be found. It merely fulminates about what the author claims someone else's statistics mean.

Which was kind of my point. Sorry I didn't state that explicitly, since it often takes a while for my thoughts to actually gel in my mind. Both sides of the issue, both for and against red light cameras, have studies to back up their claims, but the studies are all riddled with bias. You know the old saying:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

stopping in the middle of the intersection

Unrelated to the red light thing, but this reminds me, my mom has stopped in the middle of an intersection. She was lost, and finally just stopped randomly in order to look at her map.

In the middle of an intersection.

And then she was mad that people were yelling at her (including a cop who happened to be there directing traffic.)

*sigh*
« Last Edit: 27 Feb 2011, 05:36 by jhocking »
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The Seldom Killer

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So here's my main bike which I've just freshly cleaned following a very mucky and wet 200k ride yesterday.



And here's the stable that it's kept in. How many bikes do you think you can see?

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I make it eleven.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XL3g4vPK30&feature=player_detailpage#t=52s
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Fuck! I'm no fan of Critical Mass events, but that's just...  :psyduck:  Some of the comments are revolting, but that's YouTube. Or maybe just people.
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Jace

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I found the link on 4chan, which would explain a lot of the comments
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Damn! :-o

Critical Mass is just a bunch of self-entitled hippies causing a nuisance, but there's no way in hell they deserve that:-(
« Last Edit: 27 Feb 2011, 14:35 by bicostp »
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Critical Mass is a protest, and like any other, people take to the streets. I've never seen a car plow into a crowd of pedestrians waving signs and walking down the street.

This is inexcusable. Whoever drives that car deserves to suffer a horrible, painful death.
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