Pete Biggs wrote:
> Heavy and sluggish
Ah, the CTC mag's last issue actually extolled the virtues of a raodster in traffic in an answer to
one of Guy's epistles on the letters page, so you disagree with the editor of that as well as me.
Heavy is not actually necessarily the same as sluggish (ask my friends who go out for a day with a
guy on a bike weighing over 40 lbs).
> - especially up hills
There's no shortage of good hills round here, one of the busier ones has a god 40m of ascent on it
on the OS map and I often see a chap who's well past 70 and looks like a textbook frail old geezer
headed up without any obvious trouble on his old roadster (with hub gears and chaincase). Best tell
him... Most people have problems up hills that I see because they use the wrong gears, despite
having (or perhaps because of?) so many to choose from.
> As I've mentioned already, they're more popular in flatter countries
All of northern europe isn't flat, any more than Greater London. Note how in previous answers about
catalogue availability Switzerland and Austria got mentioned. Neither known for the poverty or flat
ground within their borders.
> and because it would be seen as "odd" to use anything different just because those kind of bikes
> have been so popular for so long.
Which is exactly my point about the sort of bikes bought here. MTBs have been, well, just what you
buy, for well over a decade now. Since they're so conservative on the continent that must account
for Germany and the NL being the main centres of recumbent use. Do you really think they're afraid
of MTBs or they're not available there?
> I think they're choosing bikes that are more suited to the UK
I think they're generally choosing bikes that are suited to current image requirements (note that
u.r.c. is *not* a representative cross section of Normal People with bikes in the UK). The Brompton
is a British bike and works well in Britain, is widely regarded as a brilliant design and sells
throughout the world well enough that the company making them are almost at the point of beating off
customers with a shitty stick. When I ride mine I get laughed at because of its appearance. People
say of my 'bent that they couldn't ride one, when I ask them why not they say it's just too
different. A friend is interested in one and his (adult) son tells him he mustn't "because people
will look at you". IME image has far, far more to do with bike purchases made by Mr. and Mrs. J
Public (for themselves and their 2.4 adorably typical children) than anything else, and they're
primarily seen as purely leisure toys rather than useful tools (nothing wrong with leisure toys btw,
I'd love to spend lots on a Windcheetah for *excatly* that purpose).
> really think Britain (along with some other countries) are ahead of other parts of the world in
> using more modern bicycle technology. We are quicker to adopt new technology than others in
> some fields.
We're very quick to adopt, say, descent bike technology, because MTBing is fashionable (go and look
at the new stands for evidence). The same goes for other sport-led recreational stuff. That's not
necessarily terribly much use on the street commuting to work though. The biggest changes in my
cycling have come from two inventions, the chair and the hinge, that are both *very* old and make
far more difference than any change to hi-tech stuff does, yet people won't adopt either when the
bike looks "wrong" or "uncool".
> re "cool": Image may greatly affect the choices kids make, but I don't accept it makes a huge
> difference for *many* of the adults recently returning to cycling.
An item of simple disagreement. They tell me they couldn't ride a 'bent because they're too
different and they'd be the centre of attention, regardless of any other problems/qualities. If that
isn't thinking dominated by image I don't know what is.
> (I'm excluding those who want to appear particularly sporty, who I do not think make up the
> majority).
Looking in bicycle shops I see they are far more dominated by sporting machinery than I ever get to
see actually out in use on roads or trails. Same for the ads in the rags. Somebody's buying them but
they're not riding them in the same quantities round here. A friend recently met someone who was in
her student class here, commented to this body-armour clad chap on a very expensive MTB that she
didn't remember him being a cyclist when an undergrad. And the subsequent conversation revealed he'd
just gone out and bought into the MTB "lifestyle" with a loaded Visa card because it looked cool
(and he was subsequently left in the dust by her old rigid M-Trax...).
Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK net
[email protected]
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/