NZ cyclists who also use buses, warning that from Saturday bike racks on public buses will be unavailable due to safety concerns raised by NZ Transport Agency (NZTA). May be temporary but no restoration or replacement date given.
NZTA have advised bus operators but no info for cyclists on their website. Useless agency for alerting actual transport users!
@Kay I was about to reply that Christchuch's Metroinfo had advertised it fairly well but then I reread the details and realised it's now a complete ban, not just a nighttime ban. Whaaaaat??
(Metroinfo does have a news item on their site, I'm not sure if they're updating the posters on the buses or just going to rely on bus drivers warning people individually throughout tomorrow....)
I used to love #bicycle touring, but after years of doing routes most riding wouldn't even consider, having various kinds of "type 2 fun" times, and then COVID hit, I just can't get myself to do it. That even applies to supported tours like #BikeSTP! Being a "sitting duck" in a sea of drivers of all personalities scares the everliving shit out of me. :blobfoxscared:
During the pandemic and motivated by the psychological pressures of quarantine, I learned how to ride a #motorcycle, and went through various scooters and larger bikes to get to where I am now. I spent so much time riding street (really rural highways to or through natural landmarks) that I got bored of that, too, so I bought a dual-sport so I could, well, honestly ride gravel roads to places farther off that allow OHV and/or larger use. That dual-sport was a CRF450RL and was sprung custom for a much heavier guy than me, which made it super tall for me. :blobfoxsweating: As you can guess, I traded it in for a #Tenere 700, which I will be riding this weekend on a rural gravel highway that I've ridden before on a much heavier street bike. :blobfoxhappy:
The principle of the SCHWALBE CLIK VALVE, winner of the Eurobike Award 2024, is very simple: it works intuitively with a click. What does it need? The valve and the corresponding pump head or pump head adapter. With the Clik Valve, this can be clicked onto the bike valve with minimal force and removed again very easily after successful inflation.
It doesn’t matter which valve and pump you currently have - thanks to conversion kits for all existing bicycle valves and most pumps. To change the bicycle valve, simply replace the valve insert (Sclaverand, Presta, Dunlop, tubeless valve), for the car valve there is an adapter that is screwed over the valve (and can be easily unscrewed again to be able to use petrol station pumps).
The pump head adapter can be integrated into the pump head of current pumps (by clamping or screwing in), even with hand pumps. The Schwalbe Clik Valve can also be inflated with normal SV (Presta) pumps - thanks to this reverse compatibility, you are never at a loss in any situation. And SKS will already be offering its own CLIK VALVE pump at Eurobike.
Schwalbe will soon be producing the first tubes with the Clik Valve.
I’ve been running 38mm Panaracer GravelKing tires tubeless on my Soma Stanyan for years, but the front tire I just put on has enough wobble to rub in one spot on every rotation. (The wheel itself is true.)
Two shops told me that the tire wasn’t seated right, but I checked and remounted multiple times and it’s seating fine. Even used some rubbing alcohol to lubricate the tire where it seated, but it always mounts up perfectly fine. The tire is the problem.
The second shop gave the real answer after chatting with the folks there for a bit: I should go down a size. It’s a real bummer, but even the Soma website says it can do up to 35mm. :blobfoxsad:
The only other realistic alternative is a new frameset, or at least a new fork, but that will have to wait for a while. :blobfoxgooglycry:
The slow, silent ride will start at the Davis Bike Collective (1221 1/2 4th St ) this Wednesday 5/15 and will visit 4 different locations in Davis where people have been killed while riding their bikes
The route will be 7.5 miles and is expected to take ~1.5 hrs. We will have some flowers to distribute but feel free to bring your own offerings as well.
@meganL@cycling Can't believe I didn't know about this event. Doesn't look like #STL has one, but I'm reaching out to some local bike orgs to see if we can schedule one for next year. Hope y'all have a good ride!
@alexisdyslexic@cycling So my point is not to act as if Davis is the worst - it's not. But I want to show that you don't have to scratch deeply to hit the car-centrism and ableism. Therefore holding it up uncritically as "Platinum Bike-Friendly" does us a great disservice. #UCAccessNow#CarCenrism#Cycling
@meganL@cycling the best in North America is probably Montreal. But Not Just Bike just made a clap back video about how poorly Montreal stand up to European cities. I don't think we have a good infrastructure anywhere in North America.
But I think we're at an inflexion point and a lot is going to be built out soon.
When @glitter and I got to the bottom of a long hill while #cycling yesterday, I heard the tell-tale sign of a #tubeless leak in my front tire, a well-used #Panaracer#GravelKing. She even said it was smoking, but I knew it was just sealant blowing out.
