Cycling UK Forum

Witam! The link is broken, but I take it that it's for the CdA 20?
http://www.genesisbikes.co.uk/bikes/adv ... oad/cda-20

Rather than a Long Haul Trucker, I'd say the Cross Check or the Straggler (with rim / disc brakes respectively) would be closer to what you're looking for. Maybe also something like a Kona Honky Tonk.

661-Pete wrote:César Cui - a little known 19th century composer who became one of 'The Five'. The other members were rather better known, they were Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43ETzJUOXLo
Relax and enjoy!

Thanks!

(From Glinka to horror movies: the unexpected links you can learn from Wikipedia!)

Discovered this store by chance a few months ago on a club ride, but haven't looked round it as yet. Must get out there sometime, though I'm not a huge fan of the whole Rapha cool thing.

PH wrote:

reohn2 wrote:it doesn't surprise me in the least bit what Rapha pay for theirs.

Except you don't know what they pay, what you know is what a stranger in a cafe told you.
If your stranger's story was true, it's hard to see how this one could be;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... tight.html

$1.25 might be the factory gate price, then there's shipping, insurance, customs on top of that before it gets here. But most of their costs will surely be in this country: wages, taxes, marketing, not to mention our high property costs.

I am not in business nor an economist so take this with salt.

LollyKat wrote:

cycleruk wrote:

LollyKat wrote:"CUI" ??

I wondered that, but having read the post I'm guessing = cycling under influence. ?

Thanks - my first thought was Latin "who" and my second was a Russian composer, neither of which seemed to fit!

Trying to think who the Russian composer you might be that you have in mind?

gaz wrote:

Sign.jpg

Fairly standard Sustrans sticker on a fairly standard cylindrical pole. The "use footbridge" wording is roughly equivalent to a place name in size.

Is that a current standard Sustrans sticker? I don't think I've seen any quite like that. The ones I've seen are usually much more compact — just a number on a red (or sometimes blue) square with a white arrow below or next to it, all on a blue background.

TBH a lot of the info on that one is redundant. We know it's the National Cycle Network, for instance, and the stick man shapes don't give us any useful information either. All we need is number and/or destination, direction and in this case the info "use footbridge". Get rid of the rest and you could have legibly large place names on there. Of course, that would mean a lot of printing, and budgets...

Having said that, it is quite nice to have local and chronological variations, just as there are in other types of road sign.

gaz wrote:

Bmblbzzz wrote:... I think if I were to make one change, it would be to replace the square outline with a 'pointing' one, something like []> if you'll forgive the crude ASCII art, so the direction was clear from a distance.

My understanding is that the entire sticker set was negotiated with the DfT before "approval". I use the term "approval" loosely because they certainly aren't mentioned in TSRGD. Sustrans generally frown upon Rangers using any non-standard layouts of the signage.

Please bear in mind that vinyl stickers are relatively cheap to produce can be shipped to Volunteers at low cost, carried easily by bike and are usually attached to vertical surfaces such as lampposts. Once attached they can be vandalised but not simply turned to face the wrong way.

To have a =====> arrangement would require a rigid sign and mounting brackets, raising production and shipping costs. They would be heavier and bulkier, making them harder to transport and erect and prone to the simple vandalism of turning the wrong way.

On the rare occasions that I bother to report a permanent NCN highway sign as missing the best response is "thanks for putting up a sticker, we have no money", often there's not even a thank you.

I simply meant a non-rectangular sticker. Not a metal fingerpost, but a fingerpost shaped sticker. In practice, the sticker would probably still be rectangular, but two corners would be anonymous background grey, with the blue part pointing into them. This could be angled in the appropriate direction, with a separate number to put on the red square, and the whole lot attached to whatever metalwork is available in situ. Sorry if that wasn't very clear from my post.

Edit: I see you've already addressed this, just above. Hmm, I can see your doubts about cylindrical poles, but I do think it would be more legible than the current arrows.

There certainly isn't room to put place names on the little stickers. That would be worse than pointless! They would have to be on 'proper sized' and preferably shaped (fingerpost) signs. To be fair, I can think of a few places where that has been done, eg on Route 41 there are some signs in the Severn Vale mentioning Gloucester.

