Unfortunately no. I have to leave my bike locked up outside a bar all night, and my town is infested with tweaker bike thieves (but I’ve had bikes stolen in many other places here). Really, I just had to let it go. It really is that bad where I am, and you eventually have to leave it locked up somewhere, like a grocery store or library. And if you can’t leave a $25 dollar mountain bike locked up with a good quality lock for an hour without it getting stolen then I give up.
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Hey, those videos remind me of an idea I had a while ago.
Dropper post on a road bike. To my mind it makes perfect sense; the ideal seat height for making power can make some of the more adventurous moves possible pretty sketchy. It’d be great if you could flick a lever and drop the seat 8" or so; aside from making the bike a lot more versatile, it could conceivably add safety in some kinds of situations, like this, for example:
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I mean, sure, but: road bike manufacturers have been pushing the “integrated seat post” on frames to reduce weight. Carbon posts. Carbon railed saddles. Carbon everything.
Do we really think the weight penalty (and the maintenance…) would fly in that world for the handful of times you’d (likely) ever use the thing?
Maybe on the increasingly popular “gravel bikes” I see on all the blogs? Though I’ve no idea where people keep finding all these gravel roads…
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Yeah, obviously it’s not the thing for a particularly light or aero bike, but given the increasing diversification of 700C-based machinery, I’m tipping it might be a thing one of these days.
Most of the ideas I’ve had like this have eventually come to pass…
Fat bikes came to pass. And I hate those things.
I see all these fat tired road bikes with handlebar bags and lights and whatever and I’ve no idea where these people live that having a dedicated gravel bike is a worthwhile idea. Out here, it’s a mtb bike in the woods or a road bike on pavement. I know that in many ways, I’m not the most progressive in how I think about bikes, but I’ve been around the stuff for a long time. I’ve done the touring thing. I’ve done the cross thing. Singlespeeds. Fixed. And fads are fun, but ultimately I keep coming back to the same basics.
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Yeah, my thinking is that the road bike is the most general-purpose design, and everything else is a specialisation. I think the trials riders in the videos above demonstrate that a road bike does better at trials or MTB better than a trials bike or MTB does on the road, and if you could change the seat height on the fly, you’d have an extremely versatile bike.
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Where I live, some people have them as dedicated snow bikes.
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I always felt the post-war English 3-speed was as close to a generic evolution of the 1880s safety bicycle as we’ve ever had, and everything else is a specialization.
Bike-car comparisons are a facile cliché, but what the heck.
To me the Raleigh Roadster above is something like the most basic concept of an automobile, the least exciting and most conservative utilitarian all-rounder for the city or country. Think “Lada”.
Road bikes are sports cars. High-end race bikes are race cars. Easy.
Mountain bikes used to be rugged and barebones Toyota FJ40s, now are super-capable but arguably overdone Wrangler Rubicon Hard Rock Mega Macho Mutilator Special Editions (or whatever).
Fat bikes are those American-scale lifted SUV-pickups with tractor tires and tractor torque. Bromptons are Smart cars. Those classic dependable Peugeot tourers from the 70s are, well, those classic dependable Peugeot tourers from the 70s.
You get the idea. I happen to agree with the likes of Grant Petersen in thinking that the general perception that professional sports racing bikes should be the standard for any sort of serious real life cycling is kind of wacky.
To badly paraphrase (keeping in the automotive theme), even a Ferrari buyer expects fenders, lights, some storage capability, a body that lasts more than one season and tires that last more than one day – even though the “halo” Formula One model needs none of that durability or practicality crap.
Edit: Curly quotes. We’re not savages.
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Thank you for reminding me of my favorite time in my biking history. I rode an old Raleigh in my teens on all sorts of off-road tracks that would now be done solely with mountain bikes. One guy saw me riding through the woods and asked if he could ride with me on a regular basis, because he needed to up his training (he was a football player). He meant it, too, it wasn’t a pick-up line. As far as I’m concerned, there has never been another bike to rival that Raleigh.
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An alternative to a hub generator would be to mount Neodymium magnets on the spokes, and a coil on the frame. Pass that to a rectifier bridge, a capacitor and regulator. (Stick some gears on it and call it pedal punk.)
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I’ve used a race bike minus every accessory (it’s got less on it than a racing race bike) to commute for more than 20 years, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I plainly don’t need the accessories (okay, I have lights), I don’t need more than 8kg of bike, more than 16/20 spokes, etc… I have established that. So I continue to enjoy the performance.
… Although I’ve been meaning to get a nice set of mudguards for the pub bike for a while, there’s that.
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Given almost every rim these days isn’t a box section, you could stick the magnets on the side of the rim above the brake track.
… Not that I approve of making the rim heavier…
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They make something like this with a ring of magnets mounted near the axle ont he spokes, I think the problem is the field strength diminishing if you get knocked out of alignment.
I need to build up a front hub generator. They Sanyo H27 is now only about $50 for the hub and there are others in the market the sound like they perform well (Shutter) for $150.
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I have something very similar, but it’s more in the Dutch style with a lower top tube, hub gears and back pedal brakes.
It’s pretty reliable, although I’m not too excited about the hub mechanism. The good thing is that people here don’t seem to care much if you’re using what looks like a women’s bike with a lot of features that are useful for fairly short, flat rides. An upright riding position is good if you’re with kids too.
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Classy and practical. This would be my best guess for it in the increasingly strained car-tegorization equivalence attempt.
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Actually, my idea for a dropper post was much neater and simpler than the expensive MTB system - you do it on a beam bike like the Zipp 2001. There’s a pivot at the front of the beam behind the head tube, and instead of an elastomer holding it up, you have a ram that works like the one in an office chair.
So… kinda like the old Softride beam bikes, but with a pivot?
Better.
Partially to keep this topic within the 30 day cutoff, and partially to share a new project I’m working on:
I’m not sure tumblr is/was the right choice for this thing, but there it is, anyway.
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