No hating on my mods allowed. Yes, it's duct tape.

I love commute by bike for grocery and stuff, but riding in rain is my least favorite stuff ever. Even though i have poncho, it makes me looks like a Ring Wraith on bicycle, and it's quite fussy trying to put it on. And even i get to keep everything dry somehow, the rain drop might sometime score a direct hit on my eyeball like the car salesman slapping the car. It's annoying, irritating, and frankly quite dangerous. My vision is blurred, so is my glasses, and it almost got me into trouble a few times.

So how do you guys protect your eye and keep your vision clear? I live in tropical area so the rain can be quite heavy at time, and i can't wait until it stop because sometime it will go on for hours, even if it get lighter.

How can anyone fuck up an eBike worse than a Cybertruck? Watch and find out...

So I let the chain wear down too much in the past two years and the rear sprockets appear to be worn out and will need to be replaced. The stock 50T chain ring is also showing signs of wear but appears to still be good for a few years.

I wanted to use this opportunity to see whether I could switch the gearing up a little.

The 13-16 gearing has been surprisingly capable but I need just a little more hill climbing ability; the lowest gear (2.64m) is just barely enough sometimes. I'd like it a tad lower I think.

On the high end, I usually ride in the upper two gears on flat ground. The highest gear (7.98m) feels just a tad too much sometimes though and I then fall back to one lower (6.49m) but that feels a good bit too low. That doesn't bother me a lot but it'd still be nicer to have a gear that's just right.

On a downhill, the highest gear is always sufficient for me; feels pretty much exactly right. I wouldn't mind slightly more metres of development but, honestly, I don't care very much when I'm already going way past 30km/h and I don't ride downhill for very long usually. I'm unsure whether reducing the highest gear slightly would make me pedal uncomfortably quickly down hill though.

Stock and current config:

I'm currently thinking about a 44T chain ring with 12-17:

or 12-16:

The lower gears being lower and closer together sounds very nice.

In the higher gears, my hope is that the slightly lower highest gear would allow me to use it the majority of the time on flat ground because I suspect the second highest gear would feel quite a bit too low as a fall-back.

I could see 12-15 being an option perhaps but that also gets the lowest gear much closer to 13-16 again:

But obviously the lowest gear gets very close to the previous config again.

Where I have a hard time is imagining how significant the difference between 2.64m, 2.19m, 2.33m and 2.48m are in an uphill scenario. The jump between the lower gears in 13-16 (3.25m to 2.64m) in practice feels significant but not that large either and we're talking about a much lower absolute drop being gained in the low end by switching gearing. I don't know whether the practical effect of this is linear though and I suspect it might not be.

I'd really appreciate practical experience here. Have you changed gearing on your Brompton? From what to what and how significant were the differences?

For the vast majority of winter I get by perfectly fine without studs simply by having wide tires and running so low pressures that the gauge doesn't even register. However, there's that handful of trips, especially towards the end of the winter, that I could really use the extra grip you get with studded tires. I decided to continue on the custom / diy theme with my bike mods and used 13mm self-tapping screws instead of dedicated tire studs. It's ones with a wide, flat base but I'm still considering taping over them to protect the tubes.

This is the rear wheel, I think I'm only doing the outside row on the front. I only have about 25% of the knobs studded and the increase in grip is already immense.

In 2023, my goal was 4,000 miles, and I made it, so I started with the same this year.

In late September, 2024, my local club did a ride across our state, about 350 miles over 4 days. After that, I was about 20 miles shy of the 4,000 goal, and hit it within the following week. I normally ride 80-120 miles per week, so 350 was a huge jump.

Then, I upped the goal to 5,000 miles, then finished that in late November or early December. A friend congratulated me and noted that 5,000 miles was almost 100 miles per week, so I made the new goal 5,200 miles.

Of those 5,348 miles, 2,111 miles (~39%) were on Zwift. I did three imperial centuries on Zwift this year, and several more metric centuries on Zwift. The rest were all outdoor, ranging from 25 miles to 120 miles.

I haven't decided on a goal for next year yet. Right now it's at 5,200 miles (it automatically resets to the same). But, for various reasons, I'm not sure whether I'll ride that much this year.

Had a 2000km goal. Have a 3000km goal for this year.

Just bought my first road bike and put it on a trainer for the winter. Still tweaking the saddle and such for a more comfortable ride but I'm not there yet.

Have anyone tried these on a non folded bike?

https://liteprobicycle.com/products/litepro-elite-folding-bicycle-k3-plus-pig-nose-front-bag-adapter-mount-alloy-modified-front-shelf-racks-bike-for-fnhon-dahon?_pos=2&_sid=0f57a7976&_ss=r

#biketooter #bikewrench

I'm pretty excited about this. Riding downtown was always a bit hell. It still is in most parts.

