Odd fetishes

[quixoticgeek]

I have to agree, and what is all this talk of white and silver mudguards  Surely mudguards were black long before they were silver or white?  I remember owning a bike with white mudguards as a teenager in the 70s and I was more embarrassed than even a teenager in the 70s should have ever been

Round these parts, until relatively recently bikes had to have a black mudguard with the final x amount of the guard painted white. This dates from before reflectors were a viable option for most bikes, and so white paint was the next best thing. You occasionally still see bikes with the white section of mudguard.

J

[Nick H.]

Is that a custom frame bag?

[Bolt]

I have to agree, and what is all this talk of white and silver mudguards  Surely mudguards were black long before they were silver or white?  I remember owning a bike with white mudguards as a teenager in the 70s and I was more embarrassed than even a teenager in the 70s should have ever been

Round these parts, until relatively recently bikes had to have a black mudguard with the final x amount of the guard painted white. This dates from before reflectors were a viable option for most bikes, and so white paint was the next best thing. You occasionally still see bikes with the white section of mudguard.

J

and I seem to recall the same white on black adornment of "station bike" mudguards back in my early RAF days and I swear that I've seen some audaxers on recent rides who still maintain this tradition... a bit like invasion stripes on WWII aircraft

[Jakob W]

I thought the original Clubman-type lightweight mudguards were white/cream (celluloid? - is this what Bluemels were?), though lots of classic lightweights seem to have had guards painted to match the colour scheme. The white rear section on mudguards was IIRC required by Second World War blackout regs, but I don't know if it was about beforehand - it's the kind of thing that I associate with a classic Raleigh Roadster.

[Torslanda]

Being a 'child of the 60s' and the 'Cycling Proficiency' scheme, as delivered by the fearsome and stern PC Bennett - a legend in Middleton policing - I was MADE to set off and stop on the left foot. I was 8 years old and he was an awful lot bigger, especially in the hat!

Ten years later when he trained me to deliver the same training we were still instructing 'left foot down'.

When I, briefly, rode time trials we were pushed off right foot leading.

When I took motorcycle training a little later it was 'left foot down' so the right foot covered the rear brake* so, for me, it is ingrained. I can't do it any other way...




*YES. I DO know that Beezers, Trumpets and other old shite came with the gear pedal on the wrongother side. They're so few in number as to be statistically irrelevant . . .

[Zed43]

Is that a custom frame bag?

Yes, it's an Alpkit Stingray You create a template out of cardboard that just fits inside your frame, send it to Alpkit and they make you a fitting framebag.

I like mine a lot, the only change I would make is ask them to limit the depth of the (optional) "Document Pocket" on the RHS (just a horizontal seam 6" below the zipper) as now everything I put in there drifts down to the very bottom.

[rogerzilla]

Leading foot when descending?  Left foot here (I'm right footed).  I believe from Jobst Brandt's writings that this is conventional and deviants doing it the other way suffered from knackered Hollowtech (1st generation) cranks.  It's all about reverse torque.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/loosening-cranks.html

[The French Tandem]

Leading foot when descending?  Left foot here (I'm right footed).  I believe from Jobst Brandt's writings that this is conventional and deviants doing it the other way suffered from knackered Hollowtech (1st generation) cranks.  It's all about reverse torque.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/loosening-cranks.html

This is really the first time someone draws my attention on this fine point of cycling etiquette 

Right foot first for me (and for the two of us on the tandem). I never had any crank-related problem with that but I also never used hollowtech cranks. Maybe the two facts are related or not, I don't know.

A

[orienteer]

When descending I always lead with, and raise, the pedal on the inside of the bend to minimise the danger of grounding.

[Oxford_Guy]

When descending I always lead with, and raise, the pedal on the inside of the bend to minimise the danger of grounding.

I always do that too, especially on my Hewitt, which has wide MKS "Touring" pedals

[mzjo]

I always try to unclip the right foot because I tend to unclip whichever foot happens to be coming up to top of stroke. If I unclip the left foot in this situation I send the heel of my sandals into the rear wheel because the arthritis in my left ankle means that I unclip naturally to the inside (damn difficult to unclip it to the outside). Similarly on a tandem I use the rule that the foot that is down stays on the pedal, the one that is up goes on the ground.

re mudguard colour mine are always whatever happens to be on promo at the time. Is this a fetish?

