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Passed my car test in 1975, and bizarrely, my licence says I can drive a motor bike of any size. The fact I could be let loose on a 1000cc motor bike is just nuts. Current cars, BMW 1 series and Alpine A110.
There were lots of ‘grandfather rights’ applied when driving licences changed back in the early 2000s. Category A (full motorcycle) was placed on full car licences from 2013. However….if you check the back of your licence you’ll probably have a restriction to category A of “TRI”, which limits you to riding a tricycle. Sorry….but probably for the best : )
On closer inspection, there is a 79(3) code, which as you say, restricts me to a trike. Need to cancel the Ducati and buy a Canam.
Passed my car test in 1975, a
Passed my car test in 1975, and bizarrely, my licence says I can drive a motor bike of any size. The fact I could be let loose on a 1000cc motor bike is just nuts. Current cars, BMW 1 series and Alpine A110.Another happy wahoo user here
Another happy wahoo user here, mine took 10 mins to set up, and has never missed a beat since, including one 9 hour ride for the cinglés. In answer to which is best, I spent a lot of time getting feedback and reading reviews on garmin and wahoo, and came to the conclusion that either would meet my needs, both have more capability than I will ever use, and then it’s down to personal taste. I went for the Bolt largely due to its compact size.Daveyraveygravey wrote:
I always wear a helmet, but I don’t want it to be made compulsory, and I argue with non-cyclists who get arsey about people on bikes without them. I say there’s as much chance of you falling over in your bath and hurting your head than of you doing the same whilst riding your bike.
However, I have had 5 crashes on my bike in 4 years, and every one of them included banging my head on the deck. None of them involved any other vehicle or any other person. I broke a shoulder in one, a wrist in another, scraped most of my leg off in the third, and had lesser injuries in the remaining two. Maybe if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I would have performed some astonishing manoeuvre to stop my head hitting the road, maybe not, but it saved me having hideous headaches to add to the list of injuries.
It’s good to see a voice of reason on here, and I suspect your views are typical of most cyclists. The accidents you describe, all low speed incidents (though I appreciate that lying in A&E with broken bones they might not have felt like low speed incidents), fall in the range where physics supports the view that a helmet can reduce damage. On the other hand those who believe that 2cm compression of foam will have a sufficient impact on g reduction when in contact with a vehicle travelling at say, 30mph, don’t understand the problem. (The problem being perfectly illustrated by the 4th equation of motion, for anyone with a physics O level, and that v squared term is the killer – quite literally. ) I too wear a helmet, but am under no illusions that it is unlikely to do any more than protect my handsome good looks when in contact at low, probably non life threatening, speed.
The problem is helmet promoters/wearers won’t give it a rest…….Seriously??? You are very keen on evidence and stats, so just take a look at the various helmet threads and see who’s name crops up most.
Canyon48 wrote:
OK, game over! Except of course that the likes of Airbus, Boeing and BMW already have targets to recycle 95% by 2025, and a host of processes on the brink of commercial viability, including pyrolysis, solvolisis and microwave breakdown. Oh, and you can’t burn it as you suggsst to recover carbon as carbon itself burns. (Perhaps you have heard of coal?) Any thermal processing needs to be done in an inert environment to prevent burning. This is a today issue for Boeing, with the 777 which uses some carbon fibre components being withdrawn from service.CFRP is really nasty to recycle, there’s nothing you can do with it really.
The targets are no way near being met by the big aerospace companies – I work at one of the big aerospace companies in composite design. There’s a big scrap bin for all the waste carbon that goes straight to landfill… Unfortunately :/
The problem with the thermal processes (at the moment) is it requires so much energy to do that it’s not really worth it, the recovered carbon is useless to the aerospace industry as it can’t be used in aerospace applications – clearly of some use to automotive though.
I also had no idea Boeing is currently recycling carbon for use in the automotive industry, seems the big European aerospace companies have some catching up to do.
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I suggest you read up on the work being done for example by ELG (a European company developing recycling for Boeing). Contrary to what you say about energy use, their pyrolysis process uses a fraction of the energy used to produce virgin fibre, (30MJ/kg as opposed to 250) and the resulting product when used in non woven mat is claimed to be of equivalent quality. (Clearly then not suitable for aircraft structural parts relying on woven mat).Back to bikes, and several years ago, Specialized, Trek, and others trialled a take back scheme for carbon frames, tapping into the aerospace processes. At the time, volume of scrap bikes, and sale for finished product, were inadequate. Basically, they were trying to run before the aerospace industry could walk. It seems reasonable to assume that once processes mature, they will kick off again. Metal recycling is 100 years old. We’ve only been trying to recycle carbon fibre for 10!
Canyon48 wrote:
CFRP is really nasty to recycle, there’s nothing you can do with it really.