The Balloon Cycle

There floated over the hamlet of Ville neuvye-la-Garenne, the other afternoon, in mid-air, a balloon. Suddenly it appeared to burst and fell rapidly toward the earth. Fearing that a disaster had occurred the terrified folk ran to the spot at which they expected the aerostat would reach the ground, when to their amazement they saw a parachute detach itself from the car and descend gently. Immediately the earth was touched one of the passengers jumped upon a small bicycle which he had brought with him from the aerial regions, and he disappeared in the direction of Levallois, in the neighborhood of Paris, as rapidly as the machine could carry him. The explanation of this singular occurrence is simple. The balloon was the Caliban, and the ascent was made from Levallios by Captain Capazza and M. Hervien, the latter being the cyclist. Their object was to test the possibility of a balloon being used for carrying war dispatches, and they assumed that an enemy succeeded in destroying it. Yet they proved that by means of the parachute they would be able to make good their escape and to outdistance their pursuers with the aid of a portable bicycle.—London Telegraph

https://archive.org/details/BRM_1894101801/page/n5/mode/1up?view=theater&q=Balloon

Recently a bicycle race from Bath to Kensington, 106 miles, for the (captaincy) and (subcaptaincy) of the Middlesex Bicycle Club commenced in the Bath Market-place, the competitors being Mesate, Pearce, Leaver, Goulding, Percy, Tyne, Spencer, and Walker. The diameter of the driving wheels varied from 45 to 52 inches. The first six miles of the race, which was over a capital road, were done in a very short space of time. At Newbury, which is about midway, the first two riders to arrive were Walker and Tyne. Here the wheel of Tyne's machine collapsed, making him lose two hours in the first half of the race. He went on again, but was quite out of the running. The race was won by Mr. Walker, of the Middlesex Bicycle Club, who started at ten minutes past five a.m. and arrived at Kensington at fifteen minutes past three p.m. - the greatest speed on record for the distance.

Sorry for any errors.

So a modern rider typically takes at least 4 hours to do a century ride and that is at top amateur/pro levels. Averaging 25 miles per hour for that long is very difficult. Most avid club cyclists will average around 16 mph in the real world and can finish a century in around 6-7 hours.

In this race, it started at just after 5 am and was won by the finishing rider just over ten hours later at fifteen minutes past 3 pm. So the average speed of the winning rider was just over 10 miles per hour. You'll have to forgive me for not knowing metric time but in real units, the race was 170 km, and the average speed was 17 kph.

In terms of wheel size, the 700c wheels of today are around 28in in diameter. The racers here were riding between 45-52in. So 45in is 1.143m, and 52in is 1.32m

I speculate that these were likely Penny-farthing or Ordinary velocipedes

The frame is a single tube following the circumference of the front wheel, then diverting to a trailing wheel. A mounting peg is above the rear wheel. The front wheel is in a rigid fork with little if any trail. A spoon brake is usually fitted on the fork crown, operated by a lever from one of the handlebars. The bars are usually mustache shaped, dropping from the level of the headset. The saddle mounts on the frame less than 18 inches (46 cm) behind the headset.

One particular model, made by Pope Manufacturing Company in 1886, weighs 36 pounds (16 kg), has a 60-spoke 53-inch (130 cm) front wheel and a 20-spoke 18-inch (46 cm) rear wheel. It is fitted with solid rubber tires. The rims, frame, fork, and handlebars are made from hollow, steel tubing. The steel axles are mounted in adjustable ball bearings. The leather saddle is suspended by springs.[32]

Another model, made by Humber and Co., Ltd., of Beeston, Nottingham, weighs only 24 pounds (11 kg), and has 52-inch (130 cm) and 18-inch (46 cm) wheels. It has no step and no brakes, in order to minimize weight.[33]

A third model, also made by Pope Manufacturing Company, weighs 49 pounds (22 kg) and has forged steel forks. A brake lever on the right of a straight handlebar operates a spoon brake against the front wheel.[34]

All three have cranks that can be adjusted for length.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-farthing

The original posted article from 1874 is on page 2 at the top right of the news paper archived here: https://archive.org/details/NPDP18740922/page/0/mode/2up?q=bicycle&view=theater

I didn't think aluminum rims or clinchers were a thing all the way back then.

Here are all the rest of the cycling highlights of The Iron Age like chainless drive too.

stationary trainer:

https://archive.org/details/IronAgeVol54Jul121894/page/n95/mode/1up?view=theater

::: spoiler Bonus riding lawn mower:

I'm not sure I can link like that to archived images from a catalog. Page 279 is missing from the scan. This is the whole catalog: https://archive.org/details/sears-roebuck-catalogue-111/page/n136/mode/1up?view=theater The bicycle section starts on page 137 of the slider.

