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I might have done that. Then you would be in the enviable position of second-guessing me. Yuba says the Deflopilator doesn't affect handling. A u-turn on a 10-foot concrete strip requires me to turn the bar more than 53 degrees. OK, I'll agree that a spring could keep the wheel of a parked bike...

Oh, you mean a Yuba Deflopilator. Yuba says it's just for parking. I agree. Patrice says, "to tame the steering when rough terrain or uneven loads try to wrestle the handlebars from my hands." That sounds like oscillations. Learning to ride a bike means learning to steer your wheels under you...

Is that why Modernbike.com wouldn't sell me one?

Walking a bike... I found my Radrunner clumsier to walk than a conventional bike. My Radmission was worse and my Abound worse yet. I often injured my right shin on a pedal or knocked the mirror out of alignment. After I shortened the bars on the Abound and the Radmission, they were as easy to...

I bought a Giro with a visor that was inadequate. I cut my own from 1.2mm polypropylene. (I rounded the corners after taking the photo.) One night last year I saw my neighbor on his porch and rode onto the sidewalk to talk with him. Still in the saddle, I reached down with a toe toward the...

I learned three lessons this morning. The first is that only a fool would store an immersion heater in an empty mug. Before your first cup of coffee in the morning, what's to keep a fool from putting a mug of water beside the empty one, turning on the timer, and walking away without noticing...

A bungee cord is better than a second kickstand. If the fork won't turn and neither will the front wheel, it's more secure on the sidestand, or I can lean it against something. It helps if I need it to be stable for mechanical work. It also prevents theft, unless a truly professional thief...

My Abound's turn stops prevent that. Otherwise I'd try it. It has about 6cm of trail. I might get more with the fork backward, and I could see how I liked it, unless it caused the axle to unscrew.

"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...