cycling and century rides -

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

I used to have a steel frame Diamondback road bike. It wasn't the fastest, a bit on the heavy side. But man was it a dream to ride casually, maybe 15-30 miles on a weekend. No other material compares for ride quality, IMO.

Stolen from me, at a time when I didn't have a car either. I've been thinking lately about buying another.

Steel frame road bikes (especially vintage) can be picked up for a song using ebay, craigslist or facebook marketplace. Also if you make nice-nice with your local ride groups and bike nerds, you may be gifted vintage bikes as people get their carbon fiber beauties and look to empty their bike stable of older blood.

That's how I've come in to owning both my steel frame race bike and my aluminum frame touring bike.

Centuries on steel are fun, if the road doesn't pitch too much. And when it does, having a good gear ratio close to 1:1 really helps.

 

[crayolasword]

Me and my wife just went the bikes direct Motobecane route when we initially got back into cycling 2 years ago. To be honest we’re still plenty satisfied with them.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

Good to hear that the Motobecane is alright. That's the route I'm thinking of taking when my resident goblin finishes the final goblin growth spurt into fully-grown trollbeast and I have to purchase said monster a 700c wheeled bicycle.

 

[millais]

I'm quite pleased with my carbon fiber bike, but at some point a pair of older racing bikes that must be either aluminum or maybe some titanium alloy construction frame may pass into my hands. The frames at least date from the mid '80s, but they are in pretty good shape with the occasional upgrades over the years.

It's been a long while since I last wiped out hard on a bike with that kind of lightweight metal frame construction. Are they much more vulnerable to crash damage compared to modern carbon fiber construction? One thing I rather like about the carbon fiber frame is that it feels like it will snap and break before it deforms or bends, and if you are involved in collision or crash with enough energy to snap the carbon fiber, then you are probably in no condition to be worrying about your bike at that point.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

I haven't wiped out on aluminum yet, but my goblin has. Goblin hit the ground going downhill at 16mph. Bicycle was fine, damage limited to the paint job which I repaired in my garage.

I have only wiped out on steel. Going 20 and suddenly zero, while it did a huge number on my fleshy bits and dislocated a limb, it did no damage to the bike (I just had to get one of my hoods pointing the right direction again). My gravel bike, also steel, has been smashed into trees, dropped off jumps into roots, smacked into boulders and crashed into fences - the right shift lever is broken internally thereby making my front derailleur useless, but the frame's still perfect.

Metal bikes are incredibly durable. I've often joked that if I went cycling in the woods, I could beat a bear off with my steel framed bikes, put it down and ride the fuck away without issue. Metal has memory and will return to its fabricated position unless stressed beyond its yield stress point on the stress/strain curve for its particular alloy.

Plus a nice advantage of old fashioned steel is that while it can be bent and even fractured, welding fixes it (at least, it does with steel and titanium. Aluminum, not quite so much, but metal repair is still possible at the joints). So no snapped bikes that are rendered useless - just a major repair project instead. And if you do somehow manage to demolish it beyond repair, they're cheaper to replace.

 

[crayolasword]

I have seen a guy back in the mid 90’s that had a Stumpjumper repaired. Talk about an ugly ass bike afterwards. The paint on the down tube was gone about half way and just bare metal. If I remember correctly it got taken to some farmer that did welding on the side.

 

[XYZpdq]

my bike seems to be dying rapidly
there was a very bad CHONK noise, now the part that hold the pedals and the rear wheel wobble within their mounts heavily, it throws the chain appx every ten miles, any time I flip it over something is spitting out ball bearings, and now pedaling makes a weird metal-on-metal grinding noise
so back to my buddy's still-never-used Margaritaville (tm) seven speed, which isn't necessarily bad even if it's weird and gay looking even by bike standards

 

[crayolasword]

At least it’s not the Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw model.

 

[SeniorFuckFace]

I rode your Mom for like a week.

 

[XYZpdq]

walmart had, like literally no adult size bikes, and a very few kid bikes

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

Blame corona-chan. It wiped out bikes at WalMart and Target because unemployed people got bored and bought them out.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I've considered getting a recumbent trike like all the oldsters use since I am getting older myself and don't want to break something if I have an accident while riding, but there seems to be a famine of the things - I assume this is some kind of covid related shortage though I haven't seen that confirmed.

