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Perhaps the BBC is actually
Perhaps the BBC is actually describing the reality rather than the theory? The reality is that there are very large numbers of ebikes being ridden that have been illegaly fixed up to avoid power restrictions. They look like ebikes. They were sold as ebikes. They were secretly transformed into ebikes with motorbike levels of power.
They can only be spotted as something else when ridden madly about.
When the law and its application is effective in differentiating ebikes from motorbikes disguised as ebikes – law applied to manufacturers and retailers as much as to motor software hackers – the BBC and everyone else may be able to accurately differentiate ebikes from “ebikes”. In fact, “ebikes” should become impossible to make and will revert to the more obvious electric motorbikes in design and appearance (and legal control).
kil0ran wrote:
Increasingly capable I think. Most bikes in that category will feature some or all of the following: Fully integrated cabling Wireless or Di2 shifting T47 BBsIncreasingly capable of frustrating the bejasus out of you when they need a fix. Add these to the other factor you mention of “risk is cost of fixing”.
Wot are concealed cables more capable of? Driving you mad with the rattles, drag on the sharp cable bends and inability to fix in less than three days of swearing and doing little dances of rage & frustration? Perhaps they train you to adopt the single position they allow because its far too much effort to change stem length or pitch; or shift spacers up or doon?
Before you ask … yes, press fit BB bearings are much better technically than the screwy ones and also much easier/cheaper to replace. Unless concealed cables get in the bluddy way. 🙂
If you race avidly and
If you race avidly and frequently, a bike of the type you describe may be worth having – although there’s no significant difference, other than price, bling and fragility, in similar bikes costing a quarter or a fifth of the price. The less expensive ones, as others mention, may be tougher i’ their parts’; and will anyway cost far less to mend if you break or trash a part. Also, bling of the ÂŁ12,000 bike ilk says, “I am a dafty but this bike is worth stealing”.
However, given your description of your riding, you really don’t want an out & our race bike at all. Far better to select a bike fit for your purposes, not those of the racer you might have fantasies about …. but aren’t in your everyday cycling.
Around 20 years ago I gave up racing and quickly sold the racing bikes, leaving the tourer. I then got a cyclo-cross bike of the all-road kind – fittings for guards, panniers and other stuff allowing it to be easily transformed into various bike types for various kinds of cycling. The comfort, carrying capacity and ability to go anywhere in any weather have been far more useful than somethng that might go 5 minutes faster for the same energy input over 20 miles.
These days I have various bikes but they fall broadly into summer and winter bikes permed with sporty and carrying varieties. I even have racy bikes but they’re now configured for a much more upright position and gears I’ll use all the time, as well as fat tyres and so forth. Lowest gear 30 front and 36 rear but also a 52 front and a 14 rear highest, with a middle ring for cruisin’. Good for an ole phart who still loves hills.
Other bikes of mine have motors in ’em! I fear no hills, even them double arra ones.
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In short, why waste money on a blinger for a style of cycling you never do? Be practical, man! Also, avoid being passed by horribly fit sprogs on a cheap Triban sneering at your low speed despite the TdeF bike. 🙂
I think upgrades are important, and I think it’s necessary to spend money on necessary upgrades over fancy accessories, provided they don’t affect the feel of your riding experience.One detects bot-illogic!
If new fangles “don’t affect the feel of your riding experience” how can they be “necessary upgrades” on which to spend money? Wot is this “feel”, Mr Bot? Do bots have bums, then?
In short, write the equation between “feel” and “necessary” plis.
Englishman says he will ‘stop coming’ to Wales on holiday because it is ‘too risky’ with 20mph speed limit‘It looks as if Wales’ loss will be Devon’s gain’
“Sadly we have deiced to call a stop to our Welsh breaks as we are not prepared to risk a large fine and three penalty points for accidently doing 22mph in a built up area. It looks as if Wales’ loss will be Devon’s gain. I might add that several of our acquaintances all feel the same. We will really miss Wales.”
It’s a little realised fact (I read it on a website once) that the Welsh 20mph limits in the villages and towns is to make it easier for those in The Welsh Hinterlands to capture English tourist, for rendering into pie-meat and also the stuff sold for kebabs.
Not that any Welsh person would eat such things. They sell them to the English tourists who manage to get through to Little England Beyond Wales. (I imagine that The Scot will enjoy them too, mind).
Cugel, adopted by The Welsh because too bitter for the pies.
Wrexham magistrate quits rather than enforce 20mph lawGood news- it is to be hoped that many police officers will also do the decent thing and accept the consequences of their refusal to enforce pretty much any traffic law ever
In this day and age, would anyone notice the absence of the polis? For millions and millions, such an absence is already evident, unless you want to protest that “the authorities” are in cahoots with world-burning, war-mongering loons.
