The bicycle.

[Project Willow]

^ I just imagined you in a bed of lettuce. That's what makes prints on my face. Can't ever get up and go somewhere right away.

[Project Willow]

[Gnomad]

Motorized ones, even such as these with pedals too, are already a spiritually impoverished cousin of a pedal-only bicycle.
Noisy, heavy and complicated machines.

Electric-assisted ones - such that only aid while pedaling and not ones that can be driven solely on electric motor, on the other hand, may well serve people whose own muscles can't do it anymore - or helping really fat people get started on it.



(btw, got my first holiday in a year, from wrenching... Boy, do I deserve this)

[wintler2]

Motorized ones, even such as these with pedals too, are already a spiritually impoverished cousin of a pedal-only bicycle.
Noisy, heavy and complicated machines.

Electric-assisted ones - such that only aid while pedaling and not ones that can be driven solely on electric motor, on the other hand, may well serve people whose own muscles can't do it anymore - or helping really fat people get started on it.



(btw, got my first holiday in a year, from wrenching... Boy, do I deserve this)

My sis & i have been lobbying mum to get an electric bike. At 71 she still rides the 25min to work (i know!) whenever weather permits, but her strength & sense of balance are deteriorating and electric-assist could let her enjoy biking for years more. What i'm wondering is, would it be worth making the leap to a trike as well as electric-assist? Have heard mixed reviews on trike stability on urban streets.

[Gnomad]

At that age any exercise is good for you. If it seems she no longer has the strength, go for an electric assist one (and don't buy the cheapest possible one, often they put on real cheap components to offset the price of the motor and especially the battery...) Sadly, decent e-bikes may cost as much as a motorbike or a moped...

With trikes, the only tricky thing is cornering. They don't lean like 2-wheeled ones, so it is possible to topple it if taking a corner at speed. Which an elderly person is probably not as likely to do If she feels she has problems with balance, sure, get a trike. It will probably be safer for her, as you can no longer fall when starting off or stopping.

Over here, it is that time of the year again. The white stuff just keeps on piling up, if it goes on like this we might have over a meter of it by the end of the winter
I'm so wanting a fat bike with the 4+ inch tires... This is from yesterday - that road has already been plowed once some few hours earlier

[wintler2]

At that age any exercise is good for you. If it seems she no longer has the strength, go for an electric assist one (and don't buy the cheapest possible one, often they put on real cheap components to offset the price of the motor and especially the battery...) Sadly, decent e-bikes may cost as much as a motorbike or a moped...

Yep, AU2500 its looking like, cue "i couldn't spend that much on a bike!", despite riding her bike 10x more than her car!

Over here, it is that time of the year again. The white stuff just keeps on piling up, if it goes on like this we might have over a meter of it by the end of the winter
I'm so wanting a fat bike with the 4+ inch tires... This is from yesterday - that road has already been plowed once some few hours earlier

Okay i'm impressed, that sounds like hard work. I rose 40km of the Goulburn Valley rail trail last week with friends (~3hrs), and then had v.nice dinner in Mansfield .. great place for a bike holiday.

[Iamwhomiam]

The trike would be best, considering your concern for your mother's ability to maintain her balance. Having it electrified would be ideal for allowing her to maintain her routine. There are several options to explore. Electrified hubs, where the motor is in the wheel's large diameter hub, are available in a few different power ranges (speeds; distance) or an aftermarket add-on unit that powers the wheel through direct friction. Cheapest.

Buying a trike that's already electrified would be fairly expensive, I imagine, but that's probably the best option. However, depending upon your relationship with your mother, you might want to consider Audi's 80kmh E-Bike. (More)

I'm only familiar with Surly's Fat Bikes. http://snowbikes.wordpress.com/

[vanlose kid]

Greece Debt Crisis Spurs Surge In Bicycle Use Over Cars

Reuters | Posted: 08/08/2012 8:04 am Updated: 08/08/2012 10:52 am


* Greeks cut back on fuel and taxis

* Once lowly bike gaining popularity

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Greece's dire economic plight has forced thousands of businesses to close, thrown one in five out of work and eroded the living standards of millions. But for bicycle-maker Giorgos Vogiatzis, it's not all bad news.

The crisis has put cash-strapped Greeks on their bikes - once snubbed as a sign of poverty or just plain risky - and Greek manufacturers are shifting into fast gear.

The high cost of road tax, fuel and repairs is forcing Greeks to ditch their cars in huge numbers. According to the government's statistics office, the number of cars on Greek roads declined by more than 40 percent in each of the last two years. Meanwhile, more than 200,000 bikes were sold in 2011, up about a quarter from the previous year.

Shops selling bicycles, and equipment ranging from helmets to knee pads, are spreading fast across the capital, popping up even between souvenir shops on the cobbled pedestrian streets of the touristy Plaka district.

