Cycling UK Forum

Thanks for bringing up this topic. The argument has kept me highly entertained in my insomniac state this morning.

I think I have to agree with Lee and the others who are for music on the road. I am often wired up to the radio during my commutes through the city and can be seen/heard laughing at various Radio 1 DJ antics. Perhaps that's even more dangerous when it comes to inflight entertainment? It's good fun though.

I am thinking of investing in one of these systems for use when planning cycling or hillwalking trips - but am having difficulty in comparing the various systems on sale. I am aware of three: Memorymap; Anquest cd maps; and Tracklogs digital mapping; there may be others. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has tried any of these or who knows of an objective appraisal of their respective merits.

Thanks

Fifer

Last year I used GoSure.com for a quick easy online holiday insurance policy. The same policy this year has a new exclusion for 3rd party cover for claims arising from use of a bicycle.

Luckily, as a UK resident CTC member, such 3rd party risks are already covered by the club's Norwich Union Insurance for up to £5m worldwide (except in USA & Canada).

It might be a problem if you were travelling with others in a group who were not CTC members, or they were relying solely on a non-CTC policy.

It's worth checking the small-print, even if you checked the details last year.

Lee,

The last time I looked into cycle parking I found this company on the web:

http://www.autopa.co.uk

I cannot make any recommendations, but there are illustrations of various kinds of bike stands and shelters, and a price list.

As regards what we have where I work (a HE college just outside London), the parking is mostly Sheffield style racks, some with shelters and others just in the open. The ones with shelters are obviously better. There is supposed to be some indoor cycle storage in the main college building, but I must admit to never having been able to find it! I’m told that it is also prone to being locked at odd times. There are also some older ‘butterfly clip’ type stands, but hardly anyone uses these. In my opinion Sheffield stands with shelters are the ones to go for.

The college has been improving its cycle parking recently, mainly because the local council has made a transport plan a requirement for planning permission for expansion. Apparently 10% of the local population either live or work here, which generates a lot of vehicle movements. I think the college also got some partial funding for some of the improvements from the council. I some respects the larger the employer the better off you are trying to get support for cycle parking.

Hi, I'm having great trouble getting my tyres back on and would like some advice.

I have a Cannondale R500 ladies road bike with 650c, deep-walled rims (a far cry from last road bike!).

I'm not sure if it's the rims or the tyres causing the problem but I spent over 1 hour trying to get my tire back on after a puncture (luckily I was at home) and eventually handed over to my boyfriend to have a go. Obviously he has more strength than me but the two of us spent a further 40mins, with my boyfriend getting blisters on his hands, before the tyre went back on!

The original tyres that came with the bike are Continental Grand Prix 3000. I broke the beading on the front tyre trying to force it back on and put on my new spare tyre, with great difficulty as mentioned. This new tyre is a Continental Ultra 3000. A work colleague suggests that some tyres are harder to put on than others but he mentioned Vittoria as an example not Continental.

I've only ridden the bike for 30 miles so I wondered if the tyres need to 'soften up'. I can't take it back to the original shop for advice as we've moved many miles away.

Any ideas? If the tyres are the problem can anyone suggest a pair that would be much easier for me to use? I'm on my second tyre after only 30 miles and it's rather expensive.

Just to add, I have no difficulty replacing tyres on any of my other bikes, past and present, but perhaps there is a nack to fitting tyres on these 'newer' wheels?

Although i think i may have started the 'hate situations' in a tongue in check way.

I was hoping some practical points to help others on the road.

e.g. eyeballing, making contact with your nearest driver does reduce the risk ofbeing hit.

Thanks keep it up.

But what the Real Story did show was that the Highways Authority could kill a number of people on a newly surfaced stretch of road without anyone accepting responsibility and closing the road for safety reasons. It took a Police officer to close the road, risking his own position.

Such lack of public accountability is the result of public ignorance and apathy. The situation will persist if cyclists, and others, are not told how to use their rights (which do exist to ensure their safety on the public highway). Cyclists need to deal directly with their elected Councillors and MPs if the local Highways Authority fail to carry out their responsibilities.

The 1980 Highways Act states that there is a duty of care which rests with the local authorities to ensure that all (pavements and) public highways allow safe use by members of the public. They do have available to them a defence under s.58 of the Highways Act 1980: If the local authority can prove that they have in place a safe system of inspection for the area in question, they are exempt from any claims with regard to the specific defect.

It simply needs local monitoring by cyclists to show if the inspection process is effective or not. Failure to respond to complaints of dangerous surfaces would imply a breach of the 1980 Highways Act.

I suppose it's too much to expect the CTC to issue such an information sheet to distribute to all members, and others, in their Cycle magazine?

Sorry, me again!

Another way to look at it - your weight and the general effect of your "throwing your weight around" are going to be the same regardless of how tight or loose your spokes are... and if some spokes are looser, some other spokes are going to have to take up extra strain. Think of your weight on the hub, for example, and the hub hanging within the top half of the wheel - this is before considering the tightness of the spokes, if any of those spokes are less tight, the remaining stress is taken up by the adjacent ones. Exaggerate it for a moment - if all your weight were hanging on one spoke, it wouldn't last long. The spurious extremes of stress that occur from your hunking up a hill are going to peak at more than the static stress of the tightness of the wheel. So it's worth making sure they're spread as evenly as possible between the spokes.

To separate the two issues - by building a tight wheel you're reducing the threshold at which spokes get "compressed" into total looseness, and by making the spoke tensions as even as possible you're doing that as well (by tightening the loosest ones), but also reducing the peaks of tension that the tightest ones get when you dig into the pedals or pull the bike about sideways, e.g. out of the saddle up steep hills.

