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Alternatively, lots of drivers are breaking the law because they know they are not going to get caught (for the most part) so it doesn’t matter.
You could just as easily say that as so many pedestrians complain about cycling on the pavement the law banning that clearly isn’t working so we should allow them to do so with impunity and so on.
However you slice it, it is just stoopid.
I disagree.
If there’s a law that makes a significant proportion of the population into criminals, then it raises a problem with selective enforcement.
e.g. imagine if you will a police officer tasked with keeping the roads safe (unlikely, but stay with me) and he realises that 90% of drivers are breaking the law. Imagine also that the same police officer has a major problem with people of a certain skin colour and s/he decides to only prosecute people that s/he personally doesn’t like.
Now, I get that random enforcement can be an effective way to police a population, but the problem is if the police are given too much freedom in when to prosecute or not. Especially if the police have a historic problem with racism.
The effective gear ratio goes back to the old penny farthings where the pedals were directly connected to the wheel, so the “actual” gear ratio was 1:1 (i.e. the wheel went round once as your foot went round once). Obviously, different wheel sizes would change the rider’s top speed and ability to go up hills – hence the “effective” gear ratio would be the ratio between crank length and wheel circumference (easy to measure) or the ratio between force applied at the pedal and force applied by the wheel on the ground.More rubbish, if your crank goes around once and your wheel goes around once, you have a gear ratio of 1:1. It is not difficult to understand is it.
I fail to see which part of my argument is classified as “rubbish” – could you provide more details please so that I can further improve my understanding?
In case it is your understanding that is lacking, here’s a helpful little breakdown: https://prevelobikes.com/blogs/news/bicycle-gear-ratio-gear-inches-and-gain-ratio
To fit in with that terminology, you are talking exclusively about “gear ratios” and I am talking about “gain ratios” (which I prefer to call “effective gear ratio”).
Okay, I’m conflicted with
Okay, I’m conflicted with this.
If a law is routinely broken by a sizable proportion of the population, then it suggests that the law isn’t effective and should be changed to become more relevant. I’m not convinced that speed alone makes that much difference to how someone drives (except for their kinetic energy when crashing) and I’d rather be sharing the road with someone paying attention and driving quickly than someone driving slowly and not paying attention.
However, I don’t think we should be increasing speed limits without putting more traffic police onto the streets and fixing the lax enforcement of general driving offences.
What we need is more giant hands to remove vehicles that stop on yellow box junctions.
Crank length DOES have an impact, 175 to 170 on for instance a 50×14 means the 175s give you an effective 3% lower ratio.Rubbish. Crank length does not make a difference. Gear ratio is the ratio of the size of the chainring compared with the size of the sprocket. For example, if your chainging is 4 times the size of your sprocket, for one rotation of the chainring your sprocket will go around 4 times. Your sprocket is attached to your wheel so your wheel will go around 4 times too. This ratio does not vary with the length of lever (crank) you use to turn that chainring.
If you still think that crank length changes the gear ratio think about having two different length cranks (yes, I have do it, I have considerably different length legs so thought I would experiment). Are you telling me that one leg is riding a different size gear from the other leg? If so, they must be going around at different speeds so one leg would eventually catch the other up and overtake it. Stupid thought isn’t it, stupid to think that crank length affects gear ratio.
However, the “effective” gear ratio is the ratio between force applied at the pedal and force applied by the back wheel and that can indeed be changed by different wheel sizes or crank lengths.
With your different length cranks, one foot will be applying more force (but over a shorter distance) than the other foot, but just measuring the gear ratios will miss out that aspect (admittedly, crank lengths don’t make a huge difference to cyclists). Similarly, changing your rear wheel for a different size (if it’s possible on your bike) will also change the “effective” gear ratio.
The effective gear ratio goes back to the old penny farthings where the pedals were directly connected to the wheel, so the “actual” gear ratio was 1:1 (i.e. the wheel went round once as your foot went round once). Obviously, different wheel sizes would change the rider’s top speed and ability to go up hills – hence the “effective” gear ratio would be the ratio between crank length and wheel circumference (easy to measure) or the ratio between force applied at the pedal and force applied by the wheel on the ground.
Looks like the picture
Looks like the picture stopped working. (And it’s back again. Something to do with me using the link to a picture uploaded in a comment without saving the comment).
As to getting them on and off
As to getting them on and off rims – I fitted mine myself and fitting isn’t easy, but similar in difficulty to a really tight fitting tyre. Getting them off again involved cutting the tyre with a knife, so not recommended on carbon fibre rims (unlikely combination, though).
