To the "Karens", and the "Carls" out there😂 Those riding dirty too.

I think to myself, this is sometimes one of the most aggressive forums I use

Then I remember my times in a road race cycling club.

There was a fight every week at the. clubhouse, we had quite a few just riding in a pack because someone touched their brakes when they shouldn't have 😋.
 
In the Netherlands, only a third of trips are made by automobile, so nearly everybody rides a bike. Expatinfoholland lists 12 kinds of bikes used in the Netherlands, with photos. The only one with a derailleur is what the Dutch call a racer. Do you dismiss the majority of Dutch bicyclists as crackpots? Ebikes are popular, but a bike that can be powered over 15 mph can't use bike lanes and requires a license and registration. Where everybody rides and many have ebikes, they've "ruined it for everybody."
If you ever ride a bike in The Netherlands, you will get quite an eye opener in terms of what is considered a usable bike there. In short, they all ride pieces of junk. The bicycle is a totally different kind of thing there, and since people often pull up and just park outside of ... well, anywhere... they may not even lock the thing. Or if they do its totally different from locking up a bike like we would here, where what they do is meant to be just convenient and not the both-wheels-and-frame-to-a-pole like we do here.

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Plus there is absolutely zero status associated with a bike. Also nobody wears anything like bike clothing. Its all street clothes. And if you put on a helmet you will be the only one in the city doing that. Despite people and bikes and streetcars and cars coming and going and intermingling with everyone and everything from all directions.

I did my time cycling in The Netherlands in Amsterdam - you routinely shared any given city intersection with dozens of riders at a stoplight. After the light we were shoulder-to-shoulder running along a wide-but-still-barely-adequate dedicated path. And my 250w, 3-speed (no derailleur) ebike with its EU-compliant speed limit was not even remotely safe at that (by our standards) low upper speed limit. I totally get why the EU has such low speed limits, as anyone trying to get proper use out of a 750w bike would be riding a hopelessly dangerous hot rod. Even 20 mph would be insane.

Oh and its all flat as a pancake. So people are traveling in crowds, at slow speed on flat land that is flat right to the border of the country. So you very typically have an old-school 3-speed hub like you would see on an American bike from back when I was a kid. But yes, no derailleurs and no speeds. because who needs them when you can only go 10 mph anyway?

Don't try to make a simple comparison like that as it doesn't work on many levels.
 
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s*it of a human being might be president again
That's baloney! Baloney man is only up for 91 criminal indictments so far by a jury of its peers. That's not too much. Maybe only 33% of charges will stick for prison time. MLGA make Leavenworth great again. Plus It only owes $540 million in civil charges so far, plus interest, that is only if it shut its big f-ing baloney mouth, doesn't speak falsely, or continue to defame, or insight others. It is a known rapist. Yes, It is full of baloney, it took an oath of office, and gave aid or comfort to insurgents. And therefore cannot appear on any ballot. It is a tarator by section 3 of the 14th amendment. It regularly quotes Hitler and loves Putin. Regan would roll in his grave. Lincoln would fight It with all his power. Baloney It is full of baloney and is going down without taking the nation with It. It isn't qualified to take the oath to be a municipal dog catcher. Security clearance zero, after displaying classified documents. It couldn't be a janitor at a public school. An ef-ing sex offender. Self-disqualified as a POS tarator, full of baloney.
 

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If you ever ride a bike in The Netherlands, you will get quite an eye opener in terms of what is considered a usable bike there. In short, they all ride pieces of junk. The bicycle is a totally different kind of thing there, and since people often pull up and just park outside of ... well, anywhere... they may not even lock the thing. Or if they do its totally different from locking up a bike like we would here, where what they do is meant to be just convenient and not the both-wheels-and-frame-to-a-pole like we do here.

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Plus there is absolutely zero status associated with a bike. Also nobody wears anything like bike clothing. Its all street clothes. And if you put on a helmet you will be the only one in the city doing that. Despite people and bikes and streetcars and cars coming and going and intermingling with everyone and everything from all directions.

I did my time cycling in The Netherlands in Amsterdam - you routinely shared any given city intersection with dozens of riders at a stoplight. After the light we were shoulder-to-shoulder running along a wide-but-still-barely-adequate dedicated path. And my 250w, 3-speed (no derailleur) ebike with its EU-compliant speed limit was not even remotely safe at that (by our standards) low upper speed limit. I totally get why the EU has such low speed limits, as anyone trying to get proper use out of a 750w bike would be riding a hopelessly dangerous hot rod. Even 20 mph would be insane.

Oh and its all flat as a pancake. So people are traveling in crowds, at slow speed on flat land that is flat right to the border of the country. So you very typically have an old-school 3-speed hub like you would see on an American bike from back when I was a kid. But yes, no derailleurs and no speeds. because who needs them when you can only go 10 mph anyway?

