MishMash

Bicycle innovation

It's easy to assume that there isn't a whole lot innovation going on in (push) bikes. Shimano serve the 80% well enough that the companies serving the 20% are dropping products or going out of business. Like Sachs, who used to make freewheels you could build up from individual sprockets: no more.

Look a little harder, however, and it turns out that there is some innovation going on. Rohloff have an efficient 14 speed hub gear, and Schlumpf have a range of sealed front gears based on a cargo clutch and a planetary gear.

In combination? A considerably wider gear range than a derailleur will give you. I rather fear though that the transition between ranges will be a nuisance, so riding at the middle of the total range with either a mountain drive or a high speed drive, both of which apparently aim produce two gear ranges with em>no overlap, might be a bit of a pain.

This translates in to some hefty price tags, of course.

All that engineering innovation from Schlumpf clearly hasn't left time for thinking about web site usability.

Belated Happy New Year

Well in to the New Year, but here's a note to say "I'm back".

An enjoyable time was spent over the holidays, Christmas at my parents, Hogmanay in the Lake District with friends. Unlike last year, when the lakes produced its worst for a solid week, before producing its best for a week after we'd left, we got some pretty good weather this time. I spent two days walking, the rest mountain biking (and staying in playing board games).

I'm pretty pleased with the mountain biking thing. I've had a mountain bike for years, but rarely used it for its intended purpose. For a while I had slicks on it, and used it to commute, but I recently bought a friend's (Toby's) old tourer. A pair of cast off tires from another friend (Jon) and some new brakes got it off-road worthy again. I also added clipless pedals and associated shoes just for fun (OK, really because mountain biking in clips strikes me as insane, and riding without being firmly connected to the bike impossible). The only problem is that the accessory I need most urgently if I am to get into mountain biking is … a driving licence and car.

If anyone is planning to start out with clipless pedals, I can't recommend off road on ice. Even worse is off road, on ice, with only a front brake. How it happened I don't know, but half way round the one full day out I did (with Jez, Jon, Fran, Rob) I discovered that I didn't have anything in the back brake. A check revealed that I had completely lost a block, along with its bolt. How I have no idea, I guess it just needed to be tighter. After some discussion, and two recommendations to move the front brake to the back, I decided not to because my automatic reaction from riding on road is to use the front; not having a front brake just feels wrong. I'm still not sure I'd have been happy without the front, but only having a front brake certainly contributed to coming off on the next descent. It was one of those wonderfully slow arcs, when you teeter on the brink for just long enough to think you might get lucky, before you don't. My feet came out of the pedals, and I managed not to collapse in a tangle of me and bike, but something hit the rear derailleur and bent the hanger. I got round the rest of the ride reasonably respectably on a bike with one brake, and on which I could use my bottom gear without the derailleur pinging on the spokes, couldn't use the small sprocket either because the cage was offset and wouldn't reach that far.

Hey ho. Lucky it's a steel frame and I should be able to bend it back into shape, though I'd better try not to do it too often.

Dave's Etape du Tour

Dave's Etape du Tour is a well written account from a mountain biker taking on a Tour de France stage, pointed out by Al:

With 10 kilometres to go I’d exhausted my mental arithmetic and we were climbing up hills as well. I had no idea whether it was feasible to still make silver, but I tried anyway. My leg muscles signed all sorts of loan agreements with other parts of my body and borrowed heavily to gain more energy. I surprised myself with my speed up the final climb and turned to visualisation to get me to the finish.