"They're sprouting up like mushrooms," said Vogiatzis, who designs and builds tailor-made bicycles in his workshop on the Aegean island of Rhodes.

A former cyclist on Greece's national team, Vogiatzis opened his business in the mid-80s, combining his love for drawing and mathematics, but only recently watched sales boom from a modest 40 bikes a year to over 350.

"There's no more money for luxuries and that helps," said Vogiatzis, who works away furiously with two other staff to meet demand for all sorts of bikes - some lavishly hand-painted in glitter, others flaunting the Greek flag.

"People who were never interested in cycling are buying bikes," he added. Vogiatzis now exports to seven countries including Germany and the United States, and opened shops across Greece, including in Athens where competition is fierce.

A far cry from the shuttered shopfronts in the capital that have become a painful reminder of the country's worst downturn since World War Two, bike shop owners estimate that at least one store opened every month in 2011.

Vogiatzis laughed: "Every neighbourhood has its bike shop just as it's got its kebab shop."


POTHOLES, TRAFFIC JAMS

In austerity Greece, the once lowly bike is winning new fans every day, from middle-aged commuters who relied on their cars to those who poked fun at former prime minister George Papanadreou's penchant for cycling as not being macho enough.

The new national fashion has even prompted the Athens mayor to start working on a public bike hire scheme similar to those in other European capitals - a first for a city where the few cycling lanes are often dotted with pine trees or parked cars.

The lack of infrastructure and Athens's mountainous landscape have not deterred Greece's new cyclists who have begun pedalling through traffic jams, up and down steep hills and over potholed roads.

"This is not Berlin. Here it's risky but you need to start thinking what you'll cut back on - taxis, the metro," said Elena Koniaraki, 39, a music saleswoman who joked about sticking a learner's sign on her back for the first few bumpy rides.

A pay cut two years ago forced Koniaraki to give up her car under a "cash for clunkers" scheme as she could no longer afford to pay the road tax or fill up her tank. She also moved from her house in a leafy northern Athens suburb to the centre.

And to get through a cash squeeze in March, she picked up a second-hand bike for the first time since childhood.

"At first my friends would laugh at me and say: Oh, poverty!" said Koniaraki, who now cycles to work from the foothills of the ancient Acropolis, past shop-gazing tourists in Plaka and through the bustling Syntagma square.

"We've never had a bike culture in Greece. Sometimes I'll leave my local street market on my bike, loaded with bags of tomatoes, and people will stop and wave at me," she said.


THE ONLY WAY IS UP

With fuel prices catapulted by tax rises to about 1.72 euros per litre in July - one of the highest rates in Europe - a bike culture may just develop.

"A lot of people are starting to see it as an alternative," said Tolis Tsimoyannis, a cycling aficionado who imports fold-up bikes from Taiwan.

Tsimoyannis, who opened his business in 2006, said he saw a steady increase in demand in the previous two years, many of his customers students and people in their 40s who were struggling to make ends meet. Lately, his business has started to level out - not because of a drop in demand but because the opening of so many bike shops means they each get a smaller piece of the pie.

But even as prospects of Greece's recession-mired economy remain glum and many fear the pain from the crisis will only intensify in the days ahead, bike enthusiasts are optimistic that the appeal of the bicycle will only grow.

"The only way is up," Tsimoyannis said. (Editing by Peter Graff)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/0 ... f=business

*

[Project Willow]

[barracuda]

[MacCruiskeen]

We still don’t really know how bicycles work

Forget mysterious dark matter and the inexplicable accelerating expansion of the universe; the bicycle represents a far more embarrassing hole in the accomplishments of physics.

By Michael Brooks / Published 06 August 2013 11:21 / New Statesman

http://www.newstatesman.com/sport/2013/ ... es-bicycle


Cyclists during the Tour de France. Photo: Getty

Let’s be honest, a bit of the pleasure at Chris Froome’s victory in the Tour de France is down to this being our second victory in a row and to the thought that the French haven’t won it since 1985. What must be worse for them, though, is that when it comes to the science of team cycling, even the Belgians are in front.

At the University of Mons, researchers are developing something called the Anaconda. It’s never going to be much of a speed machine because it is, in effect, a chain of monocycles with handlebars. These units are connected, by means of hinges that allow them to snake along, to a normal two-wheeled bike at the front. Every rider in the chain can be going in a slightly different direction, which means it takes an enormous amount of control and collaboration to move the thing forward. According to Olivier Verlinden, chief engineer on the project, the main qualification for riders is to be unafraid of falling off.

It’s fun, apparently. The idea is to unleash it as a beach-resort bike, the kind of thing that stag and hen parties will use to terrorise seaside towns across the world. But it is also scientifically interesting. Why? Because we still don’t really know how bicycles work.

