Cycling UK Forum

The few times i have tried it I've found as soon as I get a reasonable speed up the wind noise on the earphones is horrible.

That aside, in traffic I'd rather have my hearing available. While hearing impaired cyclists may manage ok i don't really see the point in voluntarily making staying alive more difficult than it needs to be. If every road user was sensible and well behaved it wouldn't be a problem but they're not.

niggle wrote:Thanks, however I am a Giffgaff customer and plan to stay that way, so only want sim free or locked to O2 (Giffgaff use the O2 network so O2 locked phones work with a Giffgaff sim).

Was assuming unlocking if necessary. Even paying Vodafone's fee it's only 20 quid so the phones still a good deal at 180 overall. Unlocking will be less from an independent store and free if you do it yourself.

GrahamMC wrote:I often see cyclists in front of me with large calf muscles and tend to think these are the ones who use high gears and low cadence - would that be right or is it just how people are naturally shaped - related to general body shape perhaps?

Potentially bit chicken and egg there. Personally it's a natural thing I think. Reasoning being that I only really took up cycling in the last 8 years or so and had big thighs and calves before that. It's likely self reinforcing though, it's inefficient for me to use higher cadences for sustained periods due to the mass of legs but sticking to low cadences means there's no incentive for that mass to go anywhere.

Another thing to watch out for when comparing is cabling. Particularly in the lower price brackets cables are an easy thing for the manufacturer to cheap out on in order to spend more on the parts of the bike spec people generally look at.

Decent cabling ime makes a huge difference to overall lightness and feel of gears and brakes. A bike with a sora group set that a few quid was actually spent on Teflon etc cabling will feel better than many of the cheaper ultegra bikes with crap cabling so they could spec ultegra instead of 105. You can see this easily at any largish bike store, just go around and check the feel of the levers, the variance is huge within the same group set just because of the other choices that were made.

fastpedaller wrote:

Mick F wrote:
With my Campag, I can shift from inner to outer, and with one single press of the button I can go from biggest cog to smallest cog.

So to clarify.... Am I correct in thinking if you want to shift just one it's a very brief press, or for more it's keep the finger on the button (increasingly) longer depending on how many you wish to change?

The thumb lever (which moves to smaller sprockets) on the ultrashift ergos can move in a sweeping motion much as the 'to larger' sprocket lever can on any other indexed shifter. As such the further you press the more sprockets you move, up to 5 in one go (so strictly speaking you need two sweeps of the lever to get right the way across the cassette).

The thumb lever on powershift ergos acts just like other shifters in its just a click button moving down one sprocket per press.

With companies providing facilities there will be market forces involved and that will vary across industry and company. And for larger companies varying across offices. In my office at least 20% cycle and as such they tend to get listened to especially regarding facilities when the office moved. Even across the wider industry though cycling facilities do factor in attracting some employees and given there's generally a skills shortage then employers have to respond accordingly.

To the OP, last year your first port of call would have been a grant from the LSTF via the council (though often this will be match funded). Since we now have a backwards and short sighted government this was not continued and what has replaced it is about a quarter of the cash. Regardless any grant will likely come from the council and will vary by council so their website will be the place to go.

Well in the surprise hill situation all the other offerings (shimano, SRAM and even lesser known ones like microshift) can go down 3-5 sprockets in one sweep as well. Campy's uniqueness is in multiple upshifts.

Having said that i've just noticed that the OP actually did state veloce so this becomes rather moot as veloce is the same 3 down, 1 up as 105 is. I'd recommend a road test of both, as it'll probably come down to subjective differences regarding hood shape and lever operation.

Vodafone are doing the xperia z3 compact for £150 (well plus the 10quid sim) currently.

Are all STIs unable to shift only one cog at a time down the block?

It's only campag where multiple shifts in the small cog direction are an option on mechanical shifting.

Even then it's only ultrashift models (chorus upwards). Powershift ones are one down, three (ish) up like everyone else. That said, the newer Powershift controls have moved and angled the thumb lever downwards (as it is on the eps sets) meaning it's less of a hand contortion to use from the drops.

climo wrote:I cannot see why anti cycle helmet people state that helmets on motorbikes are necessary because motorcycle accidents are more dangerous. Assuming that you don't get hit by your own bike why are they any different at say, 30mph to a cycle accident? You're still likely to come off slightly to the side and scrape your head on the ground.