But even when available they seem to cost around the 2K mark, or more, really was hoping there was a non sucky model that was about half that price.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

I fear recumbents because they're very low to the ground and difficult for people in cars to see. Plus they take up a considerable amount of lane real estate, and people tend to become aggressive assholes if bicycles aren't hugging the fucking gutter (and sometimes (especially in Virginia) are assholes anyway).

But if you really want a recumbent, have you considered checking for something used via facebook marketplace in your region? I've found some decent deals doing that.

Also, here. These guys have a few options in the low 1K's. Industrial Bicycles - tons of recumbents for the curious

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I'm mainly sticking to paths and not really doing anything in town, the old guys who I see on those things generally have flags on the back so that way they are visible at road crossings. My regular mountain bike which is a pretty nice one eventually hurts my back after so many consecutive days of riding and I just think that I want something a little easier on my back. I also had a really bad tumble at an intersection a few months ago and scraped up my elbow really bad.

But by God they are expensive. I suspect this is because they know the main customer for those things is the retiree market who have a lot of cash to burn. I have been paying attention to Craigslist for estate sales where the deceased had one but nothing good yet.

 

[XYZpdq]

I've considered getting a recumbent trike like all the oldsters use since I am getting older myself and don't want to break something if I have an accident while riding, but there seems to be a famine of the things - I assume this is some kind of covid related shortage though I haven't seen that confirmed.

But even when available they seem to cost around the 2K mark, or more, really was hoping there was a non sucky model that was about half that price.

there's a drought of all bikes

unrelated is there anything I need to know about changing a flat on a multispeed compared to a single speed?
got a flat on the rear of the Margaritaville bike I've been tooling around on
also in other Margaritaville bike news despite it being weird pastels with pink on the wheels I've had a couple of chicks go out of their way to flirt with me about it

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

unrelated is there anything I need to know about changing a flat on a multispeed compared to a single speed?

Nope. Depending on the axel you might need an adjustable wrench to take the wheel off, but most bikes have a quick-release axel, where you just pull the lever, spin it a few times, and pop the wheel out.

It's easier to get the chain back on a multispeed than it is a single speed - especially if you set it up in biggy-smalls (little chainring up front where the pedals connect, biggest fucking cog in the back). It's possible in any combination, but this one makes it stupidly easy to slip the wheel back in.

And congratz on the flirting.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

Double posting because it's been a while.

Another century in the bag, once again on the gravel bike with its (still) busted as fuck front derailleur, riding 700c x 32's at 90 psi for lowered rolling resistance. Not a shabby ride. Wish I had my vintage race bike here to ride to lose 7 pounds in machine alone, but oh well.

Wish I could take my aluminum touring bike I got gifted out on that 100 mile trail ride, but I don't have any spare 19c inner tubes or spare tires for the damned thing, and am too much of a cheapskate (with too little free time) to bother finding them. I'll be switching the aluminum bike over to 23c's when I return to my primary location at the end of the year, and then repainting the thing because this poor, used thing has quite a few imperfections in the solid glossy black paint job. But for now? It's my Zwifting bike.

BTW, if anyone around here Zwifts, check out the new world. It's gorgeous, and has some great climbing.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I have done two centuries now, the first time on a shitty Walmart bike (fucking brutal on my body), and then earlier this week on my newish mountain bike. Nothing special about the terrain it was just a bike path. But I think I'm going to start limiting it to maybe once or twice a year, some of these guys I run into on the path are doing it a couple times a month.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

After using a skateboard as my main form of transportation and risking my life every time there's a pebble on the road, I finally decided to suck it up and learn to ride a bike. I wish I had done so earlier but I'm still so happy that I'm doing it now. It's easier than a skateboard (imo) and the brakes give you so much more safety. I'm riding my mom's old Specialized something or other on evenings at the park where I don't have to worry about too many people or cars on the road.

Right now I'm practicing different terrain, transitioning between pavement and dirt paths, and getting comfortable with slopes. There's a kind of scary one on my work commute that when I'm skating I just say fuck it and walk down. Still working on the nuances of braking, and I have no goddamn idea how gears work or what any of the numbers mean.

Haven't fell off yet but I did give myself a pretty massive bruise on my calf after losing my balance, lol.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

Hint - use the back brake. Only when it's insufficient should you use the front.

Grab the front hard, that's when you go over the handlebars and faceplant into the street/dirt/tree in front of you. Back brake is gold, front brake is fine tuning and coming to a complete stop when the back's already fully applied.

Trust me on that one. You don't want to feel 20mph to the face.