Bikes are the coolest invention in the universe

wrath
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*couldnā€™t find a well, youā€™re not wrong GIF* :blush:

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The latter is probably my outside limit for commuting anywhere, depending on hills, traffic, weather and dogs.

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Iā€™ve been in a bunch of the those threads in the past, and it clicked that thatā€™s why it was part of wrath. Somehow I missed that @beschizza was responsible for it being part of the wrath category. Iā€™m not surprised it was him though.

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And since weā€™re only talking about less than 7kg of stuff, you can get one you can just about fap to for only ten times that much! :smiley:

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I never caught wrath from Jobst- but I didnā€™t spend much time there after that run-in. I did learn to build wheels by reading his book.
I didnā€™t need to deal with people having heated debates about Sturmey-Archer hubs. Not my jam.
I am glad there are people that passionate about bikes.

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just checking. if it was the latter I would urge you toward a drop-bar roadie over, say, a flat-bar hybrid or like a used MTB with slicks, but you can comfortably do your distance on whatever bike style appeals to you. maybe we went over this already? whatever. redundancy.

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Costco has a behemoth fat tired beast that they stocked a few weeks back. Iā€™ve already seen a few hitting my local streets.

If you want to get a cheaper ride, if you are near an REI - check with the bike shop before the garage sale event, they may let you know if they have something in your size, sometimes they will even sell it then to avoid the garage sale rush hassle.

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And yet here we are, still discussin Sheldon, Jobst, and Forrester.

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I will look up those terms and follow that advice.

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so hereā€™s a thing destined to never be adopted by the riding public

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I couldnā€™t quite envision how it worked so I checked youtube. Which was surprisingly helpful to the point where if I had to take off the rear wheel to change a tube out or something, I would know how. I still donā€™t quite get how it drives the rear wheel though. :laughing:

It does look really cool but I couldnā€™t pay $3,500 on one.

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that was mostly what I meant about its destiny to obscurity. it requires a custom frame, you canā€™t just slap the drivetrain on the frame you already have. all that proprietary tech costs a lot. thatā€™s also the reason I donā€™t have a belt drive right now, either.

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To be fair, belt drives are a lot less of a leap than that string bike thing. You can put a conventional drivetrain on a belt drive bike, no probs. And there seems to be a niche forming for machines that have removable dropouts to allow for various configurations. Not all that difficult to include the possibility of a belt drive, by having the seatstay and chainstay attach separately, and obviate the need for a bastard eccentric BB by making it a sliding mountā€¦

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I am happy to say that both of you are wrong about it being overly expensive, and hopefully about it being destined to obscurity. Hell, now that I know they are relatively reasonably priced I am seriously considering saving up to buy one at some point.

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http://www.stringbike.com/stringbike_bike_sline.html

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http://www.stringbike.com/stringbike_bike_aline.html

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http://www.stringbike.com/stringbike_bike_dsigners.html

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I went off the price listed on Wired. :laughing: But at $1,300 itā€™s still a bit out of my budget at the moment. Iā€™m happy itā€™s not $3,500 any more though.

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I went off the price listed on Wired at first as well, but then I went back and realized the article was 4 years old and that piqued my interest as to whether or not there had been progress with pricing over the last 4 years, and lo and behold there had!

EDIT: I just need to add, what they have done with the fixie, the first bike pictured in my above post, and listed for $1090, is fucking genius. They have removed the handlebar gear shifter, but because there is no oil to worry about getting on your hands, and because the mechanism is simple to change manually, you shift before you ride. I love it.

Single speed with 19 gears:
Bearing in mind the purity of the new bicycle, the gear shifter was removed and replaced with the lightest solution in order to change gears. To achieve the best performance, the rider can adjust the pulley manually up and down before riding the bike. This direct solution provides the benefit of the integrated 19 gears of Stringbike.

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Doesnā€™t that mean you have to get off the bike before going up a hill?

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But itā€™s a fixie anyways, so you can treat it like a fixie but still have the ability to adjust the gearing before rides if you wantā€¦ or during rides if you really have to. I imagine this is because there would probably have to be an increase in price if they wanted to manufacture different pedal/gear/string things that were missing the extra gear options, specifically for fixies. I bet the price is kept lower in terms of manufacturing if they just keep using the sameā€¦ well whatever these things :arrow_down: are.

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I really like their A Line. I know they say itā€™s good for cargo but Iā€™m curious how practical it is for a rack and pannier.

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