The Bicycle Thread - February 2023

February 4, 2023 | The Bicycle Thread

[Berlin_Freeper]

Welcome to The Bicycle Thread.

A monthly PING List for bicycle enthusiasts to share experiences, information and ideas. 🚴‍♂️👍

[exPBRrat]

When I was growing up I had a Schwinn that lasted 10 years. It was still in full operating condition when I passed it on.

Since retiring I’ve been through 3 walmart bikes that need constant attention, tires won’t even hold air...

...how do they get way with that?

[Chad C. Mulligan]

It got hijacked by a bunch of bicycle hating lunatics.

Keep your hyper-adrenalinized hostility in check and maybe you won't have us normals hating on you.

[Paal Gulli]

Something bicycles have in common with firearms is the people who create them are are extraordinarily innovative. I once stumbled on a museum in Italy (in Villafranca, a little south of Verona) that I was expecting to be mostly a car museum. What I found was the entire evolutionary tree of the road bicycle.

It was created by a rich guy named Luciano Nicolis, who collected a lot of stuff, some of it a bit odd. Classic cars, motorcycles, typewriters, cameras, musical instruments, ... and bicycles. I guess he got tired of paying to have all the stuff warehoused so he built a museum around it to make it pay for itself.

From the advertisement that I saw I thought it was mostly cars, but when I got to the floor that had all the bicycles in it, there was a side-by-side line of bikes in the middle of the room that had the complete evolution of the road bike on display. At one end was a Draisine and at the other end was a carbonfiber Bianchi with 10-sp Campy Record Ergo. And in between was every major technical innovation in the history of the bicycle, all arranged in the order of invention.

It literally was the evolutionary tree of the road bike.

A Draisine, likely a replica, but still ....

After the Draisine they added a steering head. After the steering head they added pedal power. Then brakes. Then derailleurs, three speeds up to 10 (this was some years ago, before 11, 12 or 13-sp). If it happened, it's here.

Front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive. Direct drive (high-wheeler/penny-farthings), bellcrank drive, chain drive, belt drive, and shaft drive.

Solid tires, pneumatic tires, airless tires; wooden rims and metal rims.

They had one bike wearing Tullio Campagnolo's original quick releases. And if you know Campy history, you know that's how he got into bicycle components.

And the derailleurs! There must have been a dozen crazy designs and operation methods before the 1951 Campy articulating parallelogram shifter.

A 4-sp derailleur with the control lever mounted on the drive side seat tube. The rider would have to bend down and reach around his leg to twist the lever and shift gears.

A 1947 Bianchi with a 4-sp Campy rear derailleur. One lever steers the shifter cage, which moves the chainline. There's no jockey wheel to maintain chain tension so it has a second lever to allow sliding the axle fore or aft in the dropout.

HdG wouldn't allow derailleurs in the TdF until 1937 (said he didn't want it to become about the bike) so shifter technology didn't really take off until after that.

This next one was my favorite thing on display. They have a bicycle that doesn't have gears but its back wheel has a sprocket on both sides (Hodaka, anybody?). The small gear is for flat roads and the big one is for the mountains. The reason that seemingly primitive innovation was so noteworthy was that the whole time I had been interested in bicycles, I had been reading that this set-up was why cycling shorts traditionally are black.

In order to turn the wheel around and use the sprocket on the other side, you first had to un-ship the chain with your hand. And grease from the chain would get on your hand. So unless you wanted grease on your handlebar tape, you had to wipe it on something. And the shorts were the obvious choice.

So if shorts weren't already black they'd soon get that way. So just make them black to start with.

Notice there's also a sprocket on the non-drive side of the back wheel. Looks about 15-16t on the drive side and maybe 20-22 on the non.

I'd been searching for one of these for so long I was beginning to think it was a myth. Yet here it is, on a 1925 Bianchi.

If you're interested but can't make it to Italy right away, check out their website: https://www.museonicolis.com/en/category/bicycles/

[Berlin_Freeper]

Great post Paal Gulli of a great place.

I recently walked into a building that had a historical display on bicycles which I saw through the lobby window. Some early designs are what later turned out to look like motorcycles.

