Cycling UK Forum

jawaka wrote: ↑15 Apr 2024, 5:55pmmy grandchildren had never heard of logarithms and why would they now?

Because they aren't just used as a shortcut for multiplying numbers.

jawaka wrote: ↑15 Apr 2024, 1:58pmPaul Dirac was struggling with nonsensical results from his quantum equations. He proposed positrons as the solution to the conundrum, and they were only subsequently discovered. Beyond genius

James Clerk Maxwell discovered electromagnetic waves using pen & paper, and maths.

Audax67 wrote: ↑12 Apr 2024, 10:04amfaeces are reduced to a kind of high-pressure expanding foam

I used to get that quite a lot back in my cycling days, but I haven't had it for years.

MartinC wrote: ↑11 Apr 2024, 1:55pm

axel_knutt wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 4:11pm ......How anyone could think that cycling is hard on your feet is beyond me, you're only carrying a fraction of your bodyweight, and on a surface that continuously pivots to align with your sole. Try fellwalking.

In the same vein may I suggest trying arthritis in your feet.

In which case it's the arthritis that's hard on your feet, not the cycling.

I've never ground to a complete standstill on the bike, even when I ran out of food, but there were a few occasions when I felt very nauseous an hour or two after finishing, and the feeling went after eating. Generally, if I'm riding more than 30 miles I try to stop every hour and eat about 250kcals. I don't get hung up on eating specific foodstuffs that aren't going to be available at any old village shop in the middle of nowhere, or anything that's expensive.

mattheus wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 10:22am You don't think injuries are recorded?

Whether they are or not, injuries aren't a reliable metric for measuring risk because the threshold for recording them is subjective, and varies according to the manpower available for collecting the data.

I cycle on traditional rat traps (MKS MT Lite) and have never owned a pair of cycling shoes, or felt the need to. For years until they stopped selling them my preferred shoes were Stead & Simpson's Hobos, but my last shoes were a pair of very thin soled Hush Puppies. By the time my shoes are worn out, the only part of the sole that doesn't still look almost new is the hole under the left big toe where I put my foot down. How anyone could think that cycling is hard on your feet is beyond me, you're only carrying a fraction of your bodyweight, and on a surface that continuously pivots to align with your sole. Try fellwalking.

Someone once posted a picture on here of the top off one of his bottles with the nozzle removed, and it was full of block slime like you see when cleaning out drains. That convinced me that I'd made the right decision to never put anything other than clean tap water in my bottles.

jawaka wrote: ↑9 Apr 2024, 12:23pm340 gm has about 4,000 cals bags of energy there.

Not by a long chalk, it doesn't.

The calorific value of honey is around 300kcal/100g (Tesco 327, McCance & Widdowson 288, USDA 304)

mjr wrote: ↑8 Apr 2024, 6:15pmnobody should feel any safer with me wobbling my bike towards them with the offside pedal out of my sight than me sat on it with full control of the brakes, because they definitely wouldn't be any safer! Heck, by now I've probably dropped my current main bike on myself while pushing it more than I've crashed it.

People don't see it that way though. In pedestrianised town centres I prefer to ride at~3mph with my hands on the brakes because it's safer, and I can stop quicker, but I've been told to get off and walk even by other cyclists.

Wheeling the bike is a PITA, there's no easy and comfortable way to do it.

mattheus wrote: ↑9 Apr 2024, 10:44amDo you or your mum know how many pedstrians are killed or seriously injured by drivers on pavements?

Of all the pedestrians killed whilst on the pavement, 98.9% are killed by cars, 1.1% by cycles.
https://www.roadpeace.org/pedestrian-pavement-deaths-2/

Jon in Sweden wrote: ↑7 Apr 2024, 5:20pmAny other tips?

There are two circumstances when the brakes generate no heat at all:

1) When they're not applied
2) When the bike's not moving

Sometimes you can get close enough to the former, but you can always get close enough to the latter.

pwa wrote: ↑7 Apr 2024, 4:45pm And then there are people like my mother (nearly 90) who fear using the pavement because of other people using them with bicycles, electric scooters and whatever else on them. She knows that her next fall may well be mark her last and terminal hospital entry.....

I'm not 90 and I don't much like sharing paths with cycles either. I can't hear them coming, and even when I do I tend to lose my balance if I suddenly turn to see where they are, and then stumble into their path. Come to think of it, I'm not very keen on cycling close to other cycles either, for pretty much the same reasons.

The biggest source of mess on my panniers by far is the black mix of rainwater, aluminium dust and brake rubber.

nirakaro wrote: ↑6 Apr 2024, 3:38pmI put a new tube in, and had another (slow) puncture within ten miles

Did you find the debris that caused the first one?

I once had a puncture right through the middle of the patch that I'd put on the day before, and only then did I find the fragment of glass that I'd missed the first time because it was smaller than the thickness of the tyre.