About a month ago I met some family members in Vegas for the weekend and brought my lightweight KBO hurricane with me. We planned a trip to red rock and I bragged about the ease of having a light ebike as I helped my sister and brother in law load heavy ebikes on his truck. It was HOT and I found out real quick the long inclines were gonna be too much for my bike! A made a soul crushing decision to turn around and ride back to my van with my tail between my legs. When I got back to LA I bought a Priority Current to insure I will never have to turn around against my will ever again!
Share a recent frustrating experience that made you want to switch bikes!
- Thread starter Alexander.7812
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steve mercier
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Ya there is no substitute for power. I am used to a Bosch CX now and I could not pull the trigger on a new bike with a smaller motor.
Mr. Coffee
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- A Demented Corner of the North Cascades
Part of the nature of riding a bicycle is that eventually you are going to greet the concrete. Hopefully when you will do fall you will do so in such a way that you can walk away with only bruises and some wounded pride. If you are freaked out about the idea of falling you will make the experience inevitably more traumatic when gravity finally catches up to you.
spokewrench
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For the last 4 years I guess I've averaged 5 miles a day. From the time I was 7 until I was 18, I suppose I averaged that much. In all those thousands of miles, I remember falling from a moving bike only once. Actually, it was a series of intentional crashes. They were on asphalt, not concrete.
I was 17. I'd known since grade school that my 3-speed English handled well enough that I could bank farther in a turn than my friends. Now I began to wonder just how far I could bank with the inside pedal up at 12 o'clock.
A man needs motivation to bank dangerously far. I’d play chicken with a stone church beside an asphalt parking lot, pedaling toward it as fast as I could until I thought I could barely make a 90 degree turn without hitting it. That provided the motivation to lay it over so far that my sidewalls were scuffed within a quarter inch of the rims.
A cyclist is loath to lean way over in a turn because the tires are bound to break loose at some point, leaving him sliding on his side with one leg under the bike. I’d inspect the pavement before starting, but I knew when I was leaned over with a handlebar almost dragging, a bit of gravel smaller than a pea would cause the bike to shoot out from under me. My technique was to kick the bike away so I could somersault.
I had 3 pair of Wranglers and 3 pair of Dickies. Wranglers would always end up with a small abrasion hole marking initial impact. I preferred Dickies because the fabric never showed such damage. I used to practice every day, and eventually each pair of Wranglers had several little holes. I never got a bump or a scratch.
At 21, I bought a Jawa CZ 250 Trials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RqGuhhWtzA
Before going on pavement, I spent a month learning to handle it at very low speeds on challenging terrain. The last phase was deliberately crashing, leaning in tighter and tighter circles on wet grass. I was surprised that I could stay in control indefinitely, leaned way over with both feet on the pegs and both wheels sliding badly. When it finally shot out from under me, I’d just step off.
A year later, it shot from under me when I hit a puddle while banked hard in a turn. All those practice crashes 5 years earlier paid off. I somersaulted like a tire with a blowout on the interstate. The sliding bike and I decelerated at the same rate; I kept glimpsing it beside me, throwing up sparks.
An oncoming car stopped. I landed on my feet, the bike on my right and the driver’s window on my left. “You all right?” “Yep!”
I put my hand in the puddle and found that the bottom was ice, covered in ice BBs that must have formed around grains of sand. That was a surprise. It was so warm that I was wearing a dress shirt with no jacket. Lawns were soft, but there was frost below that puddle.
My wool dress pants seemed much less durable than Dickies or Wranglers. I took them off for a careful inspection. No damage! When you have to spring into a somersault to avoid injury, a 270-pound motorcycle makes a better base than a 27-pound bicycle.
I knew I’d ended up in front of the door of the house three doors down. Today I measured on a map. I’d somersaulted more than 100 feet. If crashing my bicycle hadn't once been an obsession, that motorcycle fall might have freaked me out! I went on to ride motorcycles perhaps 200,000 miles. That was my only fall on a moving motorcycle.
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AvalancheRun
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Wouldn’t buy anything with a twist shift again. I’ve tweaked by wrist on the Enviolo on numerous occasions. It’s not an ergonomic motion. Never had that problem with traditional shifting, etap, rohloff button press, etc.
Watana Bob
Active Member
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I had the same experience, I once rented a Spec Cumo with belt drive and CVT twist shift-I hated it.
