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  1. spokewrench

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    Too many in yards, too. The house next door is 800 square feet. A Charger and a Veloster, driven by women, are there at night. There are also a dozen big pickups on that 1/3 acre, most of them 24 hours a day. Fifteen years ago, the homeowner parked his non-functioning pickup beside a tulip...
  2. spokewrench

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    Was it the quick-release kind? My Radpower bikes had them and I hated them. They would release fast, but they took me longer to put on, and they weren't foolproof, which is bad for a potentially dangerous device. One morning before mounting my Radmission, I shoved it from the side and something...
  3. spokewrench

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    If they're springy, I guess they're deflopilators. If they simply resist when pushed or pulled fast, I guess they're dampers like BMW used. At normal steering speeds, the hydraulic fluid would squirt past the piston without much resistance. If the bars started going back and forth rapidly, the...
  4. spokewrench

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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...
  5. spokewrench

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    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...
  6. spokewrench

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

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    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...
  8. spokewrench

    Do You Wear A Cap Underneath Your Bicycle Helmet?

    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...
  9. spokewrench

    Remember Highway 61 Revisited?

    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...
  10. spokewrench

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    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...
  11. spokewrench

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    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.
  12. spokewrench

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

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    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...
  14. spokewrench

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    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...
  15. spokewrench

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    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.
  16. spokewrench

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    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...
  17. spokewrench

    How wide are your handlebars?

    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.
  18. spokewrench

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    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...
  19. spokewrench

    How wide are your handlebars?

    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...
  20. spokewrench

    How wide are your handlebars?

    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...
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