Cycling UK Forum

djnotts wrote: ↑6 Apr 2022, 9:23am

peetee wrote: ↑6 Apr 2022, 8:58am

Cowsham wrote: ↑5 Apr 2022, 4:37pm There's rumour that Putin has cancer. Anyone know?

For sure?
- Just Putin and his doctor, I would imagine.

Or just his doctor, who would really rather not tell the patient!

So even Putin doesn't know, then.

I'd highly recommend this one - Cateye BM45 (might well be what's on De Sisti's bike but can't quite see). Doesn't vibrate, never goes out of adjustment and has a surprisingly wide field of view. Several clubmates also use it.

https://www.tredz.co.uk/.Cateye-BM45-Ba ... _84534.htm

Trick is to offset it as far as possible to the right - it only offsets slightly but it makes a difference and avoids you seeing your leg.

As for how useful it is, it's as useful as any other mirror on a bike. There might be those who think they're not necessary but I fervently believe they are - you can check what's behind far more frequently and efficiently than looking over your shoulder and act sooner on what's there, although you still need to do shoulder checks where necessary to cover any blind spots.

The acid test is when you've used one for a while then for whatever reason go back to riding without one - you'll wonder how or why you ever did without.

Carlton green wrote: ↑5 Apr 2022, 3:21pm Edward Reichenbach, AKA Ted Byko, sounds like quite a character and his achievement is quite something, more can be found out about him here: https://adland.com.au/ryko-project/ted-ryko-biography/

As I understand it he cycled across across the dead heart of Australia and that’s an inhospitable place. 3000 km in 28 days was a bit meaningless to me at first, but it works out as 107 Km per day back to back or 66.5 miles each day for a month. Doubtless the roads were poor, he might well have had to have walked at times and of course he had to carry all of his camping gear and provisions. Gears were just three and within a chain driven hub gear. On good roads and unloaded 107 Km per day would be an achievement, more so with camping gear and more so again with just three gears rather than eighteen plus.

Suddenly my own rather humble bike, with SA 3 speed, seems much more much suitable for a tour - and indeed even an extreme tour - than it did. The engine however is long past twenty one so I suspect that the I’m the weak link rather than the bike. In a way that brings me back to the OP and just a well meant suggestion that whilst its good to have a very capable bike it’s at least as important to have a strong engine sat on the saddle.

Thanks for the link - should have posted one myself but I hadn't seen that one - it was a quite a ride and he lived some life.

Just yesterday when I was trying to find the link in Australian Cycling Forums about the replica, I found another thread on there about Ryko which explained that when he cycled from Adelaide to Darwin he rode mostly at night, navigating by the stars, as it was too hot during the day.

This photo from your link...


It took 100 years for that setup to be classified as a 'bikepacking' setup - bar bags, seat bags, frame bags, 'dirt drop' bars... There really is nothing new under the sun!

Also the twin-leg truss forks as on Jones Bikes, although to be fair Jeff Jones would be the first to acknowledge that they're in no way a new 'invention' - apparently he's a great student of old bicycle design and has been quoted as saying, 'All the best info is pre-1930s.' Same goes for his spaceframe design - it's essentially a swoopy-tube evolution of the Centaur Featherweight but without the seatstays, and I'm sure he would acknowledge that too.

I think the trick that might still be being missed is the shallower frame angles, although even then Jones bikes have a head angle well below 70 degrees, with more fork offset to compensate - I reckon it would give a cushier ride. The handling would be slower but it's about priorities - you have to trade off one against the other and find the balance.

Sorry, that's getting a bit too far away from the subject of the thread but I thought it was interesting.

jimlews wrote: ↑5 Apr 2022, 7:36am Excellent read!

Thanks for posting that "kylecycler".

Awful glad you read it, never shared it before, always meant to. I also used to follow the Velocipede Salon, the framebuilders' forum, and the mind boggles as to what they'd have made of the bloke's approach, but I reckon they'd still have respected him for what he did. It was great fun, anyway.

There's a serious point, though - I'll never attempt to do just about anything without extensive internet research and even then I often never get around to doing it at all, whereas that bloke just looked at what he wanted to do, got on with it and pretty much winged it, which is why I thought it was relevant to this thread.

Audax67 wrote: ↑4 Apr 2022, 10:11am What annoys me is the Graun's nasty habit of ending the headline of "live" sports events with an exclamation mark! Be still, my beating heart.

'Live' as in what we all do until we don't, should be spelled the way it is, however 'live' as in a 'live' sports event should be spelled 'lyve'. It isn't, of course, but it should be. I know you can almost always tell one from the other in context but it still bugs me. (Then again, I suppose it could be argued that 'live' should be spelled 'liv'.)

Incidentally, further to the above re. 'Ryko', around the time of the 100th anniversary of his epic ride bisecting Oz, a replica of his Turner Special was built, and then a bloke on the Australian Cycling Forums whose handle is 'landyacht' built a replica of the replica, more or less just making it up as he went along. I've often wondered what Brucey or CJ would make of his processes, but basically he just looked at what he had to do and did it whichever way it took.