Thankfully, it was at the end of our ride and I didn't have to deal with steering on a floppy tire. I did snap this picture, though. :blobfoxsweating:
I tried seating it again today and it just wouldn't hold air because of the same spot. That's when I noticed the bulge in the sidewall near the bead, so I decided to toss the tire and put on a fresh (identical) one I had in reserve. The new tire seated without issue, aside from how I had to do it twice because I put it on the wrong way the first time. :blobfoxgooglymlem:
This isn't a knock on Panaracer tire quality, of course. The tire's been through a lot and there was only so much tread left anyway.
@nik After years of struggling because I was afraid to raise my saddle after tearing a quad in 2013 (?), I started raising it some, then noticed that I was able to pedal in smooth and quick circles instead of by mashing down. That circular pedaling is what good technique is. :blobfox: I also had to move my saddle forward quite a bit because my legs would drag me forward with their circular pedaling otherwise.
As far as handlebar position goes, that resolved itself once my core was strong enough. :geblobcatshrug: If you don't try to hold onto the bars for dear life and just let your hands fall where they will, that'll tell you where to move the bars to.
kids, I'm doing Ride London again this year, raising money for the brilliant Bike Project, who do up bikes and give them, along with training and support, to refugees and asylum seekers. I'm WAY out of shape, having had my slowest start to the year cycling since before COVID. Here's the link to sponsor me, if you'd like to help support them and motivate me :) xxx
I really like these panniers, though I'm glad that I found a quicker way of managing the shoulder carry strap than the rather daft built-in things #BikeTooter@fedibikes@cycling
@kim@achadwick@cycling I keep it closed using the strap that comes over the top from the back, and have also used the drybag method. The front hook is just there to add tension to the longer strap -- in all my years, I've never had a problem with the strap getting particularly muddy, unless I'm also getting muddy anyway. But different use cases, maybe?
@ravenbait@achadwick@cycling Recumbent low-rider racks put the front panniers in splatter range of the front wheel, while the rider stays high and dry. Of course, the great thing about Ortliebs is you can just run them under the tap.
The over-the-top strap is incredibly useful for overloading the pannier gracefully, dangling random things from, or crossing over with the pannier on the other side for additional security, and I do miss it on my flap-closure Altura panniers (which got relegated to shopping duty when I discovered they were being eaten by the disc brake on my tourer).
Isn’t it nice to know that you can take your bike into any bike shop and get it fixed? Even if you’re in Mexico, France, Italy, Montana, or even India? If they don’t have the part to fix your bike, they can easily order it and have it fixed in a day or two. Well, it wasn’t always that way. You see, in the 1970’s the International Standards Organization (ISO) spent years of painstaking work involving over 30 nations to develop standard sizes, thread pitches and specifications for common bicycle parts like bottom brackets, hubs, freewheels, head sets, etc…
Before the ISO endorsements were made, each country had its own standards. Even within a country, you could find different standards for different manufacturers. A bicycle made in France used different parts all around than a bicycle made in Italy or the United States. This made life difficult for both the bicycle dealer trying to help a customer, and also for the customer who had purchased a bicycle with standards not common in their area.
While rifling through my 1970’s Bicycling magazines, I found an article on this while the standards were still in development, and it brought to mind many situations that are occurring now in our industry today.
While we have always tried very hard to manufacture our bicycles using standard size parts and specifications to make things easy for our customers, many manufacturers are now veering far from the ISO standards in an effort to create what’s called ‘proprietary’ parts. These are parts designed specifically for that particular frame. It can be something as small as the part that holds the rear derailleur to a carbon frame, or something major like a specific bottom bracket that’s only available from that manufacturer.
I think people should be aware of proprietary parts as they can make life difficult for the customer, as well as the bike shops trying to help that customer. This is especially true for the cyclist touring foreign countries.
Replaceable derailleur hangers and the problems they can pose
Replaceable derailleur hangers Several years ago, I wrote an article called ‘Chaos, the new standard‘. That article holds so much truth even today that I thought a follow up was in order. So, here it goes. A company that’s been around for 51 years, as we have, will tell you the importance of standards. This is a short article detailing one such detour that we took in the 1980’s.
What are standards, and why should you care? If you are a person who wants to buy a bicycle that you will ride for 20 years plus, then standards mean a lot to you. For instance, I ride a Rodriguez road bike the we built here in 1999, and I’m still riding it today. I consider myself a Forever Bike person. I will still be able to buy parts for this bike in 20 years too. Any part that needs replacing we will have in stock. That’s because it’s built around ISO standards (International Standards Organization). ISO standards were settled upon by the bicycle industry in the 1970’s in an attempt to make sure that people could get their bicycle fixed in just about any country, and well into the future. It’s worked miraculously….until recently.