[Kim]

Right foot forward (or upward) when freewheeling for me, except when I remember to:

When descending I always lead with, and raise, the pedal on the inside of the bend to minimise the danger of grounding.

...which I'm terrible at, on account of doing so many miles on recumbents where it doesn't matter.  This is readily apparent from an inspection of the cranks on my MTB.

[phantasmagoriana]

I'm right footed but I always set off with my left foot and put my right foot down at lights.

Same here. I can't do it the other way round - wish I could, as I always wear out right cleats much faster than left ones, and it would be nice to even it up a bit!

[Cudzoziemiec]

I do this unclipping business the other way round. I'm right-footed, always start off with right foot on pedal and unclip left foot when I stop. But I always unclip with the foot at the top of the pedal stroke. This doesn't matter when riding clipped in but when riding flats it means I have to manoeuvre the right-side pedal back through 180 degrees by placing my toe under it, in order for it to be in the right place to start off. And when freewheeling I habitually have the right foot down and slightly forward. Occasionally I even backpedal through half a revolution when starting off, in order to get two successive right-footed power strokes! I reckon my left leg is probably slighter shorter than my right, possibly as a result of a broken fibia yonks ago.

But none of this is a fetish, it's simply biomechanical convenience.

[grams]

When descending I always lead with, and raise, the pedal on the inside of the bend to minimise the danger of grounding.

I do this on even mild bends when on a freewheel bike, but then I also ride fixed a lot where I simply can’t, and I’ve never had a pedal hit the ground.

(It’s worth tilting your bike over and seeing just how far it needs to go)

Very easy to ground a pedal on a Brompton though.

[orienteer]

Much more likely to "ground" the LH pedal against a kerb or verge rather than the road surface.

[rogerzilla]

All this has reminded me to swap the SPDs on the singlespeed to single-sided when I convert it to fixed.  I need all the ground clearance I can get.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I did ground a pedal once by pedalling round a corner of Queen Sq in Bath sometime in the early '90s, but then the pedals did have sticky-out bits under the front edge (part of the way the toe clips were attached). On the motorbike I had at the same time, on the other hand, I regularly used to ground the exhaust and foot pegs (actually I think it was a bolt on the jubilee clip connecting the silencer to the exhaust). This is normal, it's why m/c foot pegs have little protrusions on the underside (known in Japlish as "hero knobs" ). But I didn't do that in Queen Sq! Bicycles just don't go fast enough or have a long enough wheelbase to attain the same lean angles.

[quixoticgeek]

My housemate, after years of crit racing, I gave her a road bike I bought online that didn't fit me properly, but fits her. Only given it's been nearly 20 years since she raced, she wasn't quite prepared for compact geometry and the greater bottom bracket drop. Pedaled through a corner, struck the ground and *splat*.

The only time I've had pedal strike is on my Brompton.

J

[zigzag]

it's quite easy to ground a pedal on tight corners in races, i've had it couple of times starting to pedal too soon out of a corner, luckily managed to stay upright

[LittleWheelsandBig]

I often used to deliberately pedal strike (gently) in the last lap of criteriums as it would tend to frighten the person on my wheel to leave a gap.

[rogerzilla]

Pedal strike is more of a risk on fixie conversions than on track bikes, especially if it's a bike built for 27" wheels (as many old steel frames with horizontal dropouts are) and converted to 700c wheels.  That 4mm (or a bit more, as 700c tyres tend to be skinnier than the old 27 x 1 1/4) can make all the difference.  Turning right at a mini-roundabout with a bit of a humped centre can ground the RH pedal with minimal lean.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've just had another thought about the foot thing: despite always using my right foot on the pedal when starting off, if riding a kick-along scooter I would use my left foot as the propelling leg.

[Basil]

I've just had another thought about the foot thing: despite always using my right foot on the pedal when starting off, if riding a kick-along scooter I would use my left foot as the propelling leg.

I'm the same.  Except the opposite way round.

[DuncanM]

The only time I had pedal strike was on my fixie (conversion from old school racer) banking into a corner. It bounced me up - I hit my knee on the saddle and somehow avoided hitting the deck. My knee almost tore my ancient B17 in half! The knee was a little sore but recovered fine, the saddle needed to be repaired with duck tape and was never the same. Thinking about it, I was running M545 pedals so I could use flats when necessary, if I had the customary 520s on there I might have got away with it.
I always unclip my left foot first (which has been handy since I hurt my right foot - unclipping hurts), but I can get on from either side.