Of course, there are problems with routes changing — I should probably say, being changed. And of course, there are budgets and rangers' time.

At the end of the day, these signs are an addition to the standard road signs and whatever map, GPS, etc you choose, so certainly we should (I am) glad to see them at all. Nevertheless, I think if I were to make one change, it would be to replace the square outline with a 'pointing' one, something like []> if you'll forgive the crude ASCII art, so the direction was clear from a distance.

IME, the problems with cycle route signage can be broken down into three areas:

Infrastructure
— I've been told by someone at Sustrans that they're not allowed to put up poles and metal signs, only to put stickers on pre-existing signs, lampposts and similar.

Legibility
— The signs can be spotted from a good distance, but because they are all square, you cannot tell until really close which way they're pointing.
— It is extremely rare for signs to be put up in advance of junctions, so you don't get any warning that it's not this junction but the next one where you need to turn.
— Where two or more routes coincide for a length or meet at a junction, the numbers are printed too small to be distinguishable one from another in advance.

Consistency
— There are national routes and regional or local routes. Sometimes these have the same or similar numbers. Sometimes national numbers supercede regional ones. But there is no consistency or clear pattern to this.
— Where national routes are numbered on an OS map, those numbers do not always match up with what is marked on the ground.
— The problem of legibility at junctions and on overlapping routes is compounded by one or other route number frequently disappearing.
— The lack of place names, prefering numbers instead, is perhaps the greatest problem. As others have mentioned, the omission of larger destinations in favour of the next district of town or even a nearby street is also a problem. Local destinations are important, but just as roads will have signs to eg "Local Shops 1 mile" and "Birmingham 50 miles" together, so it should be realised cyclists have a variety of destinations.

Strange about the disappearing posts. Thanks for taking the trouble to post the same stuff twice.

nez dans le guidon wrote:I think wheels and tires are the biggest upgrade you can give a bike.

Definitely agree on that.

I just posted asking you how you'd compare the Strada Bianca to the GP 4 Seasons, particularly in terms of wet grip and p* resistance — but my post seems to have disappeared. Or rather, not appeared.

Interested to read your review, Smut Pedaller, as I wasconsidering these, in a vague way, recently. I was put off by the price and in the end went for some bargain Vittoria Rubinos (just £15 each!), which I'm happy with so far (very comfortable, though I changed the wheels at the same time, so hard to isolate tyres from wheels... )
<OT>I like your wood floor!</OT>

ferdinand wrote:I'm disappointed.

I thought the title meant you were borrowing a pelican and making like Rod Hull on your local zebra crossing.

The video would be interesting.

F

It's interesting to contrast this to the situation in India, where red-light jumping is pretty much the norm, unless there's a cop at the junction to stop people. But even then, they rarely stop cars, because how? It's much easier to stop a motorbike, it seems.

thirdcrank wrote:It's been reported that to benefit from the protection from pursuit and arrest afforded by safety guidelines, rather than the protection afforded by motorcycle helmets, offenders are using motorbikes etc as getaway vehicles and riding them without a helmet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-32904622

That suggests to me that the IPCC believes that helmets work, but some offenders believe they don't.

One thing's almost certain: the more this becomes public knowledge, the more it will happen. So why am I contributing to that outcome. Dunno.

Not really. It suggests these criminals are more concerned about being arrested than crashing.

Brucey wrote:

Bmblbzzz wrote:I find the Tiagra 9-sp on my 'road' bike changes much more smoothly than the Deore 8-sp on the mtb. I don't know quite why this is but it could be connected with the hyperglide system, where the chain starts to wrap around the next cog before it's completely left the previous one.

Both 8s and 9s have hyperglide but the 9s systems do shift better than the 8s ones; I think they had long enough to sort it out so it was better. When they are new, 10s systems are slicker again, but I'm not at all sure that they carry on like that before stuff wears and the shifts get sloppy.

Often there is a shift quality difference between MTB and road stuff simply because the chainrings are bigger on the road stuff; this increases the chain velocity (even if the road speed is the same) and this gives faster shifts.

cheers

Interesting point about chain velocity. Certainly makes sense — obvious even! — but I hadn't given it any thought before.