Cycling UK Forum

timmitchell wrote:Most often traffic is near stationary on the side i am travelling on and almost empty in the opposite direction. So as I crest I always pull right and pootle down outside of the (nearly) sationary traffic. Doing so sees me cross the solid white line. If cars are travelling in the opposite direction I always give way.
...
Crossing double white lines
It is illegal to cross a continuous solid white line if the solid line is on your side of the road, except under certain conditions. You are permitted to straddle or cross as continuous solid white line to enter a side road or property, to manoeuvre round a stationary vehicle blocking your side of the road, to overtake a cyclists, horse or a road works vehicle moving at 10 mph (16 km/h) or less. Crossing double white lines where the line closest to you is solid is illegal outside of the circumstances described above.

Am i legal?

Not that I would encourage anything (being a beginner and in no position of offer advice), my own interpretation would depend on the exact nature of the traffic. If you (a cycle) cross the solid white line to pass a stationary vehicle that is legal. If that stationary vehicle starts to move off whilst you are overtaking then I cannot see that their pulling off whilst you are over the solid line would suddenly make you illegal (not if you started overtaking whilst they were stationary). So if the traffic is stop/starting then for action to be taken against you they would have to demonstrate that you crossed the white line to overtake a moving vehicle (i.e. vehicle was moving when you crossed the white line). So, if it is stop/start, any Police car would also be stop starting and would have to observe you pulling over the white line whilst they were moving. But if it is a continuous crawl then it would be more straightforward to determine you had broken the law.

Above is my interpretation of the quote you provided and is NOT advice and I have no expertise in this. Just my personal thoughts. And I cannot comment as to what I would do because so much would depend on the detail of the particular conditions (e.g. how straight/fast the road is, the gaps between cars, etc., etc.).

Ian

NATURAL ANKLING wrote:Hi,
And Ben Ainslie Captained the americas cup American boat for what

Difficult to see that he wouldnt set his pay.......but finding it proves a little harder.

Wheres the glory and for who..........

I'm a great sailing enthusiast and in the case of the Americas Cup, I strongly suspect that Ben Ainslie took the role as a great opportunity that was not (at that time) available to him within the UK. And I understand he is now talking about trying to get a UK challenge together next time round (and his achievements last year will certainly help such a project).

And the result of the 2013 Americas Cup - the only winner was actually the UK (despite not having even entered). NZ clearly lost (coming 2nd). US were obviously set to lose until ... a Brit stepped-in and recovered an all but unrecoverable situation. Without Ben Ainslie the US had made it clear they were not capable of winning and were set on losing (without dramatic help). So the winner (and glory to): UK (or rather Ben Ainslie who actually achieved the result, not the UK).

But as they say, when it comes to sport the UK excels in sports where you are sitting down.

Ian

I such circumstances I think a lot depends on the motivation and intent and exactly how you "move".

I lived overseas for quite some time several years ago, yet I kept my investments, etc. in the UK (not for tax reasons) so I kept paying UK tax AND tax in the country where I lived (though tax paid in the UK was deducted from my French tax bill - the accountants worked it all out so I was not paying extra tax).

But as the tax situation in France would have been beneficial for me, some might have called it tax-exile (unless they knew where I was paying what tax). (And I actually moved there for other reasons - mainly being fed-up with the UK; and having been back in UK for a few years now, I appreciate why and am looking overseas longingly).

Ian

I don't like the POLITE reflective things either.

Reasons:
It's no longer amusing (I remember such "POLITE NO PARKING" notices when I was a child 50 years ago).

I believe (hopefully correctly) that even the most aggressive impatient driver does not want to be delayed with a cyclist under his/her wheels or a horse leg through his/her windscreen, etc. Reflective jackets are about helping drivers notice you (against a background). Lots of words, etc. are not helpful except being an excuse for more contrast/reflective patches. In fact a text message might risk making things worse as a driver tries to read the message to register what is happening before (s)he takes action.

Blue and white checks might cause a driver to slow but there is a risk that the impatient ones will speed up again when their brain registers "not the Police".

Unsure about arrows as there might be a risk of confusing a driver when you are turning right and in the middle of the road ?

Personally I just wear a typical builders yellow waistcoat thing. I would spend money on one with a reflective symbolic bike design on the back (might help driver register the nature of what he sees quicker). I would not get a "POLITE" one even if I did not have anything already. But it dose not bother me when others wear them (I just see them on horse riders these days).

Ian

Brucey wrote:BTW the most rapid and effective chain cleaning method I know of is to use a hot jetwash.
...
Hot water (~60C) at pressure strips off all known chain lubes in short order.

cheers

Is thee a risk that it might also start stripping out the grease from the parts you want greased (e.g. hub bearings) ?

Ian

Personal experience (as a driver) is that I find only flashing rear lights quite hard to notice - at least I don't find them obvious. Probably the most noticeable I have seen are what I would describe as pulse rear lights (where the light is continuous but frequently flashes extra bright). But, when I purchased my own bike lights relatively few seemed to include a pulse mode. As I am only after "emergency" lights I was not so concerned though if I were regularly riding unlight roads at night (which (risk of) traffic) I would either go pulsed or two lights, one on continuous and another very close flashing.

However, I think flashing front lights are noticeable to drivers (but probably don't help with seeing where you are going as much).

Ian

I'v still to "degrease" clean my chain, but one thing that concerns me (in my ignorance) is that as you run the chain through the machine, so it will pick-up degreaser which will be carried to and transferred to the rear cassette from where it can (over time) start to degrease the hubs !!