The one I fitted on a unicycle was a nice yellow colour and the disadvantages (heavier, slower, bumpier) weren’t noticeable for that kind of riding.
For serious puncture protection I’d probably go for one of the heavier commuter tyres (Schwalbe Marathon Plus?) or run tubeless, though tubeless won’t help so much if you’re getting really big cuts on your tyres (and is more expensive and a bit more faff).
My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has responded. Called my GP surgery yesterday to be told that their best doctor had moved on elsewhere. Arse. I’m going to make an appointment to see someone, though.One of the things that complicates matters – as I mentioned in my first whiney post about this last year – is that although strictly speaking, I’m ‘supposed’ to be in the office every day, no one bothers if I’m not. I had what they call a ‘1:1’ with my boss a couple of months ago.
‘Are you in the office today?’
‘Erm .. no, I’m at home’
‘Yeah, fair enough. I’m not bothered either way, mate’
That’s great. But it doesn’t motivate me to get into the office.
My wife likes it. Well, she’s as concerned for my mental health as anyone, but when I’m home all day, every day, it means that the house gets kept clean. Dishes in the dishwasher, clothes washed and hanging up, work surfaces wiped down.
Anyway, this isn’t solving the problem.
I sort of fancy doing the Dunwich this year. Reckon I have enough time to prepare?
I can empathise with feeling “invisible” at work – it’s very demotivating. I try to focus on the positive aspects (I can get on with doing what I want, when I want with minimal interference), but it does wear you down. I often fantasise about switching jobs, but on balance, I think I’m better staying where I am as it pays the bills and is easy (for me, anyway).
Having no particular knowledge of doing the Dunwich (though I’m well up on the fictitious Dunwich and their fish-men), I’d state that yes, you most definitely do have enough time to prepare. July is plenty of time.
It’s not so much being invisible, as I know that they know when I’m there. But as I do all that computery, geeky shit, i can do it just as well sitting here in my living room, on the company VPN. I’ve been seriously tempted to go and rent a small flat in somewhere like Rome, and ‘WFH’ there, without telling anyone. I can get back in a day, for any meetings. But my wife would never go for it.
Likewise, I’m doing computery, geeky stuff as well, so I’m only really visible when things stop working – that means that upper management have no idea what I do but have a general feeling that I’m needed.
hah, yeah I know that! One day, a colleague (previous job) told me that when I had left to cycle home, someone had said, ‘What, erm..what exactly does [my name] do?’
‘Linux stuff’ he said.
‘Oh’
And that was that.
Yeah, I’m a linux admin part of the time and the other part of the time, I do DBA work which largely involves making developers cry.
My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has responded. Called my GP surgery yesterday to be told that their best doctor had moved on elsewhere. Arse. I’m going to make an appointment to see someone, though.One of the things that complicates matters – as I mentioned in my first whiney post about this last year – is that although strictly speaking, I’m ‘supposed’ to be in the office every day, no one bothers if I’m not. I had what they call a ‘1:1’ with my boss a couple of months ago.
‘Are you in the office today?’
‘Erm .. no, I’m at home’
‘Yeah, fair enough. I’m not bothered either way, mate’
That’s great. But it doesn’t motivate me to get into the office.
My wife likes it. Well, she’s as concerned for my mental health as anyone, but when I’m home all day, every day, it means that the house gets kept clean. Dishes in the dishwasher, clothes washed and hanging up, work surfaces wiped down.
Anyway, this isn’t solving the problem.
I sort of fancy doing the Dunwich this year. Reckon I have enough time to prepare?
I can empathise with feeling “invisible” at work – it’s very demotivating. I try to focus on the positive aspects (I can get on with doing what I want, when I want with minimal interference), but it does wear you down. I often fantasise about switching jobs, but on balance, I think I’m better staying where I am as it pays the bills and is easy (for me, anyway).
Having no particular knowledge of doing the Dunwich (though I’m well up on the fictitious Dunwich and their fish-men), I’d state that yes, you most definitely do have enough time to prepare. July is plenty of time.
It’s not so much being invisible, as I know that they know when I’m there. But as I do all that computery, geeky shit, i can do it just as well sitting here in my living room, on the company VPN. I’ve been seriously tempted to go and rent a small flat in somewhere like Rome, and ‘WFH’ there, without telling anyone. I can get back in a day, for any meetings. But my wife would never go for it.