The reality of it is of course more complicated than that, but I know I've had a charmed life as far as spoke breakages are concerned, and I've always built very tight wheels with 14g stainless spokes (above-mentioned rustless exception excepted!), some with DB front and occasionally DB offside rear.

Conversations I used to have with fellow wheelbuilders used to centre around how quickly we built them - my own boasts were often about how slowly I'd do it - my very first ever pair of wheels took me about 12 hours to get exactly right (I did the front first and that took about 8 hours!) - that was c. 1981, and I'm still using it now. I think I had to true the rear by about half a millimetre in the mid 90s. I'm not joking!

It's really worth getting handy with a spoke key - just turn the bike up-side-down and use the brake as a guide, and feel the spoke crossings for tension, gauging how tight each spoke is within a pair by sighting along the wheel to see if the crossing is pushed further in or out than the others around it. Some diagrams might make that lot sound less greek - best thing is get a book on wheelbuilding, or get some decent wheels built by a reputable wheelbuilder.

"The wheel looks and feels as though it is made for a heavy load." You can't see spoke tensions, so even with a wheel that looks good, have a feel and check that it's even.

most days it closes very early so i'd say it was unlikly to be possible. i was workin in the alps and it came past about 12 or 1 00 and the road was shut all day with support cars charging up and down it all day. Remember u get the whole caravan before it too and that takes about an hour, u can see the peleton comin cos of ther helicopters too its lots of fun!!!

but i have heard of following it, u may be riding with others then!!

Cyclists need to watch Real Story to have it explained why their roads are in such a dangerous state. It is largely the failure of cyclists, amongst others, to understand the decision making structure: Your elected Councillors and council employees paid out of your Community Charge are making decisions that result in this Highways scandal of underspent and misspent maintenance budgets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/real_story/4607181.stm

I'm in that market too, having just scrapped my old short wheelbase fast tourer. (Metal fatigue across the downtube shifter braze-ons). Like the others I'll be having a frame made to measure & my spec. I'll be using Edison Cycles of Clowne, N Derbys. The rest I'll do myself.

My council estate neighbours dump plastic furniture covers in bushes - I collect them until needed!
easyjet, Ryanair and others accept bikes in plastic bags.
At Rome Ciampino last month I stashed plastic and bubble wrap in a carrier bag and hid it in bushes across main road from airport. Still there 3 weeks later! Bought roll of tape from stationers. WARNING: Via Appia Antica 300m up this lane has dodgy characters lurking in trees at junction (otherwise, a fantastic, almost traffic-free route into Rome).
In France last year I bought plastic sheet and brown tape from DIY store before flying home.
Am going to Helsinki with KLM tomorrow. Obligatory cardboard boxes - will let you know!

CJ, you give out a vibe of having laid this one to rest, but somehow I don't think you have. As with most science - it's all incontrovertably true, but it usually misses out something, and of course until someone puts their finger on that something, we imagine there's no more to be said. Some frames are comfy, others are less so, all else being equal. All else is usually not equal because you wouldn't tend to put rock hard tyres on your touring armchair or balloons on your fast racer - but I've swapped wheels and saddles between my various bikes just to find out what's what, and some frames are more rigid per se, and it's noticeable even in the context of tyres that squish fifty times more than the frame. You can throw as much science as you like at the issue but it won't change the fact that squishy frames are more comfy than hard ones.

On a similar note, I had a discussion with Sheldon Brown in which he proved to me on paper that a squishy frame doesn't waste energy when you're hunking up a hill out of the saddle. He said the difference was psychological. Any metal deformed within it's elastic range of deflection gives all the energy back, so you don't lose energy, therefore a flabby frame is as efficient up a hill as a stiff one. The missing element there was that the human leg isn't a piece of metal, and when the deflected metal magnanimously gives you back that energy, the energy you used to deflect it in the first place ISN'T turned back into the flapjack you ate before the ride. Any energy that didn't result in the bike moving forward IS wasted. As I mentioned above, the science was all correct and incontrovertible, but he left out one crucial element. He set out some facts that one couldn't argue with but hadn't thought the whole thing through. From a lifetime's experience - squishy frames ARE less efficient than stiff ones to get up hills on. It's not inconceivable that there's a similar element here that we haven't thought of.

I used to have a Jack Taylor touring bike which had a really long rake on the forks - going over bumps you could see the front hub move back and forth by what looked like half an inch - probably exaggerated due to eyeballs wobbling! ... but it was a considerable amount of movement. This would have allowed the back end to give as well, because of pivotting about the bottom bracket. Also it's possible that there's flexibility in the front triangle of a frame since it's not actually a triangle - it has four sides! OK so two of the corners are very close together, but isn't it possible that there is more give in these joints if the tubing is more flexible? That flexibility would only be measurable in fractions of a degree but maybe some time spent with sines and cosines might reveal that it translated into more than your tenth of a millimetre at the seatpost. I personally can't be bothered to get out the calculator, especially when I know without having to measure anything that the stiff frames I have are harder up the bum than the flabby ones. Simplistic science is often worse than none at all!

Didn't someone prove scientifically that bumble bees can't fly?

Try Kool-Stop salmon pads first (from Wiggle). They have much higher friction than many others.

From the subjective view the Brooks B17 Titanium feels springier, and watching others riding gives that impression. I haven't done a CJ to measure relative deflection! It just feels so good, even by comparison with my past stable of broken-in Brooks Pros. Having said that, I never got on with the narrower Brooks (Colt?) Titanium. That seemed the worst of both worlds - heavier than the racing Flite type saddles, yet less comfortable than the Pros. But I've yet to meet anyone who is unhappy with the Brooks B17 Titanium - no doubt there are some.....