Cycling UK Forum

Butterfly bars or moustache bars are a good alternative to drops as they allow several hand positions but flat bars with bar ends are just as good in my experience.

Weight of a bike is an issue if you see it as one, lots of low gears such as on a mtb drive chain can help negate weight but at the expense of speed.

As for a recumbent again it depends on you and where you intend to tour. On the road in not too hilly terrain my EZ-1 recumbent is very comfortable and relaxed, I describe it like riding a deckchair. In hilly terrain its a b*&$$!!, you get down into low gear quickly and it starts to weave a bit plus its heavier than a conventional bike. My recumbent also has no suspension which hurts on bumpy ground.
With recumbents a test ride is essential, a fully suspended one will be good on harsher ground but its not for everyone.

My favourite bike for commuting and touring is a mid 1980's hitensile steel mtb, its big, its heavey but its very strong and comfortable with a broad range of low gears so its neither lightweight or a recumbent ................weird !!!

I'd suggest a Carradice saddlebag, such as a Camper Longflap, as being more suitable than a seatpost rack. Plenty of people find then suitable for tours of several weeks, provided they aren't camping
It loads the bike in the same way as a slightly fatter person would, rather than hanging the extra weight on the end of a lever.

If you are camping, then neither a saddlebag nor a seatpost rack will have sufficient capacity.
There are proper pannier racks that will mount on an MTB with discs, via the QR. Look at the Tubus or Old Man Mountain ranges. Otherwise it's a BOB or similar

One thing is certain that Landis' father does not think he is a mishtake.
If bikerdave'sson were winning the tour
and bikerdave put £18 to win at whatever price,
he would NOT be following in a car! He would be crawling backwards to Santiago on a prayer wheel
saying Amen..onite... Amenonite.... not A mishtake.... not a mishtake every ten cycles of the prayer wheel.

Neither sect supports gambling.

Merely because everybody follows him in cars
(quite a few) does not prevent him from being
Amish and his father Menonite.

They quite often fall by the wayside.... and buy
internal combustion engines until they once again see the error of their ways, and go back to ploughing with hand shares, and cycling with bikesh.

Not quadcycles!

They are not cycles in any accepted, objective sense of the word.

The motor cycle , the bicycle and the tricycle, are the only three which come into that category for the purposes of the relevant acts and laws.

They are not bikes because they do not have two wheels. They have four.

They have internal combustion engines of no mean capacity. 3-4hp or more

The BPCC has been going a long time, and
the question has not arisen until recently.
It is a fun name for a fun entertainment and hobby .... On/off road pedal quad-cycles.They like to call them Pedal cars
because they do look like that!

The quad"bikes" do NOT even look like
any kind of bicycle or any kind of non-motor vehicle. It is perfectly clear that they are powerful motor vehicles.

The Pedal Car BPCC type vehicles are Quad-cycles; any hand and/or footcranked vehicle with four wheels is a quad-cycle; sometimes called pedal cars, on account of bodywork and elaborate "fareing"(?)butHPV nonetheless.

Even with electric assist or petrol motor assist
cranking, a four wheeled handalled/pedalled vehicle is still a quad-cycle, within the limits of current law.

A quad-bike is a fraudulent application of the cycling technology language to attract vehicle rental customers. It is neither a cycle nor has it got two wheels.

My data is "Adultdata", a hefty publication by our Department of Trade and Industry, that is mainly based on "PeopleSize 1998", a continuing study of the UK population, but also includes data from studies of other populations around the world. Comparing these with each other indicates that the UK population is more representative of the world as a whole than any other European country and covers almost as wide a spectrum as the USA. This is as one would expect, given relative ethnic diversities.

A comparison of tables 2 and 107, by the way, indicates that neither do women have significantly shorter arms: Shoulder-to-Handgrip averages 37.7% and 37.6% of stature for median men and women respectively.

Already accepted that fact. Thankyou for your concern.

Arguments are mainly about the attitude of the Police. Driver wasn't breathalysed and neither was I, which is standard practice in an injury RTA, or so I thought.