I think you're generalising there. You could probably consider me 'anti helmet' but my own view is that motorcycle helmets shouldn't be compulsory either. My general viewpoint on these matters is that ultimately the rider is only affecting their own risk and it's therefore none of the government's business.

Same for seatbelts (for adults), especially the given the case that while seatbelts have reduced driver fatality they may have increased risk to vulnerable road users.

That said, it should be noted that motorbike helmets are designed pretty well to actually protect the head. Cycle helmets are generally designed to satisfy the minimum nominal protection for certification while being as light and non sweaty as possible. It's hard to take proponents of cycle helmets seriously when if they really wanted to protect their head they'd be in a full face MTB helmet.

Again, it's hardly less practicable: you even see people walking around wearing them after they've got off their bike.

I see someone do an entire shop in the supermarket without taking theirs off.

Edit: removed a 'may' for clarity

Mick F wrote:No comments on the phone, but just checked my Samsung Galaxy S2 battery for comparison's sake.

6.11Wh = 6,110mAh ............. so yours will be 66% more capacity.

Wh != Ah !

P= IV therefore, (at a nominal 3.7v) 6.11/3.7 is 1.651Ah. Or near enough the 1650mAh commonly stated for the s2.

Newer larger phones tend to be around 2500 to 3000 so this is about 3-4x those.

Obviously as others have pointed out, how long a phone lasts depends on a large amount of other stuff. It may be a better option to simply get a phone that suits the other needs and then just get a backup battery charger. It's easy to expand a battery via such methods, much harder to expand other phone functionality. As the review says, it's good providing the compromises aren't an issue.

I have had motorcycles with smaller capacity batteries...

Amp hours aren't a good measure of capacity to compare across functions due the voltage thing, motorcycle batteries are 12v, you'll have a job starting a scooter engine with a phone.

Dave W wrote: The only way stop it is with the skewer far tighter than it has any right to be.

How tight is that? My mtb has external cam skewers and i have to use both hands to get them to not loosen, I'm not sure there is such a thing as too tight with that type of skewer unless you're superman or something.

al_yrpal wrote: This article is interesting. Can the 'internet of moving things' end traffic jams? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36215293 But as we all know things will still get gridlocked if there is just too much traffic and it will come..

Al

Large parts of London are already running at effectively 100% capacity with traffic held back by the UTC system in some places to prevent others gridlocking entirely.

Much of that link seems to focus more on other things such as optimising deliveries or taxi income.

There's only really two potential gains to be had for vehicular traffic. The first is system optimised routing but that would require almost everyone to follow given routes and to be fair is a fairly minor gain. The second is reduced headways as a result of automated vehicles but that's a couple of decades yet.

With even larger cuts in central funding to deal with than Ferguson had (and Ferguson has already made most if not all of the easy non service efficiency improvements available) I don't think Marvin would have the money to remove the 20mph zones even if he wanted to.

In reality i don't think he wants to anyway, he's just been largely very non committal to most things in his campaigning in what appears to be an effort to not lose the pro car vote, or at least get it to turn out. I've seen/heard talk from a number of people belonging to the more traditional labour voting suburbs (with traditionally flaky turn outs) who seem to be under the illusion that he's going to let them all drive to work again so it obviously worked. They're going to be quite disappointed.

However he does seem way too keen on consulting with everyone, being 'democratic' and making everyone happy (obviously impossible). He also seems too nice in a rather naïve sense as well so won't have the will to push unpopular sustainable transport policy through. He also appears to lack any kind of real world project management experience which is concerning (contrast Ferguson, who as an experienced architect and in urban realm/regeneration would have had plenty of both that and planning issues as a whole).

Ferguson was far from perfect but he had a decent vision for the city and actually made stuff happen, which as anyone who's been in Bristol longer term will know was a bit of a rarity for a city more used to endlessly procrastinating over doing anything substantial.

I doubt Bristol well go backwards over the next 4 years but it's hard to see it keep moving forward at the rate it has been and easy to see it returning to the stagnation of old.

old_windbag wrote:Closing speed could be 40-50mph so not a pleasant outcome.

Thing is that kind of infrastructure isn't aimed at those doing 20-25mph, rather those doing perhaps 15 tops, probably less.