Cycling UK Forum

I've often been very rude about bicycle journalists... and if any one of them is reading this here is your chance to redeem yourselves... promote those handlebars which are neither flat 'bars or dropped 'bars... we do have to change this very boring, almost binary choice, of straight or curly..

Like the proper mustache handlebars, https://lovelybike.blogspot.com/2013/02 ... r.html?m=1
.
like nitto's narrow bull horn bars, https://www.hubjub.co.uk/nitto-rb-036-b ... 4606-p.asp

.like Alex Moulton's mosquito bars https://www.traditionalcycleshop.co.uk/ ... squito-bar

..I don't think that the most comfortable handlebars are being commerically produced...
I think 531Colin's home built handlebars are closer to this holy grail

chocjohn9 wrote: ↑12 Feb 2025, 8:29am I'm on the tall side and have always riden bikes with drop handlebars. But for a bit of a change, I fancy a flat bar touring bike.

Is there a rule of thumb for the geo I should be looking at?

My current bikes all have a top tube horizonal of between 590-597mm. Reach 400-405mm-ish. If I ride on the hoods then this would extend my stretch by a further 8cm-ish, but then I would want a slightly more upright position on a flat bar. i do like to be quite stretched out.....

There's some sort of myth about cycling which is flat handlebars=more comfortable, dropped handlebars=less comfortable....
...and I don't think that's true...
dropped handlebars usually are as wide as your shoulders, which keep you wrists and elbows at natural angles, and keeps your shoulder blades straight...
For some reason, most flat handlebars are now considerably wider than they use to be which means your wrists, and perhaps elbows are taken out of their natural angles...this is made worse by dropping the handlebars below the height of the saddle..

Getting the handlebars right can become a bit of a rabbit hole - I've even experimenting for r or 5 years, having gone through numerous stem lengths, handlebar shapes and different grips.

Right now, if dropped handlebars work for you, I'd just exchange the stem for something with a bit more rise...

roubaixtuesday wrote: ↑12 Feb 2025, 9:56am The Tuesday hypothesis of UFOs, that sightings are a mess of fraud, natural phenomena, psychological suggestion and the like, predicts:

(1) No physical artefacts of non-earth origin will be discovered.
(2) No alien life forms will be discovered.
(3) The laws of conservation of mass and energy will not be found to be violated.
(4) Inconsistency between sightings will be noted.

I further suggest that any theory of alien origin which allows these aliens to be so inept as to show their existence through the many sightings, precludes their being to hide from us without discovering (1) or (2).

And whilst being equally inept at allowing themselves to be seen and recorded... they have also managed to pilot their rocket ships between the large amount of space junk which is now orbiting the earth....

..the alternative theory relies on the pilots of ufo being alternative versions of us, and are visiting different alternative realities....

reohn2 wrote: ↑12 Feb 2025, 9:23am

roubaixtuesday wrote: ↑12 Feb 2025, 8:45am

cycle tramp wrote: ↑12 Feb 2025, 7:21am That's fine.... but you're going to need to prove to me that every ufo and ghost sighting was any of the above, to convince me.

That's an interesting inversion of the burden of proof.

I posit that fairies at the bottom of the garden magic up UFOs. It must be true - you can't prove otherwise!

i
Is there anyone either on here or elsewhere claiming fairies are real?

Beyond folk lore I have found no evidence of them.... although they were widely believed to have done. The word 'stroke' to describe the medical condition comes frome the early phrase 'elf-stroke' as people around the suffer believed that they had been attacked by a faery, and suffered an invisible injury at the hands of an invisible foe.
Traditionally faeries hated metal, especially Iron, so I'm not expecting any sightings soon.

roubaixtuesday wrote: ↑12 Feb 2025, 8:45am

cycle tramp wrote: ↑12 Feb 2025, 7:21am That's fine.... but you're going to need to prove to me that every ufo and ghost sighting was any of the above, to convince me.

That's an interesting inversion of the burden of proof.

I posit that fairies at the bottom of the garden magic up UFOs. It must be true - you can't prove otherwise!

Indeed. It is possible that they exist in a set of dimensions which means that only my chickens will perceive them... although that does mean that there are probably less of them after they were spotted...

Stevek76 wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 5:42pm A cursory search seems to find plenty refutable about Rendalsham.

I don't particularly disbelieve in ghosts etc as my views on most such matters tend agnostic rather than absolute doesn't exist. However I've yet to see any events that come even anywhere close to actual reliable evidence and particularly the credibility of the older various claims is ever further diminished by the sheer absence of actual good evidence now.

So either aliens and ghosts have reduced their visit frequent in line with that increase in coverage or those older ones, just as many current ones, was just a mix of the usual lights, atmospheric phenomena, military shenanigans, weather balloons and hoaxes/pranks.

That's fine.... but you're going to need to prove to me that every ufo and ghost sighting was any of the above, to convince me.
And given the body of evidence from pilot sightings to sound and cctv/video recordings its going to be an impossible task, which means that somewhere some are genuine, which means we have some gaps in our knowledge... which is actually a harder thing for members of our society to admit. So generally we don't...