It is rare that most people appreciate the bicycle, but it is quite an extraordinary machine. Push a riderless bike, letting it roll freely at high enough speeds, and it can withstand pushes from the side – it will wobble a little, but quickly recover [2]. In the conventional analysis, that is because the gyroscopic force of the front wheel, its mass and the spontaneous turn of the handlebars all act together to keep the bicycle rolling forwards. This has something to do with the gyroscopic effect, the force that keeps a spinning top upright. You can feel this by removing a wheel from your pushbike and spinning it while you hold the axle spindles. If you try to change the orientation of the wheel, you’ll feel it push back against you.

The first mathematical analysis of bicycles suggested that this is also what keeps a moving bike on its wheels. But although the equations were written down in 1910, physicists always had nagging doubts about whether this was the whole story.

The most definitive analysis came exactly a century later. It involved an experimental bicycle that had all its gyroscopic effects cancelled out by a system of counter-rotating wheels. The effort of building such a strange contraption was worth it: the resulting paper was published in the prestigious journal Science.

The publication plunged bicycle dynamics back into chaos. It turns out that taking into account the angles of the headset and the forks, the distribution of weight and the handlebar turn, the gyroscopic effects are not enough to keep a bike upright after all. What does? We simply don’t know. Forget mysterious dark matter and the inexplicable accelerating expansion of the universe; the bicycle represents a far more embarrassing hole in the accomplishments of physics.

And it may not be solved any time soon; very few researchers are working full-time on bicycle dynamics and there’s very little money in it. Once we’ve discovered exactly how these contraptions work, it might be possible to come up with bold new designs of bicycle – perhaps even better than the Anaconda. But nobody is desperate for that to happen; not even the French.

Maybe that’s OK. In an age where we have worked out the history of the cosmos and the secret of life, it’s rather nice that the humble bicycle keeps our feet on the ground.

Tags: Cycling

http://www.newstatesman.com/sport/2013/ ... es-bicycle

[Luther Blissett]

That's incredible.

And I just wanted to iterate, if I haven't already, that I love my old birch beer Schwinn Continental. I've put a lot of work into it this summer and I've been having a great commute. I was able to take some excess weight out of my gears and that, combined with my recent discovery that magnesium supplements seem to balance my ph levels and make me sweat less, has made me a little less of a disgusting human being during the hot months.

[beeline]

Zoomable image at link:

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0211/4926/files/bicycle_layout_zoom_0905_2.png?3095

[Mask]

[Luther Blissett]

Is It O.K. to Kill Cyclists?
By DANIEL DUANE
November 9, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO — EVERYBODY who knows me knows that I love cycling and that I’m also completely freaked out by it. I got into the sport for middle-aged reasons: fat; creaky knees; the delusional vanity of tight shorts. Registering for a triathlon, I took my first ride in decades. Wind in my hair, smile on my face, I decided instantly that I would bike everywhere like all those beautiful hipster kids on fixies. Within minutes, however, I watched an S.U.V. hit another cyclist, and then I got my own front wheel stuck in a streetcar track, sending me to the pavement.

I made it home alive and bought a stationary bike trainer and workout DVDs with the ex-pro Robbie Ventura guiding virtual rides on Wisconsin farm roads, so that I could sweat safely in my California basement. Then I called my buddy Russ, one of 13,500 daily bike commuters in Washington, D.C. Russ swore cycling was harmless but confessed to awakening recently in a Level 4 trauma center, having been hit by a car he could not remember. Still, Russ insisted I could avoid harm by assuming that every driver was “a mouth-breathing drug addict with a murderous hatred for cyclists.”

The anecdotes mounted: my wife’s childhood friend was cycling with Mom and Dad when a city truck killed her; two of my father’s law partners, maimed. I began noticing “cyclist killed” news articles, like one about Amelie Le Moullac, 24, pedaling inside a bike lane in San Francisco’s SOMA district when a truck turned right and killed her. In these articles, I found a recurring phrase: to quote from The San Francisco Chronicle story about Ms. Le Moullac, “The truck driver stayed at the scene and was not cited.”

In stories where the driver had been cited, the penalty’s meagerness defied belief, like the teenager in 2011 who drove into the 49-year-old cyclist John Przychodzen from behind on a road just outside Seattle, running over and killing him. The police issued only a $42 ticket for an “unsafe lane change” because the kid hadn’t been drunk and, as they saw it, had not been driving recklessly.

You don’t have to be a lefty pinko cycling activist to find something weird about that. But try a Google search for “cyclist + accident” and you will find countless similar stories: on Nov. 2, for example, on the two-lane coastal highway near Santa Cruz, Calif., a northbound driver lost control and veered clear across southbound traffic, killing Joshua Alper, a 40-year-old librarian cycling in the southbound bike lane. As usual: no charges, no citation. Most online comments fall into two camps: cyclists outraged at inattentive drivers and wondering why cops don’t care; drivers furious at cyclists for clogging roads and flouting traffic laws.

