Cycling UK Forum

Oh, chapeau! Brilliant.

irc wrote:Mostly camping. A mix of roadside camps - pitch at dusk and away early, cheap campsites £10-$15 a night. Free camping in town parks, especially Kansas Colorado.

There are extensive State Park systems in the 50 states and most reservoirs have campgrounds maintained by the Corps of Engineers or by a local community.

Richard Fairhurst wrote:The Great American Rail Trail is decades off rather than years, I fear. I had a go at plotting it in cycle.travel and only 46% of the 3800 miles are currently trails rather than roads.

Yep, but you currently can ride between Washington D.C. and Lincoln, Nebraska and be on Rail Trail ~most~ of the way - if that's your bag. Note that this is also a chain of individual, local trails and there is currently scant long-distance touring infrastructure - something else they're working on for the future.

American rail trail surfaces vary much like Sustrans routes: everything from cycling autobahns to muddy tracks. One memorable Texas trail seemed to be paved entirely in Tribulus Terrestris. The Great American Rail Trail web site delineates the individual surfaces of the trails they are linking.

In 1908 a rider named Peck lowered the End-to-End record to 2 days, 22 hours and 42 minutes on a BSA bicycle using the BSA licensed-produced Sturmey X-Type hub - it appeared that Sturmey had been hoisted by their own petard.

Not to worry - a few weeks later Harry Green bested that by ~3 hours using the new Sturmey-Archer Type N Tri-Coaster. Green's record would stand for almost 21 years. I believe this is the only time the End-to-End record was captured using a coaster brake hub. I could be wrong.

Fun fact: The earliest models of BSA hub features planets running on ball bearings:

matt2matt2002 wrote:

Sid Aluminium wrote:A very short saltwater to saltwater, ocean pier to ocean pier ride across the USA is combining Adventure Cycling's Southern Tier route from San Diego to Central Texas with my own Third Coast Cutoff:

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/29360687

What's that total milage please

Across the USA ocean pier to ocean pier 'the short way':

About 1600 miles (~2600 km) from the San Diego California beach to Kerrville Texas on Adventure Cycling's Southern Tier Route; about 325 miles (~525 km) from Kerrville to the Corpus Christi Texas beach.

This ride is in the far southern USA and is best done between mid/late September and early/mid May. It crosses the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts and makes one of the lowest crossings of the North American Continental Divide. It passes through the American cities of San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, San Antonio and Corpus Christi.

Cycletourists may decide there are other more interesting or scenic tours, and that's cool, but for the time-limited who want to 'conquer the continent', this is the ticket.

'There are, in fact, three distinctly different "ordinary" uses of a bicycle, and ideally the enthusiastic cyclist needs at least three different machines.' Reginald C. Shaw, Teach Yourself Cycling, 1953

There's also the Eastern Express:

https://www.easternexpressroute.com/

and the partially completed Great American Rail Trail:

https://www.railstotrails.org/greatamer ... ail/route/

Choices, choices, decisions decisions.

A very short saltwater to saltwater, ocean pier to ocean pier ride across the USA is combining Adventure Cycling's Southern Tier route from San Diego to Central Texas with my own Third Coast Cutoff:

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/29360687

Brucey wrote:I'm not mentioning the 'R' word but I will mention the 'P' word; if you can pick up one of those (complete bike) used it might be just the job for you.

There's also the 'E' word: Enviolo.

I've always thought these were fascinating on paper but probably less than stellar IRL. Then I recently saw a complete, new-in-box N330 kit on Ebay for £90 ($110), and, well, shrug, it's on my workbench now.

Wow, 2.6kg! There are Clyde puffers with lighter anchors. The hub seems glass smooth in operation. Uses twin 'push-pull' cables; obviously no indexing. Tests indicate these hubs are relatively inefficient, but they have the potential to keeps one's muscles at the highest efficiency tempo.

I'll let you know.

"The SA AW hub has an enviable reputation but given the way that other SA products have failed to perform well one wonders how they got that design right and so many others much less so."

Looking through the information at Sturmey Heritage, the AW seems to have arrived on the scene in 1936 with absolutely no fanfare. The breathless news out of Nottingham in the late 1930s was all about the narrow ratio 'racing' hubs, the fixed-gear hubs, the four speeds and the Dynohubs. The AW's DNA is traceable in several of Sturmey-Archer's more exciting, upmarket products, though, so I'm thinking they didn't assign the development of their price-point model to the intern.

The AW's unprecedented 75th anniversary of production came and went in 2011 and was studiously ignored by SunRace Sturmey-Archer.

I have an AW with hubshell that reads 'Patent' but has no date mark which I suspect is a first-year, 1936 production. I don't know what sort of service it saw over the decades, but it still works well.

Today's tiny rechargeables that actually light up the road make it impossible for me to generate any nostalgia for the Ever Ready Frontguard II I had. I seem to have a fuzzy recollection of being impressed with the lens, but can't remember exactly why. Perhaps it shaped the feeble beam to some advantage?

"The Frontguard II has been built to the rigorous specification of the British Standards Institute; before being awarded the prestigious 'kite mark' the front lamp had to be switched on and off 5,000 times and continue to work without a flicker, and there were punishing vibration, moisture, corrosion and dust tests as well. BSI stipulated that the Frontguard had to be as conspicuous from the front as a car side-light, and that it throw a wide enough beam to cycle by; the intricate lens was designed by the Department of Opthalmic Optics at London University. After using this latest model of the Frontguard ourselves we feel that it is quite the best lamp on the market." - International Cycling Guide, 1982

Tried several pumps and the Topeak Roadmorph was the only one with which my wife could get the tandem's tyres up to snuff.

Dwarf2010 wrote:As Neil Diamond might say' Born in the U.S.A' California.

Bruce Springsteen?

Despite the logo on the bikes, except for the prototypes, all Dahons were manufactured in Taiwan until the naughties. Dahon now has facilities in Taiwan, China and Bulgaria, so one might even spot a modern one wearing a 'Made in EU' sticker.

The original Dahons have quite a following in Asia and a little web browsing can turn up highly modified examples. The ones with stainless steel frames are modestly collectible.

LittleGreyCat wrote:It does beg the question, though, of how low you can go and still have a rideable bike.
What is the lowest gearing where you could expect to stay on the bike (gyroscopic action of the wheels) when climbing an extreme 1 in 4/25% gradient?

For your amusement - 1 in 3, 7.5 gear inches:

https://youtu.be/FgIL6eHHgZU

willem jongman wrote:I would suggest that for many step-through frames using both front and rear racks may be a bit much for stability. An aluminium frame may be better in this respect than a steel frame, but even so, step-through frames are not nearly as rigid as diamond frames.

Thus my suggestion of a space-frame Moulton TSR.

IIRC Herse and Singer often fitted the inexpensive Allvit on their 'all singing, all dancing' custom machines.

The late Frank Berto played around with an 'Allvit for the third-millennium' concept.