Is this a concern or am it not appreciating how they work properly ?

Ian

horizon wrote:... I rode through each cloud of smoke in turn filling my nostrils with memories of childhood and adventure and foreign travels. What is it about woodsmoke that is so stimulating to the imagination?

And dangerous. There have been several studies and all find wood smoke to be very dangerous o health. One puts wood smoke as 30 times more carcinogenic than cigarette smoke !! I agree that, unlike cigarette smoke, it does bing back memories, etc. but the health impacts are serious, even in the west (where we don't use open wood fires for cooking, heating, etc. It is also estimated that 70% of smoke emitted from woodburners ends-up in peoples houses (though I can't remember where I read that one). I was going to have a woodburner installed myself. But trouble is that pleasant as they are, you do need a good supply of free wood - because if you have to pay for it, their recent popularity is making buying the wood quite expensive.

Ian

learn2cycle wrote:didn't know that you need different gears... well.. i'm pretty sure it'll be a pretty standard normal trail and roads (no deserts or other interesting geographical features...)

If you are travelling in northern altitudes, in mountain then you would be taking very different gear compared with a trip in the tropics. Deserts can be crossed by road. Similarly, some countries are sparsely populated with long distance between "facilities", others and "rural" means only a few miles between villages/shops.

learn2cycle wrote:didn't know that you need different gears... well.. i'm pretty sure it'll be a pretty standard normal trail and roads (no deserts or other interesting geographical features...)

When you say "gears" I had assumed you were meaning "gear" (as in tent, sleeping bag, ...) but do you mean "gears" (as in the cogs that the chain goes round)? Because from other threads you have posted it looks like you are after a low cost off-the-shelf bike.

I'll give up now 'cos I don't understand what you are after or trying to do and I've not got time to do lists for all possibilities you might consider.

Ian

What gear you take would depend on where you are going and how you are doing things (e.g. camping or using accommodation).

As discussed above, PCT is a non-starter for a bike (plus you need different gear for different parts e.g. bear canisters are not carried through desert sections).

Ian

I am no expert (other end of the scale!) so I express only my thoughts and opinions NOT advice

But, be careful how fast you lose the weight. I agree that additional exercise can cause weight loss to happen faster but I'm sure that would also have undesirable effects and/or place additional considerations of the nature of what you do eat. Trouble with the internet is you can read whatever you want and from that, believe/follow whatever you want. It would be terrible if your extra fast weight loss caused other health issues so, maybe double check with somebody who should know (maybe a nurse at your local GP practice, whosever ... I don't know enough to advice on this).

Ian

I always worry when something is "against the rules" but Police are expected to make a judgement when they see it happen. I means that should a cyclist use the pavement under the "more relaxed terms" and be seen by Police, they might or might not have action taken against them depending on the mood/understanding/character/etc. of the Police-person. In effect nobody knows where they stand.

I agree with the comments about such changes allowing politicians to feel they have solved the problem when in fact they have just moved the problem which still needs to be solved. And at dangerous junctions when cyclists start using pavements we start seeing pedestrians getting all upset with cyclists who are now the group "invading their personal space" and thus "the bad guys".

Ian

I recently had a fuel tanker race past on an open road without really giving me space and the turbulence dragging me in to the tanker was really scary. So I e-mailed the company; polite suggesting that it was time they reminded their drivers to give cyclists decent space on the road. Not seeking anything about the driver (did not even mention where or when), just pointing out that nobody wanted to see a cyclist under one of their tankers.

Response: None.

So I e-mailed again, suggesting that if they really think such driving is OK maybe I should start writing letters to newspapers and spreading the word about what they consider acceptable behaviour ...

Response: None.

They clearly just don't care. So now I'm wondering what to do next. Don't really want to spend time on it but I am quite outraged, more that they ignore such warnings than the original incident (that I never sought to be pursued anyway).

Ian

tom-tom ? I do't use it so don't know if it meets all the requirements but would seem to meet many. I used a hardware Tom-Tom around 5 years ago (in a car) and found the battery life "poor". However, you can buy the software to run on a smartphone - but no idea what that would do to the battery life. I have found that it is driving the screen that seems a significant power drain on smartphones and leaving the screen off makes batteries last dramatically longer ... which might be a bit of a limitation of you are needing on-screen directions.

Ian

andrew_s wrote:

Psamathe wrote:But, to OP, there are other long distance trails in the US that are open to bikes. You could check-out the CDT (which I believe allows bikes). It is not really as "complete" as the PCT. It is complete in that it is all made (it is one of the Triple Crown), but not as complete in that the path is not so well established, marked, etc.

The Continental Divide Trail was set up as a mountain biking route following the continental divide (i.e. the Atlantic/Pacific watershed) as nearly as was practical. It was originally from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, but has since been extended northwards to Banff. It's mostly unsurfaced road or jeep track, but there's some singletrack and some normal surfaced highways as well. It's easier on a bike than on foot, but even so you may have to carry water for 2 days and food for 3 or 4 (at least if you go a normal speed). There's no signage and the route descriptions are written north to south, which makes routefinding errors fairly easy if you go the other way and haven't obtained a GPS track. The Canadian section was badly damaged by flooding last year, so check the state of the trail well beforehand.
There's an unsupported race along it, which was won by Mike Hall from Cardiff in 14.5 days (197mpd) last year.

Maps etc from the Adventure Cycling Association (link above)

Are we confusing the CDT (Continental Divide Trail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Divide_Trail) with the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divide_Mountain_Bike_Route). Thought probably not crucial to the original posted question - unless they select the wrong one ?

Ian