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How was your cycle commute?

Speaking of which, I find London cabs very hard to slot into a neat category. Some are obviously very skilled and experienced drivers, with excellent awareness and road manners. Some are "king of the road" selfish arseholes. You just have to assume they all are :-/
 
Crispy said:
Speaking of which, I find London cabs very hard to slot into a neat category. Some are obviously very skilled and experienced drivers, with excellent awareness and road manners. Some are "king of the road" selfish arseholes. You just have to assume they all are :-/
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I was surprised by how good bus drivers were, compared to how i'd imagined they should be.
 
There aren't so many London-style cabs up here in Leeds, but I do recognise the engine sound! It's mostly Skoda octavias up here. They're not the worst, private hire seem to have that badge, especially good at overtaking in the other lane when you're signalling to turn right into a side road (any Leeds folk who turn off Cardigan Road onto Thornville Rd by the petrol station will be very familiar with this move).
 
Suddenly got a whiff of petrichor and see that it's raining - I wish I'd screen-grabbed the met office page earlier :p
I actually considered leaving my jacket at home - only light rain though ... I wouldn't have donned the rubber trousers even if I'd brought them.
 
Commiserations about the rain chaps. I'm just about to bugger off home (POETS day you see) and am hoping I won't get sunburned :)
 
Blue skies and a slight/moderate easterley here (a constant this week, a bugger in the morning but has helped out with some fast times on the homeward leg). Leaving in about an hour, might have a crack at a few Strava sprint segments on the route home.
 
Dogsauce said:
My initial comment was knowingly facetious, so relax.

BUT there is some use in expecting certain drivers to behave according to stereotypes, it's part of your instinct if you ride everyday - for example personal plates/fat exhaust/tinted windows are a sign to be a bit more cautious around them at the lights. From experience also, white cars (newish), transit-type pick-up trucks (especially those with landscape gardening equipment in the back), BMW/Audi/Golfs, taxis/private hire (especially taxis/private hire) - all seem to appear more frequently to put you in danger. Not every driver will drive like a twat, and sometimes you'll get nearly run off the road by a 2CV with a nuclear-power-no-thanks sticker in the rear window, but some amount of stereotyping is just part of the processing of information as you read the road ahead, the same way you adopt certain cautions around buses and large lorries. It's something you just pick up if you ride every day (I do about 18 miles cross-city every day).
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BMW Minis are, sans exception, driven by twats. Either estateagent twats, suityyoungbloke twats or poshyounggirl twats.
 
My fastest time for months this evening, but the bike feels like a bag of spare parts at the moment.
Pretty sure the BB is somewhat tired after only maybe 5,000 miles.

This idiot almost made up for failing to get two others last night. :-



I called the video file "Billysmarts" ....
 
gentlegreen said:
My fastest time for months this evening, but the bike feels like a bag of spare parts at the moment.
Pretty sure the BB is somewhat tired after only maybe 5,000 miles.
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Do me a favour gg, turn your bike upside down and have a close look at all the places the tubes join round the bottom bracket and the rear dropout for cracks.
 
plurker said:
BMW Minis are, sans exception, driven by twats. Either estateagent twats, suityyoungbloke twats or poshyounggirl twats.
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You forgot fluffy-haired studentbloke twats, although admittedly that's just an embryonic stage of suityyoungbloke twats.

Not one I've noted being particularly badly driven tbh, only sometimes badly parked.
 
gentlegreen said:
This idiot almost made up for failing to get two others last night. :-

I called the video file "Billysmarts" ....
Click to expand...

I thought the first guy was a bit reckless taking you on the bend, let alone the second. Christ.

A private hire and a golf though. Add it to the tally.
 
weepiper said:
Do me a favour gg, turn your bike upside down and have a close look at all the places the tubes join round the bottom bracket and the rear dropout for cracks.
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Thanks ..it's certainly had me looking at the dropouts ...It was a bit strange that it all started so suddenly.
It's a Giant ATX830 from 2001 with 20-something thousand miles on it.
Is that a high mileage for that sort of frame ?
 
Dogsauce said:
I thought the first guy was a bit reckless taking you on the bend, let alone the second. Christ.
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That stretch of road just keeps on giving.
I try to laugh at these things, but if they'd had a blowout, I might well have copped some shrapnel...
 
gentlegreen said:
Thanks ..it's certainly had me looking at the dropouts ...It was a bit strange that it all started so suddenly.
It's a Giant ATX830 from 2001 with 20-something thousand miles on it.
Is that a high mileage for that sort of frame ?
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Well, Giant have a lifetime frame warranty but twelve years old is pretty old for an aluminium frame that's getting commuted on by a heavyish rider.
 