OK, game over! Except of course that the likes of Airbus, Boeing and BMW already have targets to recycle 95% by 2025, and a host of processes on the brink of commercial viability, including pyrolysis, solvolisis and microwave breakdown. Oh, and you can’t burn it as you suggsst to recover carbon as carbon itself burns. (Perhaps you have heard of coal?) Any thermal processing needs to be done in an inert environment to prevent burning. This is a today issue for Boeing, with the 777 which uses some carbon fibre components being withdrawn from service.Not biodegradable, but as
Not biodegradable, but as there is only 1kg of carbon fibre in a bike, it’s impact for example on landfill is often overstated. eg what weight of plastic packaging does your family dispose of over the 10+ year lifetime of a bike.Currently only a small percentage of carbon fibre does get recycled, typically into various types of building material, insulation and fillers. If you do a Google you will find that everybody and his dog is working on CF reuse and there are some innovative ideas out there, ranging from recovering fibres for use in new CF structures, to combination with plastics in 3d printing processes. This is undoubtedly an area we will get better at.
Bear in mind also that recycling of a metal framed bike is not without an environmental impact.
What puzzles me is the connection between expensive bikes and athletic prowess. Some cyclists take the view that you should “earn” the right to have an expensive/lightweight/aero bike by racing or by having some arbitary level of performance.I think some of this is triggered by envy from those who are perhaps leaner, younger and fitter, but also poorer.
You will probably find that
You will probably find that what you propose is illegal. There are strict guidelines on individuals setting up fixed CCTV to record outwith their own property. This is very different to a dashcam or helmet cam! I suspect your proposed installation would very quickly be tested by “Mr Loophole” or some other scumbag lawyer wheeled in by a traffic light jumping 4×4 driver arguing that the evidence was illegally collected.
i’m not a communist in any historical sense. stalinism was bad, post stalinism was bad, pre stalinism was bad. i can still point out the evils of consumerism. affluent commuter belt types tearing round the countryside on £3k bikes at the weekend doesnt seem right somehow. the athleticism / eco statement etc is fine. the economics, not.Who the he££ do you think you are judging people by how they spend their hard earned cash? My £3k bike does 5000 miles per year and will still be going at 10 years old. During that time the average golfer will spend £10k on membership fees alone.
And don’t give us the crap about equality – your average teenager from a working class background these days is equipped with a £600 iphone, plus contract, and subject to replacement every couple of years, not to mention £80 a pop trainers – because that is the choice their family make.
I choose not to spend £120 per month on Sky TV subscription, I choose not to buy the latest ultra HD ZLED TV, I no longer go to music concerts at £60 plus per ticket, I choose not to take beach holidays, I choose not to burn money smoking, and I am writing this on a 10 year old laptop that cost me £300. What gives you the right to question my spending choices?
What gives anybody the right
What gives anybody the right to say “my culture is superior to yours”?
As for those on here promoting British acceptance and tolerance of others? Just pause to think how many of those areas of the World currently troubled by terrorism, Civil War and poverty, have we, the honourable Brits waded into through history, redrawn maps, and attempted to impose our own cultural values by force? And no, I’m not talking about Victorian times, we are still at it today, from wars in the Middle East, to manning a garrison to prop up “Mr. Stone the gays” Sultan of Brunei.I always planned to retire to France in a few years but of course this Brexit clusterfuck is likely to put paid to that.There are a lot of irrational and unfounded fears among expat retirees that we will all be sent home after Brexit. I retired to France 2 years ago in my late 50’s, and due to the timing, was burn’t badly by the post referendum exchange rate, but then those of you still living in the UK buy everything from Orange Juice to Corn Flakes in dollars anyway so we were all burnt by 17M people voting to screw their own currency. But apart from exchange rate, the practicalities of moving have not, and will not, change. There are loads of Australians, Canadians and Americals retired here!
If the worst case scenario of no deal had happened, then we would simply have been treated as 3rd country citizens and subject to the same 3 questions that the immigration policy of most countries in the civilised world is based upon: 1) Are you coming to take a job away from a local French person – No! 2) Are you coming to sponge off the state – No! 3) Do you have independent means, eg a pension – Yes! At which point you will have the red carpet laid all the way to the local tax office where you will pay a fraction of the contribution HMRC would demand, and be rewarded with a standard of healthcare which makes the NHS look Dickensian. Put simply, retirees have a golden visa, and are welcomed by most open minded countries as the tourists who never go home.
In my case this was never about thinking Britain was a shithole, although I never found the 300 days per year of cloud pleasant, and I find the recent rise in xenophobic behaviours in the UK distasteful. For me it was that I always thought the way to live long and healthy is to continually develop and challenge yourself into old age. ie retire at 66 in your same house in the same neighbourhood and you may well slide into long grey days of Sudoku and daytime TV. Why spend all your life in the same back yard? Life for me is about doing new stuff, and a new country with 300 days per year of sunshine helps! Learning a new language for example is reckoned to be one of the best ways to maintain brain activity.
So don’t let Brexit deter you. I have never for one second regretted the move, I have a quality of life in excess of what I would have had retiring in the UK, and every day is a schoolday.
You are a student, and
You are a student, and suggest, not unreasonably, that your budget over the next few years might be tight. My advice would be to take a look at 2018 leftover stock, at the spec you are looking for, from a range of manufacturers. Typically 2018 models will be discounted by around 25-30% by now, and an independent might even be open to a bit of further hard negotiation. New bikes are a buyers market. Take your choice of either getting a better spec bike for the same budget, or getting your target spec with money left over for the beer fund.
£0 I live in the Vaucluse
£0 I live in the Vaucluse (think Ventoux), and quite happily leave my expensive carbon framed bike outside local cafes. Why would I drag around the weight of a bike lock?