Likewise, I’m doing computery, geeky stuff as well, so I’m only really visible when things stop working – that means that upper management have no idea what I do but have a general feeling that I’m needed.
Not sure I think working from home is the paradise it may initially seem. My wife does it one day a week and when I come home around 3, she’s still another 2 hours to go and me and my lad may as well leave anyway as anything we do will annoy her.Work should be for a workplace.
As has been mentioned, I’d be expected to do everything if I worked from home. I’d rather stay at work.
Yeah, I “work” from home one day a week and when my wife was doing different shifts, I’d get annoyed when she tried talking to me when I was “working” (“working” from home always goes into speech marks). What bugged me was that the whole reason that I was “working” from home was to concentrate on tricky jobs without being diverted by office chit-chat and then I’d get even more chit-chat at home. Luckily she’s now doing a standard 9-5 shift so it’s no longer an issue.
My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has responded. Called my GP surgery yesterday to be told that their best doctor had moved on elsewhere. Arse. I’m going to make an appointment to see someone, though.One of the things that complicates matters – as I mentioned in my first whiney post about this last year – is that although strictly speaking, I’m ‘supposed’ to be in the office every day, no one bothers if I’m not. I had what they call a ‘1:1’ with my boss a couple of months ago.
‘Are you in the office today?’
‘Erm .. no, I’m at home’
‘Yeah, fair enough. I’m not bothered either way, mate’
That’s great. But it doesn’t motivate me to get into the office.
My wife likes it. Well, she’s as concerned for my mental health as anyone, but when I’m home all day, every day, it means that the house gets kept clean. Dishes in the dishwasher, clothes washed and hanging up, work surfaces wiped down.
Anyway, this isn’t solving the problem.
I sort of fancy doing the Dunwich this year. Reckon I have enough time to prepare?
I can empathise with feeling “invisible” at work – it’s very demotivating. I try to focus on the positive aspects (I can get on with doing what I want, when I want with minimal interference), but it does wear you down. I often fantasise about switching jobs, but on balance, I think I’m better staying where I am as it pays the bills and is easy (for me, anyway).
Having no particular knowledge of doing the Dunwich (though I’m well up on the fictitious Dunwich and their fish-men), I’d state that yes, you most definitely do have enough time to prepare. July is plenty of time.
They’ve now published a
They’ve now published a summary article that has more info on the routes: https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/raced-north-bristol-city-centre-2635420
(Sorry – I can’t be bothered to copy/paste their different routes)
Not really long-term
Not really long-term experience, but I have tried them out (on a unicycle and a bike) and found them to have a very poor ride quality. To be fair, this was decades ago, so I’m sure that newer tyres are slightly better.
The major problem seems to be with how solid tyres absorb shocks. With a standard pneumatic tyre, a bump will cause deformation of the tyre around the bump and then the shock/pressure change gets distributed around the wheel via the air inside. With solid tyres, the bump doesn’t get distributed as well and thus you need harsher rubber to keep from bumping the rim.
The other issue is that solid tyres are heavier and it feels as though they absorb energy on rough surfaces – higher rolling resistance.
Unless you have a specific reason to use solid tyres, I’d give them a miss.
(By the way, a solid tyre worked okay on a unicycle. It was specifically for playing unicycle hockey and I needed a non-marking tyre for use in church-halls etc.)
Edit: Just remembered that although you can’t get punctures, I did notice that the solid tyres pick up quite a few nicks and cuts which doesn’t help their ride quality at all.
I now want either a Klein bottle or some associated merchandise..
What works for me is making
What works for me is making cycling into a habit. If I start thinking about cycling, I find I end up concentrating on the negatives and so the best solution for me is to not think about it as I forget that it’s supposed to be fun. The fun aspect is also the grounding aspect – you notice the wind, greenery, glorious sunshine (NOT) and it’s all physical sensations leading to a sense of well-being and nothing to do with the brain sticking its oar in and worrying.
However, you’ve clearly got a problem making it into a habit, so along with seeking help from a GP and others, I’d repeat MungeCrundle’s advice. Go for a 5 minute ride with no expectations – don’t even necessarily put on all your kit – just pootle around a bit.
On a tangent (nothing to do with bikes) – I wish I could syphon off the energy and enthusiasm that Cliff Stoll has: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU
For mobile phone use, how about removal of thumbs as a punishment?That’d be unfair – what if they ever need to hitch-hike?