The bicycle is such an amazing invention.
The most fundamental greatest invention of mankind.

[Paal Gulli]

"... He cited the usual benefits, and added “It changes your head.”

For me there's no doubt that it's a form of psychotherapy. Like Zen meditation, clears everything from your mind. I get edgy if I'm not riding enough.

Then again I also get neurotic about missing a ride. That's one reason why I have so many bicycles. There's always at least one of them that's ready to ride.

[daniel1212]

For me and where I like, this is more practical. How much do you think it cost? (No cheating)

© 2023 Walmart. All Rights Reserved.

[KingLudd]

How much? $199 is my guess.

[wintertime]

Thank you for your very thoughtful post.

[wintertime]

Ok! ( sitting here chuckling!) :)

[Paal Gulli]

A couple of days ago a pro roadracer in a race in France got caught up in a mass collision on a bridge, flipped off his bike and barely managed to hang on to the guard rail.

The rider was Valentin Ferron and it was the second stage of the Etoile de Bessèges. They neutralized the stage, not because of Ferron's close call but because of the massive pile-up on the bridge.

There's no estimate of how high the drop was but the commentator said "not short," so I don't know if that means his life was in danger.

There's video of the event here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMXfJfBP7Fo

[Paal Gulli]

... The most fundamental greatest invention of mankind.

I once knew a university physics professor who claimed that the bicycle is the most efficient form of human transportation in existence because there's nothing else that can carry a man as fast on so little fuel.

[Osage Orange]

I have a Marin East Peak Aluminum Mountain bike....It’s old but in great shape.

[Disambiguator]

I was just making an observation.

FWIW, I don’t run with the spandex butt-in-the-air crowd.

[Berlin_Freeper]

It’s not normal for you to be Trolling in The Bicycle Thread.

Be gone.

[Berlin_Freeper]

How to Go Cycling in Snow Without Risking Your Safety

[Berlin_Freeper]

The Importance of Wearing a Bicycle Helmet

[BrandtMichaels]

There’s another great benefit to spandex, protects your skin from road rash in a crash.

And have you seen this?

https://mashable.com/video/bicycle-twists-middle-drifting-invention

[sphinx]

Since retiring I’ve been through 3 walmart bikes that need constant attention, tires won’t even hold air...

I think you already know the solution to your problem. Don't buy your bikes at Walmart. They're cheap for a reason.

A Walmart or other big box store bike is ok for kids who are going to abuse it, leave it lying around in the park where it will probably get stolen, and outgrow it in a year anyhow. Buy cheap and think of it as a disposable item.

For you, being retired, buy a decent bike. Go to a good local bike shop. Talk through your goals and the local riding options with the staff. Ride a range of bikes and listen to what your body tells you. You can get a competent starter bike from a reputable manufacturer for $600, give or take. If you take reasonable care of it, it will outlive you. Start with a decent starter bike and, if you find yourself riding a lot, it will become your fallback, casual bike or loaner for friends when you upgrade.

Bikes are commodity items. You get what you pay for. It's been awhile since I've bought a bike, but glancing at the websites for my local stores, the sweet spot for mass market "good" bikes seems to be around $1,200-$1,600. You can spend a lot more than that, but you will be buying performance upgrades that may not be relevant to the average casual rider. The key limiting factor on multiple bikes is storage space. When you find yourself needing to buy a bigger house to store your bikes, you might want to slow down a bit.

[Sirius Lee]

Is there any organization pushing for this that I could join and support?

Rails to Trails.

https://www.railstotrails.org

CT and Massholechussets have a pretty decent network of trails. Maine, not so much. The closest one to here in the Boothbay area is the Narrow Gauge trail north of the lake. You don't want to ride the steeply crowned roads as there are lots of lumber trucks and no shoulders.

[Disambiguator]

Nope. I’m too old for that kind of thing. I like my frames to stay put.

When I was commuting I would wear sturdy clothes that I didn’t have to change out of when I arrived at my place of work. Since it is a pretty casual atmosphere I could get away with it.