For reference:

At this early point in the history of license plates in the United States of America, none of the 45 states, territories, or the District of Columbia, was issuing its own plates.[1][2][3][4] The State of New York remained the only state that required vehicle owners to register their automobiles. The system of using the owner's initials as the registration number, begun in 1901, remained in effect. This would change in 1903 when a number was assigned to each owner to display on their vehicle. Across the country the increases in the number of automobiles was being noticed, and there were many cities, like Chicago, that had already begun to require their owners to register their vehicles.[5][6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_United_States_for_1902

1902

• February 12 – The 1st Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance takes place in Washington, D.C..
• March 7 – Second Boer War: Battle of Tweebosch – South African Boers win their last battle over the British Army, with the capture of a British general and 200 of his men.
• March 10 – Clashes between police and Georgian workers led by Joseph Stalin leave 15 dead, 54 wounded, and 500 in prison.[1]
• April 2 – The Electric Theatre, the first movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles.
• May 20 – Cuba gains independence from the United States.
• July 2 – Philippine–American War ends.
• August 22 – Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first American President to ride in an automobile, a Columbia Electric Victoria through Hartford, Connecticut.
• August 22 – A 7.7 earthquake shakes the border between China and Kyrgyzstan killing 10,000 people.
• September 1 – The first science fiction film, the silent A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans La Lune), is premièred at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris, France, by actor/producer Georges Méliès, and proves an immediate success.[7]
• November 16 – A newspaper cartoon depicting U.S. President "Teddy" Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear cub inspires creation of the first teddy bear by Morris Michtom in New York City.
• December 30 – Discovery Expedition: British explorers Scott, Shackleton and Wilson reach the furthest southern point reached thus far by man, south of 82°S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1902

Shifter is a youtube/peertube channel with lot of great insights on cycling.

Every year he collects stuff to gift to bike commuters and I there are some good suggestion in it.

Hey guys,

So... I've been using a small electric pump for my bikes and e-scooters over the last few years.

They are nice, but really aren't designed to be used as often as I do.

I'm a fan of low-tech gear, so I'm looking for a good quality floor pump that will last the next 20+ years. Obviously, it needs to be serviceable and have easily replaceable parts. And it needs to be accurate, for sure. LOL

I'm reading reviews from Wirecutter and various cycling sites, and they are all over the place with recommendations. I think a lot of their choices are driven by affiliate links, so there's that.

Does this unicorn exist?

Edit: I want to thank eveyone for their generous help. I ended up getting the Advent X groupset and got it installed. Although I still have some tweaking left.

I have a Triban RC100 that I wish to convert to 11 speed.

I got as far as choosing the Sensah Srx Pro and the Shimano RS100 wheels. But got stuck after that.

Which cassette would be compatible with both and what chain length would I need? I am looking for something that gives me some offroad climbing gears.

Thank you for your help.

I wanna try doing this some day

(By overnight I mean set off in the evening (well rested) and cycle until the morning)

I know about the obvious stuff like a bright vest, blinking rear light and wearing light colored clothes but is there anything else that I need for when nightfall hits?

First, the good news: My friend is essentially okay, aside from some bumps and bruises. His bike took some damage, but likely not catastrophic: From what we could tell, both derailleurs on his bike and the bar tape were damaged; there may be other damage we couldn't identify immediately, such as the handlebars themselves.

We were riding on this road with two lanes, no shoulder, and there's a light at the bottom of a hill, with a right turn lane. The light was green, so our group was cruising at a pretty high pace - probably 25 or 30 mph - in the right lane (not the turn lane, the through lane) and some driver needed to turn right, but couldn't wait a few seconds. So, they went into the LEFT lane, then turned right in front of our group, hit one of our riders, and kept going.

("Must get in front...oh I have to turn here..." Shitty driving habits in general, I'll bet.)

A few other cars stopped, and someone called the police, who took a report and got an ambulance to check out the victim. Hopefully they'll do some investigation and find the guilty party. The cross street leads into a neighborhood with no other exits, so there's a good chance the perpetrator lives there. Also there is a camera at that light, and one person thought to note the exact time it happened, in case the camera does continuously record.

I hope they find the driver. They deserve to pay for all damages and a huge fine.

Our friend commented that his bike was likely worth more than the minivan that hit him, which is almost certainly true, given it was an older model van and his bike is a high end Pinarello. He also noted that none of us stopped his bike computer, which was good for a laugh.

The ride leader's husband was able to come and pick up her, the victim, and another rider that wasn't comfortable continuing after the crash (we were only about halfway through the planned route). The rest of us pedaled on, albeit a bit more subdued for a while.