How often should BBs be changed? I've had one of those sealed unit ones in mine for nearly 2 years, will have done well over 5000 in that time I reckon. It doesn't feel rough or anything, but it's felt like there's a bit more friction or something when I've been riding recently, though that might just be old legs (or the less common easterly wind pegging me back in the mornings when I'm used to the prevailing westerly blowing me along). I gave the chain a good clean yesterday and put some air in the tyres a couple of days ago which has helped, but something definitely doesn't feel as easy as it ought to.
 
Dogsauce said:
How often should BBs be changed? I've had one of those sealed unit ones in mine for nearly 2 years, will have done well over 5000 in that time I reckon. It doesn't feel rough or anything, but it's felt like there's a bit more friction or something when I've been riding recently, though that might just be old legs (or the less common easterly wind pegging me back in the mornings when I'm used to the prevailing westerly blowing me along). I gave the chain a good clean yesterday and put some air in the tyres a couple of days ago which has helped, but something definitely doesn't feel as easy as it ought to.
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drop the chain off the smallest ring to rest on the frame and turn the cranks, it should be smooth and free-running. Then grab the left crank in one hand and the frame seat tube in the other and try to pull the crank away from the frame, there should be no play. If there's play or roughness it's new b/b time, otherwise the problem is coming from elsewhere (hubs? worn chain etc?)
 
Thanks, I'll check that. Chain & back block were changed recently (2 months) and should be OK. The derailleur was pretty mucky but I cleaned that yesterday along with as much else as I could get to (dirty winter roads!). I had an issue with brake blocks sticking a bit a while back and think the front one might still be catching sometimes. I suspect it is just the wind holding me back, but was just curious if there was a typical lifespan for the sealed unit BBs (it's an octolink one, probably the cheapest of that type I could get on ebay at the time).
 
weepiper said:
Do me a favour gg, turn your bike upside down and have a close look at all the places the tubes join round the bottom bracket and the rear dropout for cracks.
Click to expand...

On what part of the frame do you see the most failures in your experience WP? Around the bottom bracket?
 
I was given (for spare parts) an old Raleigh Pioneer many years ago where the weld had failed where one of the seat stays met the seat tube. One of my dad's friends who builds bikes rewelded it and I got quite a few more years out of it. In retrospect it sounds more like a defect than a failure, it was only a few years old.

I guess catastrophic frame failure must be one of those things that would really knock your confidence - I just whizz about assuming this 30-yr old bit of steel underneath me is going to stay in one piece. I've had a couple of axle failures (both at low speed), a front wheel fall out bumping up or down a kerb and a very scary brake cable failure (downhill, T-junction on to busy fast road that just happened to be clear as I shot across it and clattered into the opposite kerb). It can take a while to get your nerve back.
 
Crispy said:
Speaking of which, I find London cabs very hard to slot into a neat category. Some are obviously very skilled and experienced drivers, with excellent awareness and road manners. Some are "king of the road" selfish arseholes. You just have to assume they all are :-/
Click to expand...
Whereas any vehicle with the Addison Lee brand on it seems to be actively seeking ways to kill cyclists im(central London)e
 
Had a pretty good look at my frame welds.
The one worrying part is behind the seat tube where I've fitted a propstand - the clamp bolt wouldn't budge last time I tried and I can't find my spanners at the moment :oops: .. (I've picked up a shelf unit in Aldi for £20 so I can get my tools and spares properly organised.)
But I couldn't see anything untowards when I shone a light down there.
There's just this noticeable play in the rear wheel bearing.
It probably IS time to make this my emergency bike, so I suppose I'll need to look for a new 26 inch wheel bike - though I suspect it's the wrong time of year to be looking.
 
gentlegreen said:
Had a pretty good look at my frame welds.
The one worrying part is behind the seat tube where I've fitted a propstand - the clamp bolt wouldn't budge last time I tried and I can't find my spanners at the moment :oops: .. (I've picked up a shelf unit in Aldi for £20 so I can get my tools and spares properly organised.)
But I couldn't see anything untowards when I shone a light down there.
There's just this noticeable play in the rear wheel bearing.
It probably IS time to make this my emergency bike, so I suppose I'll need to look for a new 26 inch wheel bike - though I suspect it's the wrong time of year to be looking.
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fixed gear.
then start dressing all hoxton
 
gentlegreen said:
No way Jose.
Somewhat peeved that I'm liable to have to accept 9 or 10 speed and octalink - so a whole new set of tools.
I'm perfectly happy with my 7 plus 1 megarange...
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:)
Give a few types of bikes a go though. Just to see what they feel like. No point in just sticking to what you know.
Evans Cycles will order any of the ones on their site in for you to have a go on.
Then bugger off and get a similar one from elsewhere.
 
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