Just got back from my second tour with a Saunders jetpacker. This one was 1 month and the other 3 months but neither camping all the time. It is pretty lightweight (1.5kg) but probably a substantially worse space to weight ratio than the laserlite as it uses a ridge design not curved poles. What swung it for me was the very cmpact pack size and lower price. It is just about big enough for 6 foot me and my luggage but it's a squeeze. If buying again I may well go for the laserlite or another single hoop tent - particularly for a bigger entrance.

Andy

I think there's probably very little doubt, reohn2, that wearing a helmet will provide some protection in some collisions with cars. The question is though just how likely is it that you'll have such a collision (I've had two collisions in 24 years of cycling daily in London and didn't hit my head in either) and just how much protection the helmet will provide. You then need to multiply the two probabilities together to get an answer to how much risk you put yourself in by riding without a helmet. It may well be possible to get some idea of how likely a collision is but you cannot have any idea what the chances are of the helmet protecting you from serious injury.

Neither I, nor anyone else, is trying to tell you not to wear a helmet. All I'm trying to do is show you that your reasons don't hold water for anyone but yourself -- you've provided no evidence to back up your argument. Myself and others have. I am not anti-helmet -- as I've stated before, if the evidence changes I'll update my thinking on whether I should wear one. Currently, the available evidence suggests that wearing a helmet would only reduce my chances of serious head injury by a tiny amount. If I'd wanted to protect myself from every possible risk, from whatever cause, the best thing for me to have done would not to have been born.

I wasn't seriously suggesting that cars should be built with spikes and glass bubbles. I was being flippant. I was seriously suggesting that current road safety thinking is not in line with other safety issues in other areas.

Thanks for the response.Not snake bite and rim and tape seem ok. This problem was initially only on front wheel and punctures spaced a few hundred miles apart.Did not keep records so hard to be precise on exact distances.Today it also happened on rear wheel for first time. Strangely on both wheels the positioning is similar - about 10 inches before the valve on each occasion. This should make locating a rim problem easier.I can find nothing amiss and neither can anyone else. All experienced cyclists.The holes are small almost like splits as tho' the tube had burst outwards. Tyre pressure is as recommended by the manufacturer.In the most recent case 50psi on a tyre marked 40-65psi. Does any of this ring a bell?

""thin sliver of rubber tyre offers NO protection from a lightning bolt of several million volts" very true Helen, neither do car tyres for that matter. Cars will take lightening strikes quite merrily, the occupants are protected by the metal cage around them. Cyclists don't have such a cage and lightening therefore scares the crap out of me. "

Hence my comment about the Faraday cage effect when inside a car - it's that which protects you.

"thin sliver of rubber tyre offers NO protection from a lightning bolt of several million volts" very true Helen, neither do car tyres for that matter. Cars will take lightening strikes quite merrily, the occupants are protected by the metal cage around them. Cyclists don't have such a cage and lightening therefore scares the crap out of me.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Buy, or make (like we did) a bike bag. You then have "Luggage".

Take off your wheels. All you have then is a collection of bits. NOT a bicycle! A frame is not a bicycle by definition. Neither is a couple of wheels.

I've done it - it works.

Mick F. Cornwall

What are your local clubs like?
Do they offer the type of activities you want?
I think the CTC is in a pretty good position to gather up people who find the local cycling club too insular.
My nearest clubs are racing and time trial based, and as I now do neither I have only the local CTC section to rely on, which doesn't tick all the boxes.

third crank...i agree, neither would i risk a substantial investment in a 8 speed from tawain, but the point i was trying to make, and stick by, is that for a short distance commuter, an old raleigh three speed takes a lot of beating, both literally and metaphorically...and no they haven't moved on, the one i have (hub dated 94-2) looks very similar to either of these on the page at the bottom of this reply, from '62 or '76...i suppose that the old adage stands true in this case, if it aint broke, don't fix it. i would suggest that it was the marketing of alu farame, full suspension, and 24 gears for £99 that has killed this type of bike off, and not that they were actually improved upon. needless to say, i wouldn't invest in a £99 bike either, Y-frame or not

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/retroraleighs/sports.html