Mind, the avid polis of Derbyshire, was it, did all that policing of dog walkers in remote hill areas during Covid. If it wasn’t for droning after those dangerous terrorists with their dripping conks and evil hounds, we’d all be dead now!
And don’t forget their very important work stopping and lecturing grandads and little girls & boys daring to ride their bicycles without a polystyrene hat! If that sort of behaviour is allowed to spread, civilisation will soon crumble.
Then there’s all the hard work ignoring loons looning in cars ….. . It’s exhausting having to turn so many blind eyes!
Half a mile is about 800m, which can be walked in well under 15minutes. #carboundIn some locales, folk become so habituated to sitting, in car or idiotbox sofa (or even the chair in front of their PC) that walking any distance at all becomes a real trial of their extremely enfeebled and perhaps also bleb-like bodies.
One can have sympathy with those who find themselves forced into this condition by ill health or being badly pranged by a car, but for huge numbers of such it was a lifestye “choice” (although they had been hypnotised by adverts at the time). Even as they wheeze and strain when getting out of their chair or sofa, they prefer its “comfort and convenience” to having to get fit enough to walk about, even from sofa to car, without inducing “a bad turn”.
It’s inconvenient having to ask a teenager to fetch your junksnak & grog bottle from the fridge, though.
Of course, their lifestyle choice with the consequent reliance on car seems to have severely restricted or demeaned the lifestyle choices of others, who must learn car-dodging skills if they are not to be murdered or maimed by a bleb-feeble “driving” a car who has terrible reaction times and an inability to look away from their hypno-gizmo.
What’s required is A Nanny of uncompromising intentions to improve the lives of bleb-feebles, whether they want them improved or not. First – confiscate the car.
But no one should listen to me as I am a-one o’ them would-be thieves of personages’ freedumbs to bugger up everything, including the lives of not just themselves but everyone else; and every thing else. A pink-livered bluddy socialist snowflake or summick, me! I should be run over.
“2000” posts in Drivers and Their Problems.The problems drivers create for others, the problems they (and only they) experience. It’s all in here, people made self-centred and self-pitying by cars – the waves of hope, freedom and independence crashing against the rocks of traffic jams and parking charges.
Self-pity because despite having so much of the world, its space and resource has been dedicated to them over the past few decades, some drivers are convinced they are an underdog, a war on cars.
Self-centred because everything and everyone else is the problem, it’s never them. The road is narrow and icy, it’s flooded, cyclists and horse riders are using it, the car park is full.
Cars breed still more cars as cars close down and suck the life out of all the alternatives. You can’t unsee it.
The big question then: is it just human nature or is there something about cars that hugely amplifies many of the nastier aspects of human nature whilst suppressing the nicer?
Is it that the car itself is an inherently dangerous thing, because of its power and complexity of function, making cars not truly suited to the very limited abilities of humans to control such powerful and complex technology?
What about the culture of the manufacturers and purveyors, who realise that certain nasty aspects of human nature alloyed with the powerful nature of the car, provide an opportunity to sell more via the design and portrayal of the things as “weapons of choice” for go-getting thrusters-about not allowed guns or blunt instruments of more obvious intent?
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Well, some leading questions there! 🙂
But without understanding all the factors that make driving motorised vehicles such a dangerous and damaging phenomenon, how do we ever solve all the pressing problems they create?
I have winter Marathons with studs … great fun in the snow. Yet to try them on the commute and not sure I’d want to ride the full 40 miles on them … they are noisy and not sure what 40miles of tarmac will do to themWhen I first got them, I put the studded Marathons on the winter bike and left them on for around 3 months, riding a number of 30 – 50 mile routes in the wet, frost or dry.
The studs seem very resilient, as they should be, being made of TCT with a steel jacket. The steel did show some cosmetic rusting after they dried following a wet ride but this didn’t seem to affect their performance or become any worse than cosmetic.
There is quite a bit of road-drag (relatively poor rolling resistance) and they do give a constant snap, crackle & pop noise – but you get used to it. In practice, they don’t seem to wear any faster than unstudded tyres. Perhaps they might even wear more slowly, in the rubber parts, as those studs seem to take a fair bit of the load at the contact patch, going by the noise they make.
Keesvant wrote:
Some good advice was given ! Conti gp5000 28mm tyres , are a good investment. Then wheels. A simple solution for cable spagetti is cheap cable wrap fron diy store. I use it on all my bikes to make 4 cabeles into 2 . To make the cockpit look more tidy Ride safe !Just recently the bars on me winter bike were changed to some that are far more comfortable courtesy of various bends, flats, tilts and the like. In taking the old bars off (those that came taped-up with the bike) I removed the tape to discover the brake & gear cables buried under it, including it’s in-line cable adjusters!
