Recent content by spokewrench

"Mihogo" is Swahili for "cassava." I have a sudden craving for tapioca pudding!

For a long time, I was thinking of putting planks on stacked cement blocks so I could roll a bike up onto the platform to check tire pressure. I've been a fan of Carl August Norgren's ball chuck since shortly after his passing. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11132496/carl_august-norgren...

When I had the Radrunner I would have bought one because tire pressure was a hassle compared to my motorcycle. To reduce the danger of blowouts, BMW had gone to natural rubber tubes, and they were porous. Checking was just a matter of a couple of zigzags on my first hundred feet of pavement. If...

Ordered. Now I can mount a tire pressure monitor. I'm sure you know how embarrassing it is to be pedaling along and have the highway patrol pull you over to let you know you have a flat tire.

I've been having nightmares since I substituted two short bars for one long one. The streets are awash, and in the heavy rain I don't see Pennywise until the prow of his yacht is looming over me. Clowns laugh at clown horns, and a Bombay taxi horn probably wouldn't daunt Pennywise. In my dream I...

I think that was a purpose of swept-back bars before pneumatic tires. Weight on the handles put torsion on the center section of the bar, which acted like a spring.

The new kind of low-end headlamp impresses me. No colored lights. Just wide high, wide low, spot high, and spot low. The wide bar is intense enough to be conspicuous in the sun but I think not too intense to look at a driver at night. If you hold the button a few seconds, the spot and wide...

When you said the whole bicycle industry has refuted Brown, I thought that was your personal opinion. I didn't realize you are the whole industry's representative. The wide handlebar (90cm) came out on the Schwinn Stingray when Brown was 18. It was beneficial in BMX. Brown said wide bars are...

The first motor vehicle to cross North America was a bicycle with 3/4 horsepower. The second bicycle to do it had 2.5 hp. The rider suffered several severe crashes on mud, sand, and snow. When in the 1960s, California kids began racing Schwinn Stingrays on tracks of loose dirt with jumps and...

What made me very uncomfortable was the way the bike could wobble if I hit bumps while one hand was off the bar to return a wave. Cutting my bar to 55cm worked for me. When I have to maintain control with one hand, I can steer with more authority. It also handles quicker, especially for u-turns...

How do any of these changes make what Sheldon Brown said about bicycle geometry, obsolete? In 1902, the Thomas Auto-Bi had a more powerful engine than a Harley or a Hendee. You'd lean forward a bit on the former, while the other two forced you to sit straight up with bars that swept way back...

The chain drive made the modern bicycle possible, but riders preferred high-wheelers until John Starley's Rover in 1885. He had improved bicycle geometry by moving the seat well aft of the crank. What's more, the seat could be adjusted fore and aft as well as up and down. Brown wrote about what...

Years ago, I got tennis elbow soon after buying a Radrunner. The pavement around here is bumpy. Each bump causes a sharp deceleration of the bike. You lurch against the bars. When I took my left hand off the bar to signal, I'd lurch against the right bar only, requiring tremendous torque with my...

I seem to recall them in Worcester MA in the 1950s. Worcester was unusual in that the neighborhoods were pockets between steep hills and lakes. Since the 17th Century, settlers couldn't choose their neighbors. We had a retired Anglo on one side, a French couple on the other, a young French...

[And Dick the shepherd blows his nail] They're never shown in ski gloves. [And Tom bears logs into the hall] How come they're never shown with a load of logs? Do they have Amazon deliver their firewood? [And Marian's nose looks red and raw] They never wear hats with extended bills to keep the...