Don't try to make a simple comparison like that as it doesn't work on many levels.
I saw quite a few bikes with no brakes at all, the bike shop owner said they probably had back pedal rear brake, but I know how they look, and the bikes had ordinary hubs front and back.
I guess if you just pedal at 5mph and use your feet for emergencies, you could get away with it.
 
Maybe it was confusion over terminology. This is the first time I've heard a coaster brake called a back pedal brake. To me, back pedal braking is how you stop without a braking device.

On a high-wheeler, you had to sit almost over the axle so pedaling wouldn't cause swerving. A brake would have been disastrous. Better chains made rear wheel drive possible. They called them safety bikes, but most weren't very safe because they preserved the horseman-like posture of the high-wheeler, with the seat almost over the pedals and the bars low and swept back. Maybe a safety bike wouldn't go end over end, but the rider could easily be ejected over the bars.

Brakes were seldom seen because many riders considered them dangerous. Even in the late 90s, avid cyclist and magnate George Eastman specified no brake, saying that the only safe way to stop a bike was by applying back pressure to the rotating pedals. That reflected a strong consensus in America.

Meanwhile, Wright Brothers' catalogues described the painstaking steps they went through in making bikes, starting with superb frames. It didn't seem feasible to do that for the small scale of sales their records reported. Due to their fame in aviation, the buyer of their shop preserved it. They weren't manufacturers but a front for a huge smuggling operation, which put most major manufacturers out of business by selling new bikes as refurbished.

The only thing they were equipped to manufacture was coaster brakes. That terminology suggests that the primary selling point was the freewheel, allowing a rider to coast down a hill without having to keep his feet on racing pedals.

In 1910, bicycles were still king in America. Even if you could afford a car, car tires were not yet pneumatic or tough. American cycling periodicals published pleas to accept coaster brakes, saying that the stopping distance really was shorter, and the difference could save a rider from being run down at a trolley crossing.

If Dutch riders don't like to coast down hills or cross trolley tracks, the shop owner may have been talking about what was for a long time considered to be the safest way to stop a bicycle.
Well he was Dutch and we both couldn't work out the phrase, they weren't fixed wheel, I spun them back to check.
There were no brakes as in not even levers on the bars.
 
Where did you find that photo?
Very becoming... and a more intelligent likeness than most of his pics
I have a German friend who comes up with this stuff. Someone out there is highly creative. It was first posted by Snoop Dogg at the end of January, 2017. I can imagine, maybe with the assistance of a little weed while having the munchies while making a sandwich. A.I. tags it as a mugshot.

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You said when every American has one, the authorities won't dare restrict them. I pointed to a place where everybody has one and there are restrictions, and you wish there were more.

Did you miss Cauberg? 440 feet
Keutenberg? 535
Mount St. Peter? 561
Eiserbrosweg? 633
Vrouwenheide? 692
Vaalserberg? 1058


I understood you to say that because everyone has one, the riffraff ruined it for everybody. In fact, Dutch law provides for the elite such as yourself. You need to present your superbike to them and demand a license and registration. The riffraff will know you're special when they see your plate, and you can legally go 130 km/h.
Gadzooks. How off-track can you get? But this is the internet, so the answer is "utterly".

You misunderstood my comment. That derailleur vs. fixie bit was an almost throwaway illustration to dryly note the ineffectiveness of a small minority to complain about something in wide use by the majority. Fixie riders were once the vast majority, very influential in cycling and they dictated terms on public opinion and competition (it took 38 years for the TdF to legalize the use of a derailleur. The guy below in the picture was instrumental in that). In the present day fixies are a tiny niche (fixies are never considered to be single-speed ebikes, even counting the Babymaker or the Luna Fixed which both took a fixie as their inspiration). As unimaginable as that shift away from fixed gears was then, so too is the inexorable shift to ebike ubiquity unimaginable now... to the haters at least. And they are growing fewer in number.

Fixie vs. derailleur refers back to a specific famous issue of cycling history that translates directly to today's hater/cheater scenario ... and we are slowly seeing the tide turn, just as it once did for fixies and derailleurs.
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Doesn't that sound familiar if you change the equipment around just a little to be ebike and bike?
 
Viola Brand! She does some big shows.


Notice how there's no freewheel on that bike. Another fixie thing. The pedals keep moving.
 
Acme. Wiley coyote will get his due. Beep, meep.
 
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Should you be out riding its almost noon time.
I don't know wtf is in progress. Pakalolo, reef, volcano are all protected. We have plenty resources.
Narrow minded I had to web search the meaning.
I will add it to my dictionary.
Narrow minded = Stefan from Poland..
I have the internet, too.

 
Since its the internet this is required by the rules ...
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And so long as I have a theme going, re: the value of this thread

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Corrected.
Typing without reading glasses.... I end up inputting haphazardly.. which ends up being saved in autocorrect.. which in turn ends up being the default suggestion.. which in turn my lazy ass goes for first 🙃
 
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