Needless to say, the new bar tape on the new bars doesn’t cover the cables; and the holes in the bars fro cable-threading are unemployed. I likes available-cable, me.
Of course, I will go 7 seconds slower per ride now because of the cable “drag”. Oh dear. 🙂
.Agreed at first.
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Switched off when you went hyperbolic.
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Coo – is this an attempt by the boy to engage in a dialogue?
Don’t be shy, now! Perhaps you could make clear what you agree with and what you find hyperbolic. I admit to hyperbolising when approaching then entering rant mode. 🙂
But you need not worry, more cycle infrastructure will mean more cyclists ……This may be so in densely populated places that are flattish and have oodles of cash spent on the bicycle ways. London is the prime example. Elsewhere, I’ve noticed that even wide and well-made cycle paths well separated from traffic remain empty of bikes except for mine, as far as the eye can see.
There’s a really nice section of such path on the busy A-road going along the Welsh west coast around Blaenannerch and going part way down to Aberporth. I used to cycle along that a lot – about 2 miles worth, perhaps twice a week …. but never ever saw anyone else on a bike. The population levels are low there; and the terrain is very hilly, mind.
To be frank, I’ve no idea why they built it. It is made to a very good standard and even gets swept by a wee machine with a rotary brush (I saw that regularly) but still didn’t get used except, apparently, by me. It got so I would for wheel tracks on it – but never saw any. 🙂
Probaly the council got a budget allocated for cycling facilities and felt obliged to spend it. There was room where they put it. Many roads in West Wales are impossible to improve with pavements or cycle paths as they’re already very narrow and usually bounded by ancient turfed walls with trees or hedges on top, behind which is Welsh farmland not easily give up by the farmers.
Your next point I think amounts to “rubbish infra is rubbish” (I agree) but then “better not ask for decent food – they’ll just give you more gruel and beat you for complaining”. I agree, it’s been gruel and not much of it so far… but I don’t think we shouldn’t keep asking for the proper stuff though and continue explaining why it’s to the benefit of the non-cyclists and the powers that be also!Personally I find the cyclist cry for new infrastructure dedicated just to cyclists a very self-centred and blinkered attitude.Bingo!
Actually, it’s often not “cyclists” (in one definition) who are asking for this. Surely “cyclists” would ride regardless – even if the drivers where actively hunting us down? We free-thinking convention-defying types, unafraid to dress like clowns, adopt a mode of transport which many look down on and others despise, and ride among more dangerous vehicles…
No, infra is for the drivers, the bus riders, the walkers. Get some of the masses out of their cars, give independence to some who have to rely on others, or taxis, or (woeful) buses…(it’s for “cyclists” also though, don’t fear).
As for “dedicated just to cyclists”, it’s a bit like how it makes sense not to have the cycling, horse racing, sprint and distance events – oh, and the javelin and shooting – all taking place at the same time on the same course / range…
It demands vast amounts of money and perhaps the destruction of already built stuff but, worse, large areas of nature’s flora & fauna to be paved over.I’m not sure where you’re getting this from. It’s not a given and us paving everywhere is little to do with cycle infra. It sounds like the motorists’ “save the tree! (because we flattened all the rest which were in the way of the road). As pointed out before some places where they’ve added cycle infra they’ve been able to remove roads, overall leading to greener spaces. (Because motoring is massively space-inefficient).
More to the point, it only solves a tiny portion of the general and ever more pressing car problem. Cyling infrastructure won’t stop pedestrians and the car-borne from continuing death and maiming; nor will it stop the vast pollutions and other damage done by cars.Is this “it won’t stop every death, ergo it’s useless”? Actually proper cycle infra does indeed make it safer for cyclists and indeed pedestrians. That’s a lot of the reason for it (at least initially). Further – it can help get people out of their cars for some trips. That reduces the chance for people to run others over AND reduces the pollutions and other damages.
I’m still not seeing how either “leaving things as they are” fixes either of those, or how “just make cars go away” can be achieved without a range of measures including getting more people cycling (which decent infra does)?
The roads are excellent for cycling. They go everywhere you might want to go on a bike, unlike cycle paths which seem often to go from nowhere much to anther example of such a place.Roads aren’t “excellent” for cycling mostly any more. Though not built for cars they are now adapted for them, being very wide, having high kerbs, speed bumps, crash barriers, traffic lights and a host of stuff unneeded and unwanted by cyclists and pedestrians in their absence. The directions the roads go tend to be “desire lines” (because they often pre-date cars). Again this isn’t an argument against cycle infra – it’s an argument against crap cycle infra designed to not affect motorists at all.
