7bicycles

I jest, of course. Become xbikers

this is in jest, it's the top comment to this post

just blew all my PRs after a few small beers and lynrd skynyrd

not much to tell beyond the picture. Some of them are hand cranked, others include e-motors with throttle either because there's legal modes for it or maybe you're at a bikepark where usual public regs against that don't apply.

Mostly niche-builds, so custom things adapted to specific customers or small scale lines

that's it that's the post

The discussion is an enduring internet classic of people who have seen horses in The Last of Us ascribing near magical powers to it vs. everyone who ever worked with horses saying this is the worst idea imaginable which is fun.

I'm posting this here on account of the amusing amount of comments that presuposse a horse is a car that runs on dirt and just self heals broken bones

EDIT: Bonus points for "a horse can carry so much more" which is demonstably untrue unless you want the poor thing to die real early or strap a cart to it, at which point you have both horse and bicycle problems

To be fair they also plan to dissect it, you know try and figure out why it did strand, put the skeleton in a museum and such but still: certified germany moment.

This is best exemplified by carbrains claiming if you get stuck behind a slower vehicle such as a bicycle it's only natural that you turn into a bloodlusting psychopath but like this happens to me daily because grandma earnest and me share the same not-even-one-bicycle-wide bikepath. Since I neither intend to hit a pedestrian or bunnyhop a sick trials line across some cars I just ride slower for a bit.

The thing about how bicyclists throw themselves infront of cars? Guess what: An alarming amount of people play crossing traffic by ear and since I don't make "vroom vroom" noises while riding they literally just straight up walk infront of me, on the road. Half the time they don't even notice me emergency braking and going behind them.

Started playing it yesterday and it's set in not-WW2 where you fight for the good germans that are dutch people whose kinkade-esque homeland is in the baltics because the evil soviet empire nazis want to invade the not-NATO that is also straight up the Hansa. Could you not have picked a different war for this

Bicycle infrastructure being what it is I often slow down for like pedestrians and such. I have often wondered why this is so often such a an awkward endeavour for all involved, considering our vectors of travel seem clear to me.

I realized today that peole don't know about bicycleshido - never put a foot down - and don't know how to deal with an upright stationary bicycle where the rider has no foot down. What direction will I go is unclear to them, being stationary, which leads to being overly cautious. I have now started to do polite handwaves and it seems to absolve the problem.

Not done one of these in a while so here goes: if you think your bicycle is a bit too tough to ride as per effort, here's some pointers. This is obviously aimed at people new to bicycling to give you some idea of what's worth to do and what not.

The "average" human (heavy air quotes on this one due to the range of humans) can continously put out 100 Watts on a bicycle for an hour with generally no problems to give you some scale here.

I'm assuming here you don't actually want to buy a new bike.

Free or Nearly Free

• Put air in your tyres. Range of TPI or Bar is printed on the sidewall somewhere, generally the higher the easier to ride but it does get bumpier. Don't eyeball it except on thick MTB tyres you don't use for any kind of sport, get something with a manometer. This is basically impossible to calculate in watts on account of it changes heavily with road surface, i.e. lower tyre pressure might be faster on shitty roads.

• clean and oil your chain. Like just wipe it with a rag and then use some bicycle chain lubricant (maybe 8 eurodollars a bottle, so about 0,02 per oil application) - this can mean a difference of 10 - 20 Watts

• Change your position on the bike. Aero is big for bicycles, if you can assume a more streamlined position there might be a another 10 - 20 Watts in there. Just change your bars, it's a few screws and maybe 10 eurodollars for a new one that gets you a bit lower

• dial in your saddle height. Just play around with it, just make sure your leg is never fully extended or you might wreck your joints. This can be another 10 Watts (more if your current position is just absolute dogshit)

• if you have a a 2x or 3x in the front, maybe take a look at what gears you're using and how hard they crosschain. The closer you get to straight the more efficient it is. Watt savings can be up to 5 Watt with few differences in how it rides since 2x or 3x often have the same gear ratios for multiple gears.

• Unmount shit you don't need. This is kind of case by case and might not be worth the hassle if you do use it occasionally, but between carrying an air pump, a rear rack that sees usage once a year, a fixing kit that sees useage twice a year you may be getting like half a kilo of weight off there for no cost.

Worth it for some money

• New Tyres with lower rolling resistance. You can find good tyres, where I am, for ~30 eurodollars if you can get them on sale. Depending on what you have now this can be a 10 to 30 Watt difference.

• Wheel replacements. This can be a bit of work scouring your local online used market, but you can semi regularly find generally good bikes that have quite good rims but are otherwise in a state of horrid disrepair for quite cheap. Most wheel bearings for rims are closed, which means you really have to try to fuck them up bad. Could be another 10 Watts for 50 eurodollars or so.

• getting new pedals - a lot of mosey on around town bicycles seem to come up with plastic pedals with rubber grippads that have last had friction two decades ago. Change these out for some basic metal pedals with pins - it feels way better to ride and due to less of your motion going into slipsliding across the pedals you could get around 5 Watts.

Do not

• Swapping parts out for lightweight stuff. If it saves actual weight it costs a gajillion dollars, otherwise losing a kilogram of your weight (unless medically inadvisable) is probably cheaper and worth more

• Drillium, for obvious reasons