A random thread for cycling things that don't really warrant their own thread

[Kim]

n+0.5

Not sure that's UCI legal, thobut.

[Andrij]

[insert obligatory chain comment]

[T42]

Just saw that Mavic are in receivership.

https://www.boursorama.com/bourse/actualites/le-specialiste-francais-du-velo-mavic-en-redressement-judiciaire-09057b2dfc46c494552fc3bba44bf26d

No more yellow cars on the TdF if that falls through.

[Cudzoziemiec]

n+0.5

[Steph]

https://twitter.com/theJeremyVine/status/1259466341330890754

[ElyDave]

https://twitter.com/theJeremyVine/status/1259466341330890754

Catch the woman on the scooter about 45 secs in 

[Kim]

<kim> there's an old guy on a mountain bike doing lengths of [our road]
<gerwin> Well, it's exercise innit
<kim> he's just abandoned the bike and got into a car outside our house
<kim> ...and got out of the car, back on the bike and has ridden off up [adjacent road]
<gerwin> ...
 * kim wonders if he was meeting his drug dealer         
<kim> or he was the drug dealer
<kim> evidently not a very good one, judging by the state of his bike
<kim> nevertheless that's the most exciting thing that's happened on our road since the bin men started coming a day early

[The Family Cyclist]

I'm lending a mate a bike. It's a Merida Race lite so a decent enough bike. Just put a set of cheap plastic pedals on it so he can use it..... My word they look hideous on it. I feel bad enough using mountain bike type spd pedals normally as my knees suffer with road ones but this is a new level of wrong.

[Deano]

Someone just ride past my window in an actual rain cape.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Random cycling thing that occurred to me while in pedestrian mode: now that car traffic is back to 80-90% of pre-covid levels and pedestrian traffic about 70% (here anyway), those pedestrians trying not to inhale strangers' breath particles or subject others to their own droplets, are experiencing routine close passes while on foot. Probably a few punishment passes too.

[Kim]

Someone just ride past my window in an actual rain cape.

Was it Canardly?

[Deano]

Someone just ride past my window in an actual rain cape.

Was it Canardly?

Nah, not his cycling gait. There were other clues, too.

[Cudzoziemiec]

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2020/jun/04/pedal-power-zambias-female-farmers-go-further-by-bike-in-pictures

[Kim]

The local oiks appear to be having a pushing-female-cyclists-into-the-canal spree.  Fuckers.

https://twitter.com/swat_transport/status/1271506381703610368

https://twitter.com/swat_transport/status/1271545794701791234

[Cudzoziemiec]

Bristol’s hills put off many people from cycling more regularly.

But this could soon end thanks to an invention imported from Norway which sees cyclists carried up a steep gradient by an escalator known as the Trampe lift or CycloCable.

A group of architects and city planners want to see the UK’s first CycloCable installed on Park Street to encourage more people to cycle in a post-Covid Bristol.

Comes around every couple of years.

[Kim]

I expect that'll get installed after they've finished the Faculty of Engineering chair-lift from Stoke Bishop to Queens Building.

[Cudzoziemiec]

That's going to be a hyperloop tunnel under the Downs connecting to a zipwire from the Water Tower to the Wills Memorial Building.

[Kim]

I remember doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations in some faculty design^[1] lecture to work out how long it would take for the hill to erode away through the natural action of mud from the Downs accumulating on the trousers and Sensible Footwear of SCIENCE and engineering students, drying and being shed over the course of the day, and removed by the cleaners in the evening.

I can't remember the numbers, but we concluded it would be on an equivalent timescale to the successful repair of Shite Bunker's roof, so the chair lift seemed a better bet.

The zipwire experience can be reproduced by cycling down Black Boy Hill on a borrowed bike with brakes adjusted for Cambridge (DAHIKT).


_{[1] The bit where they round everyone up and witter on about concrete without there being an exam at the end.}

[Cudzoziemiec]

It can even be your own bike with 1980s suicide levers, chromed steel rims and rain.

[Sergeant Pluck]

Saw a Brompton with tan sidewall tyres on my ride to work this morning. It looked very smart indeed.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Electric balance bikes are now a thing.
https://ebiketips.road.cc/content/news/mondraker-launch-the-grommy-e-balance-bike-2465
I'm sure it's fun but I'm not sure it functions as an introduction to cycling. Maybe though?

[Kim]

Seems fair enough, in as much as it looks like a much better-designed piece of kit than many of the electric ridable things you see children on, and as a two-wheeler it requires bicycle-balancing skills.  Same legal problem as the scooters and skateboards and so on, of course.

Legality aside, I can imagine an adult version (possibly with a step-through frame) being a useful mobility aid, on or off road.

[Mr Larrington]

This Unit will shortly be contacting divers vulture capitalists with a view to obtaining funding for an electric exercise bike.  No, not anything like a Peloton, fool, although the really expensive one will have Internet of Shit connectivity.

[Kim]

So you can use an app to check what clothes are hanging from it?

[Basil]

So you can use an app to check what clothes are hanging from it?