Will any potential Blighter government of any stripe find the money and the will to build non-gruel cycling infrastructure other than a few bits in highly urbanised places like London? The chances seem like zero, no matter what political party governs, because Grate Bwitain has no prospect of finding the money or the will. Or the space*.
Are roads excellent for cycling? Having ridden on them for a vast amount of miles I would say: most definitely – apart from the presence of dangerous drivers of motorised vehicles. They’re certainly better than even the nicest cycle path I’ve ever ridden along. And they go everywhere, which cycle paths never, ever will.
What is the fundamental problem in all this? It’s motorised vehicles that themselves are inherently dangerous and which are driven by a lot of humans who are also inherently dangerous, through aggression and/or incompetance. Fix the fundamental problem and the whole need for an additional cycling infrastructure goes away – along with a huge amount of other serious problems associated with motorised vehicles.
I agree that fixing that fundamental problem of dangerous vehicles driven by dangerous humans is not a trivial issue to find solutions to. But the costs of not doing so are far, far greater than killing & maiming some cyclists. Asking for cycle paths is like asking for a sticking plaster for your gravel rash as you’re rapidly bleeding to death from a cut artery whilst being locked in a room slowly filling with toxic gases.
* You seem unable to appreciate just how much additional hard surface cycle path would need to be built to provide alternative routes to all the dangerous roads currently used by cyclists. It would be an immense amount!
Your post refflects my own
Your post refflects my own worry-set about so-called cycling infrastructure. “So-called” because in the great majority of Bwitish schemes, it’s no such thing but rather a set of half-arsed pretences that often make cycling more dangerous (as in white-line murder strips) or put us in contention with pedestrians and others on “shared paths”.
But for me, the greatest worry is that faux-provision of even teeny amounts of sub-standard cycling infrastructure will provide an excuse for the car lobby to get us either banned from roads or made even more the pariah – semi-legitimate targets for punishment passes and worse.
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Personally I find the cyclist cry for new infrastructure dedicated just to cyclists a very self-centred and blinkered attitude. It demands vast amounts of money and perhaps the destruction of already built stuff but, worse, large areas of nature’s flora & fauna to be paved over.
More to the point, it only solves a tiny portion of the general and ever more pressing car problem. Cyling infrastructure won’t stop pedestrians and the car-borne from continuing death and maiming; nor will it stop the vast pollutions and other damage done by cars.
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The roads are excellent for cycling. They go everywhere you might want to go on a bike, unlike cycle paths which seem often to go from nowhere much to anther example of such a place.
What’s needed is for cars to be severely curtailed, in number, speed, weight and ability to be driven badly. Ideally, they should go altogether, as a highly uncivilised mode and contraption rather like guns, gambling, highly addictive drugs or a hundred other mad practices and devices we now regard as only of appeal to psychotics, sociopaths and the generally daft.
Hello Sroc,
Hello Sroc,
Cycling! Good innit. 🙂
You can get a lot out of riding with others, joining a club being the easiest way to do this if there are any clubs near enough to where you live. Some clubs can be a bit cliquish but many are welcoming and have different sections or runs for various levels of ability. But even if you go out with a group and tend to get dropped, just regard it as the stimulus to get fitter. You’ll soon be sticking and perhaps dishing out the pain yourself, before too long.
Beware of bike fits, some of which might get you the right bike size/geometry but some of which will assume that you’re already a racing snake, or ought to be, so you end up with a bike that gives you various body aches.
Generally, a slightly too small bike can be more easily configured to fit via seat post, stem and the like than the other way ’round. But ….
If you buy a bike with a top tube that slopes down a lot from head tube to seat tube (as Giant bikes tend to, for example) you can buy a bigger size than the “ideal” as you can still stand over the top tube yet configure various parts (e.g. seat post height and stem length/rise) so the bike fits well.
A larger frame size can mean you have a more sat-up position, because of the taller head tube – although you may need a short stem to avoid over-stretching. In addition, a larger frame can also mean you won’t suffer toe-overlap with the front wheel – although if that happens its not really much of an issue unless you do a lot of very slow speed U-turns.
if you find a good bike fit service, they’ll take account of your body type and flexibility, so you should end up with a bike that’s at least not going to give you back, neck, shoulder and knee ache. I don’t know which might be good bike fit services and which not-so-good, never having had one myself. Trial and error, it was, for me.
As I age, I’m finding the fit that used to suit no longer does so changes have to be made. There ain’t no “right for everyone, at all times” fit. And what suits you today may not suit you in a year or two as you become more cycling proficient.