Unfortunately the thread has since suffered from 'photobucket blight', although most of the photos are still there, but it's still one of the most entertaining and maybe even inspiring cycling forum threads you'll ever read - a sort of classic of a one-of-a-kind.

https://www.bicycles.net.au/forums/view ... 23&t=77526

Be prepared to shout "NO-O-O-O-O!!!" at your screen when you get to the post beginning 'crap day today' but rest assured it all ends well after 'she's back in the shed!!!'.

Tommy Godwin set the Year Record - 75,065 miles - and went on to 100,000 miles - from 1939-40 on a steel bike with a 4-speed Sturmey Archer IGH. That type of bike nowadays would be seen as a commuter/tourer, if that, whereas back then it was a state-of-the-art road bike. Granted, I don't think it's even known whatever mechanical issues he encountered or how many components he wore out and replaced, but it's never been about the bike.

Going back further still there was this fellow - Ted Reichenbach, aka 'Ryko', who cycled from Adelaide to Darwin in 1914 - 3,000 km in 28 days - how would his bicycle, kit and equipment stack up nowadays?


Absolutely not trying to put BikeBuddha down, quite the reverse - I suffer the same way myself insofar as I'll procrastinate to such an extent that I never get anything done ever - just trying to put things in perspective.

I keep thinking there have to be some factions within the Russian establishment and military ready or willing to do what it's transpired that General Milley and others were ready to do in the US if Trump had gone rogue. Putin has already gone rogue, of course - the horse has bolted - so now it would just be damage limitation but once the damage gets too bad, however that's defined, I'm hoping they step in. It might mean civil war in Russia but in that case they can get on with it.

Also I'm thinking the 'Special Military Operation' is like Pinocchio's nose - the lie the Russian populace is being told is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The way to bring Putin down would be to take over the media and tell the true story, i.e. expose the lie.

Don't know what you'll all make of this - a Ukrainian MP's view of the Russian populace and their support for Putin...

Ben@Forest wrote: ↑27 Mar 2022, 9:53pm Zelensky is a politician. He's not just talking to us, he's talking to his own people. Like every politician he's upping the ante to see what he can get. The USA is about to give Ukraine $600 million worth of Switchblade missiles, would he have got them without pressing hard?

Zelensky is a punter just like you or me or anyone else - he might well be an exceptional punter but he's still a punter - yay for all the punters everywhere.

What I don't think anyone has mentioned so far is the aroma like you get in coffee shops. Whenever I've gone over to making coffee in a cafetiere instead of instant coffee, it may or may not taste better (certainly different, not sure about the 'better') but I can't get the aroma like you get in coffee shops, or even get it to smell of anything very much at all - not even coffee!

There's a thread on the US cycling Paceline Forum called 'What's on your coffee bench?' Apparently a 'coffee bench' is a thing ovah theh (like a gun cabinet except not like a gun cabinet)...

https://forums.thepaceline.net/showthre ... ffee+bench

djnotts wrote: ↑25 Mar 2022, 8:27pm I do wonder about the actual cost of production of 10 grand BICYCLES and conclude about 10% of selling price. Otherwise all the makers of complex m'cycles, with many finely designed and engineered parts, vital to safety at 100+ mph, sold at 10-15 grand are all working at a loss.
The pricing structure is a joke, the whole supply chain laughing all the way to the bank.
AND there is no fundamental difference between a 1 grand bike and a 10 grand one for anyone other than a top pro.

Agree on all counts, except perhaps the last one - I mean, surely the difference between a 1 grand bike and a 10 grand one is... palpable... (/s)

If that needs explaining, 'palpable' is a word I genuinely only ever recall seeing in cycling journalism, as in a road test comparison between two road bikes, one weighing 7.8kg, the other, 8.2kg - on the level there's barely a fag paper between them but at the first sign of an incline, the difference is palpable... Apparently. I guess there might be a little more of a difference between a 1 grand bike and a 10 grand one, just not anything like 9 grand and certainly not anything fundamental, as you say.

(Actually, to be fair, I suspect cycling journalists know perfectly well that at least some of what they write is tosh (at least I hope they do) but they have to make a living just like anyone else.)

Bmblbzzz wrote: ↑25 Mar 2022, 7:34pm Have you ever read any of Josie Dew's books? There's at least one occasion on which she's asked if she's on a gap year, to which she replies – internally – that's she's taking a gap life.

I'll definitely check them out (I need to get back into reading and get off this here contraption) - I guess that was in this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Travels-Strang ... oks&sr=1-3

At least she didn't say she's taking a sabbatical - don't know why but that word makes me want to puke. Not because of what it means, it's just so... pretentious, somehow. In Scotland we call it a brek.

I think my entire life has been a gap life, but not it a good way.

m-gineering wrote: ↑25 Mar 2022, 7:58pm

kylecycler wrote: ↑25 Mar 2022, 10:50am I believe it's just the bottom right hand corner of NL that has anything approaching actual hills - the province of Limburg.

Nope.
Hills start in Twente with the Holterberg etc ('steeper than the Alpe dHuez' ), there are some proper ones around de hoge Veluwe and Nijmegen, and then there is the bit in Limburg. If you like them longer you could always do them twice

(And if you must insist on the Netherlands the highest point is 887m)

Thanks - shows how much I know - I've only been 'learning' about NL (or not) through following pro cycling, and geography has never been my strongpoint.

Been learning a bit of the language, too - just recently I found out that bakker in Dutch means baker in English. Also that maar means but.