Stevek76 wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 5:42pm The simple fact is that there are high quality cameras everywhere these days and widespread CCTV recording a huge portion of the planet. So much so that when cool phenomena occur, like large firebally meteors, it's not uncommon for multiple angles of it to end up on the internet within hours.

So either aliens and ghosts have reduced their visit frequent in line with that increase in coverage or those older ones, just as many current ones, was just a mix of the usual lights, atmospheric phenomena, military shenanigans, weather balloons and hoaxes/pranks.

General I find the reports from the military to be the most reliable- after all (a) they have to report these sightings (b) they are then usually confirmed by others in real time (c) there is no reason to fake them...
..in which case the number of unexplained ufo sightings have increased and whilst many have been identified the news item below contains clips of those objects which have not been https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co ... 252340.amp

PDQ Mobile wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 8:32pm A farting ghost.

Indeed... we mostly credit apparitions as the main evidence of haunting.. unexplained smells, toast, matches, flower scents are seldom mentioned.

Stevek76 wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 5:42pm
I don't particularly disbelieve in ghosts etc as my views on most such matters tend agnostic rather than absolute doesn't exist. However I've yet to see any events that come even anywhere close to actual reliable evidence and particularly the credibility of the older various claims is ever further diminished by the sheer absence of actual good evidence now. The simple fact is that there are high quality cameras everywhere these days and widespread CCTV recording a huge portion of the planet. So much so that when cool phenomena occur, like large firebally meteors, it's not uncommon for multiple angles of it to end up on the internet within hours.

So either aliens and ghosts have reduced their visit frequent in line with that increase in coverage or those older ones, just as many current ones, was just a mix of the usual lights, atmospheric phenomena, military shenanigans, weather balloons and hoaxes/pranks.

I think everyone just got bored with cctv ghost clips - yet another from a hospital featuring a wheelchair moving without any obvious influence - Yawn https://www.newsflare.com/video/669472/ ... ital-floor
Although the wind noise, the water on the floor and lack of surprise by those films, suggest that this one is more wind powered...

roubaixtuesday wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 12:15pm

reohn2 wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 12:11pm You appear to be saying anything that isn't proven to your scientific satisfaction is magic and fairies.

No, what I'm saying is that any explanation which relies on phenomena outside of known science is no more rational than magic and fairies.

Depending on your experience of faeries and magic.. and by magic I also mean the power of prayer....
..my own patron Saint, as befits someone who rides a bike with 26" wheels, freewheel and drum brakes is Saint Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes.. and by default, I believe lost things... there have been a number of times when I have lost things from house keys, to bike parts and found he is pretty useful at find stuff when a petitioned for assistance..
...those who are more... ancient have the Norse Gods and so on..
Albert Einstein, formulated the universal link between energy and matter E=MC2, e being energy, m being matter, c being the universal constant (speed of light) which suggests that matter is only energy scrunched into a different vibration...
If we accept that everything around us, our bodies, homes, bikes and even planets are simply compressed energy, then the idea that the laws of physics remain forever unaltered or un-influenced by other forces seems less likely....

Jules59 wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 12:18am Our sense of reality is just an imagination created by our conciousness from the various inputs received from its peripheral sensors; the eyes, eyes, skin etc reinforced by a memory of previous scenarios. The mind itself never encounters reality first hand.

Its not surprising our reality gets a bit unreal at times.

Or is this down to the cider Im drinking.

And those inputs caught on cctv camera or audio tape or photographs?

reohn2 wrote: ↑9 Feb 2025, 9:18am FWIW,I'm always skeptical of those with the attitude of "it's beyond the laws of physics" etc,so can't be true.As if humanity knows everything there is to know about everything,when we clearly do not.

Currently there is a hole in our understanding of physics which goes like this....
..if you take an atom, spilt it in two part (really pair of sharp scissors?) and then move one half of the atom to a different location and then reverse the flow of the electrons on the atom, then instantaneously the electrons reverse their flow in the other half without an action taken to do so.
Scientific thinking is that even if you spilt the atom,its possible that it remains connected, and for that atom to remain connected, then that suggests further dimensions beyond the usual, height, length, width and time. If there are other dimensions layered onto the dimensions which we are aware, then all bets about the physical world should operate are off...

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-th ... ot-explain

Another link with more information https://lavozdeibiza.com/en/current-new ... -cyclists/
..but not that much more, apparently both the cycling group and the car were travelling in the same direction when the car collided with the group for 'an unknown reason'..
... at which point it's down to speculation until witness statements are read and the course of further action is decided.
However it's worth remembering every other vehicle managed not to collide with the group of cyclists..

simonhill wrote: ↑8 Feb 2025, 11:27am While he quite likely was, it could have been a mechanical failure or something else. It seems to me you're very much hanging the man before he's found guilty.

More info on the German team would be pertinent.

So, if you follow the link to the first website (in english) there's then a further link to another website (non english) in which is recorded footage of the aftermath of the incident. https://www.cronicabalear.es/sucesos/ac ... apo-palma/
In the footage of the incident is a car with a missing right hand wing mirror, a dented front spoiler, and marks to the front wing and car door. Does anyone fancy their chances of being Sherlock?