On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 19:12:13 GMT, "Dave Mayer"
<
[email protected]> wrote:
>I've observed a weird new species of road bike around on my
>daily commute and weekend rides. These bikes must be new as
>they have all the latest gimmicks and are ridden by guys in
>their 20's. Symptoms:
Hmm...I'm a guy in my 20's...
>- Compact geometry with a steeply sloping toptube leaving a
> whole bunch of seatpost exposed.
>- Oversized alu frame with a garish paint job
>- Triple crankset with ridiculously low gearing
>- Drop bars with a treadless stem mounted upside down to
> give lots of rise.
These items describe one of my bikes, somewhat.
Compact, bright yellow alu frame with oversized downtube:
Why should I care if it's compact? Why should I care if the
tube is oversized? Bright yellow may be good for being seen
in traffic. Still, as a non-fan of yellow, it wasn't my
first choice.
Triple crank giving me a low gear of 30x27: Is that
ridiculous? I'm 210 pounds, and usually ride farther than
I'm in shape for; I can at least crawl uphill to my house
when I'm bonked and dead trying to finish without walking.
Drop bars with a threadless stem mounted _right_side_up_
giving lots of rise: My handlebar is still lower than my
saddle. My short legs and long torso put lots of weight on
my hands. Compact+"zero stack" gimmick headset=extremely low
handlebar Why do you suppose it's necessary for us amateurs
to crunch into the same positions used by professionals in
time trials?
>- Fattish tires with treads
Nope. 700x23c 100% slick.
>- Disk brakes?!?
There are functional reasons that one might prefer disc
brakes. I wouldn't spend the weight or money on them for my
road biking purposes, but it may be worth it to some. My
next mountain bike will probably have them.
>- Low spoke count wheels.
My front wheel is slightly-gimmicky in that it's radially
laced, but not low spoke count. My rear is average.
I'm surprised they didn't all have deep-V aero rims too,
from your description. I don't...but I'm not them. The 'semi-
aero' very-shallow-V Mavic CXP-21 rims on my bike roll fine,
despite their possible gimmickry.
>Whats up with this? I invariably come up on these guys fast
>and see them struggling with a seat postion 6" too low
>(must be converted mountain bikers). Their high stems put
>their bars above the level of the seat making the bike look
>like a hybrid.
Must be ignorant. You might be a nice guy and notify them
that they will get greater power from a higher saddle. Of
course, then their bars would be closer to (or below) the
saddle, and you'd have one less thing to write about.
>Despite the low seat position, their seatposts are bending
>1" back and forth as
I expected my carbon fiber aero seatpost to do this under my
210 pounds, but I haven't noticed it. Nobody with whom I've
ridden has remarked anything to this effect, either. I also
expected it to break within a few rides, but it hasn't done
that either.
>they thrash along at a 40rpm cadence (yep: mountain
>bikers).
Maybe their bodies are different from yours. I last much
longer at lower cadences, except in certain situations
(notably, climbing while tired). I tried to do the
recommended 80 rpm, and struggled for a few years before I
forgot to think about it one day and found myself cruising
at 20 mph.
Also, I find that off-road, I do better with a higher
average cadence, so your mountain biker low rpm theory may
be broken.
>I draft them for about 5 seconds until I get bored of
>watching their boat-anchor brake calipers dragging on the
>disks. Then I drop them.
So, they're incompetent riders, incompetent shoppers, and
incompetent at maintaining their bikes too? My god! These
people are evil. You ought to do something about getting
them off the road. Maybe Fabrizio can help you organize
something. Don't even THINK about helping them.
>Is this the future? Have I died and gone to hell?
If that constitutes hell for you, then I hope you burn
well. The rest of us will concentrate on riding while we're
on our bikes.
In fact, I'm slow. You would probably drop me like a rock.
But it's not the bike, it's me. Due to many factors, most
of which involve laziness, I haven't ridden much all
winter; barely at all. When I stop making excuses and get
out and enjoy the ride, I'll still never catch up to many
riders...and that's okay. I enjoy my speed well enough,
and as I get in better shape, I'll enjoy the additional
speed too.
BTW, I'm no faster on my steel, non-gimmicky, non-compact,
non-garish, non-oversized-tubing, threaded HS, but still
triple bike. A bit slower, actually, due _partly_ to some
other older technologies. The effective geometry, as far as
body contact points, is the same, even with the '7'-shaped
stem and barely exposed seatpost.
My gimmicky bike: 2001 Giant TCR2:
http://www.tinyurl.com/jweb
+ some modifications for me: added high-rise stem, triple
crank, egg beater pedals
My non-gimmicky bike mentioned above: Semi-unidentified
older Peugeot, which I _think_ is a PBN 13 as shown here:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/peugeotshow/images/1983_3.jpg but a
different year. In fact, I have a photo of it:
http://members.cox.net/thc69/bikes/Peugeot.JPG (I've since
added clipless pedals)
So, what is it about all those gimmicky items that
bothers you?
--
Rick Onanian