My own view is that everybody’s a little right and that we’re at a scary cultural crossroads on the whole car/bike thing. American cities are dense enough — and almost half of urban car trips short enough, under three miles — that cities from Denver to Miami are putting in bike-share programs. If there’s one thing New York City’s incoming and departing mayors agree on, it’s the need for more bike lanes.

The American Medical Association endorses National Bike to Work Day, and more than 850,000 people commute on a bicycle, according to the League of American Bicyclists. Nationwide, cycling is the second most popular outdoor activity after running, supporting a $6.1 billion industry that sold 18.7 million bikes last year.

But the social and legal culture of the American road, not to mention the road itself, hasn’t caught up. Laws in most states do give bicycles full access to the road, but very few roads are designed to accommodate bicycles, and the speed and mass differentials — bikes sometimes slow traffic, only cyclists have much to fear from a crash — make sharing the road difficult to absorb at an emotional level. Nor does it help that many cyclists do ignore traffic laws. Every time I drive my car through San Francisco, I see cyclists running stop signs like immortal, entitled fools. So I understand the impulse to see cyclists as recreational risk takers who deserve their fate.

But studies performed in Arizona, Minnesota and Hawaii suggest that drivers are at fault in more than half of cycling fatalities. And there is something undeniably screwy about a justice system that makes it de facto legal to kill people, even when it is clearly your fault, as long you’re driving a car and the victim is on a bike and you’re not obviously drunk and don’t flee the scene. When two cars crash, everybody agrees that one of the two drivers may well be to blame; cops consider it their job to gather evidence toward that determination. But when a car hits a bike, it’s like there’s a collective cultural impulse to say, “Oh, well, accidents happen.” If your 13-year-old daughter bikes to school tomorrow inside a freshly painted bike lane, and a driver runs a stop sign and kills her and then says to the cop, “Gee, I so totally did not mean to do that,” that will most likely be good enough.

“We do not know of a single case of a cyclist fatality in which the driver was prosecuted, except for D.U.I. or hit-and-run,” Leah Shahum, the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, told me.

Laws do forbid reckless driving, gross negligence and vehicular manslaughter. The problem, according to Ray Thomas, a Portland, Ore., attorney who specializes in bike law, is that “jurors identify with drivers.” Convictions carry life-destroying penalties, up to six years in prison, Mr. Thomas pointed out, and jurors “just think, well, I could make the same mistake. So they don’t convict.” That’s why police officers and prosecutors don’t bother making arrests. Most cops spend their lives in cars, too, so that’s where their sympathies lie.

Take Sgt. Richard Ernst of the San Francisco Police Department, who confronted people holding a memorial at the scene of Ms. Le Moullac’s death. Parking his squad car in the bike lane, forcing other cyclists into the very traffic that killed Ms. Le Moullac, Sergeant Ernst berated those gathered, according to witnesses, and insisted that Ms. Le Moullac had been at fault. Days earlier, the department had told cycling activists that it had been unable to find surveillance footage of the crash.

Provoked by Sergeant Ernst, people at the memorial decided to look for themselves. It took them all of 10 minutes to find an auto shop nearby with a camera that had footage of the incident. The police eventually admitted that the truck driver was at fault, but they still have not pressed charges.

Smart people are working to change all this. Protected bike lanes are popping up in some cities, separated from car traffic. Several states have passed Vulnerable User Laws placing extra responsibility on drivers to avoid harming cyclists and pedestrians. Nobody wants to kill a cyclist, but the total absence of consequence does little to focus the mind. These laws seek to correct that with penalties soft enough for authorities to be willing to use them, but severe enough to make drivers pay attention. In the Oregon version, that means a license suspension and a maximum fine of $12,500 or up to 200 hours of community service and a traffic-safety course.

Cycling debates often break along predictable lines — rural-suburban conservatives opposed to spending a red cent on bike safety, urban liberals in favor. But cycling isn’t sky diving. It’s not just thrill-seeking, or self-indulgence. It’s a sensible response to a changing transportation environment, with a clear social upside in terms of better public health, less traffic and lower emissions. The world is going this way regardless, toward ever denser cities and resulting changes in law and infrastructure. But the most important changes, with the potential to save the most lives, are the ones we can make in our attitudes.

So here’s my proposal: Every time you get on a bike, from this moment forward, obey the letter of the law in every traffic exchange everywhere to help drivers (and police officers) view cyclists as predictable users of the road who deserve respect. And every time you get behind the wheel, remember that even the slightest inattention can maim or kill a human being enjoying a legitimate form of transportation. That alone will make the streets a little safer, although for now I’m sticking to the basement and maybe the occasional country road.

Daniel Duane is a contributing editor for Men’s Journal.