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How was your cycle commute?

Your gear hanger will have been a bit bent. Happens all the time. They're meant to bend easily as they're replaceable and it saves the frame being a write-off when the bike's fallen over to the right/been shoved by someone else putting their bike in beside it in a bike rack etc etc. But if you don't notice it in time the mech gets caught in the spokes when you're in an easier gear as has happened here. It's not going to be cheap to fix though I'm afraid :( it'll usually be a new rear mech, new gear hanger, replace any badly cut spokes in the wheel, new chain if it's twisted and maybe cassette on the rear wheel too if the chain was worn. Sorry.
 
weepiper said:
Your gear hanger will have been a bit bent. Happens all the time. They're meant to bend easily as they're replaceable and it saves the frame being a write-off when the bike's fallen over to the right/been shoved by someone else putting their bike in beside it in a bike rack etc etc. But if you don't notice it in time the mech gets caught in the spokes when you're in an easier gear as has happened here. It's not going to be cheap to fix though I'm afraid :( it'll usually be a new rear mech, new gear hanger, replace any badly cut spokes in the wheel, new chain if it's twisted and maybe cassette on the rear wheel too if the chain was worn. Sorry.
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Cheers. I might just get a new bike. My new workplace does cycle to work.
 
Looks like something that happened to me last year but I was going slowly up a hill so didn't come off. With me the derailleur hanger had bent causing it to spring up into the cassette. Needed a new hanger, derailleur and chain, costed £100 at Brixton Cycles. They had a spare hangar in their bits box for cheap
 
Ouch - got floored by a crushed beer can this morning. I'd turned the bars to go round a corner and at that precise moment my front wheel went over a crushed beer can on the road, and my wheel went skating out to the side causing me to hit the deck. I was lucky - there was a van behind me which had to slam on the brakes but was going slow for the corner. It just glanced my bike but not me. No damage to the bike and no serious damage to me either - I'm sure I'll be getting some nice bruising on my shoulder, elbow though as there both currently pretty sore. Not a good start to the day :(
 
after a few weeks of miscellaneous excuses I was on the bike today: lovely weather, no near misses, loved it.

now I feel bad for Orang Utan and braindancer :(
 
I thought I'd got away with no injuries til I woke up this morning. I have a livid bruise near my hip and my leg hurts a lot.
Bike shop quoted me £116 to fix it. Does that sound reasonable?
I am moving to Liverpool Street tomorrow, so this is a most inconvenient time to have no bike. I shall be walking from Liverpool Street to Peckham and back for the rest of the week.
 
That happened to me when I was just starting up the east face of the Col du Pentonville earlier in the year, with a train to catch at Kings Cross in 15 minutes. I think the fairly ancient rear mech fell apart when I changed gear quite abruptly. Took a few panicked minutes to wrench the chain out of the wheel and tangled mess of gears at the back of the bike (snapped it to pull it free), dashed up the hill to Angel pushing it alongside me, then freewheeled down to KX and just made it onto my train.

Second hand rear mech from the spares box at the bike workshop for a fiver, picked a few links off a chain in the bin there which was worn as much as mine (checked with the tool), couple of new spokes and I was back on the road. Shit no-frills bikes ftw.

OT - if you need a bike for the week I have a spare in London if you want a loan, one I was trying to give away a while back, it's a crap 80s Raleigh mountain bike, surprisingly comfy/smooth for what it is and the sort of thing nobody would steal. It's in a shed at the girlfriend's place on City Rd near Angel, about 20 mins walk from Liverpool St, DM me if that would help, I'm not going to need it in the next few weeks.
 
Orang Utan said:
Bike shop quoted me £116 to fix it. Does that sound reasonable?
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Certainly doesn't sound impossible depending what kind of kit is on the bike :( I mean you could probably do it for cheaper with some secondhand bits but you need someone who knows what they're doing to help.
 
Orang Utan said:
I thought I'd got away with no injuries til I woke up this morning. I have a livid bruise near my hip and my leg hurts a lot.
Bike shop quoted me £116 to fix it. Does that sound reasonable?
I am moving to Liverpool Street tomorrow, so this is a most inconvenient time to have no bike. I shall be walking from Liverpool Street to Peckham and back for the rest of the week.
Click to expand...
Ouch, sorry about your crash :( moving to Liverpool St you say :hmm: I'm off Uni until Jan so you'd be welcome to use my bike - you'd just need to put your pedals on it or get some cranks bros cleats :)
 
braindancer and Orang Utan sorry to hear of your offs; GWS

1) I VERY nearly had an off myself this morning, coming down from Streatham Hill there's a relatively sharp right-hander - I'd just whipped past a bike and van and was going a bit faster than usual; about 22mph, I threw myself info the bend, knee out as always, and felt the back wheel start to go from under me; and the bike started wobbling. Thought ' oh shit, here comes some roadrash at the least' but somehow must have jolted myself to the left as it managed to right itself. My lucky day.

2) Going along The Cut; there are three riders who've come off the lights by Waterloo road quickest, we're following a skip-truck. I'm riding to the off-side so I can see round him, there's a guy in primary and another gutter-hugging. At this point by the Young Vic there's a bike turning right, which I can see but the others can't. The truck slows as he can't get pas the bike, but he's slightly moving to the left. I and the primary-rider slow behind the truck does. The gutter-hugger goes up the inside of the truck, but there's no room to do that as the truck's now moving left, the road's narrow so he ends up having to try and jump on the pavement. His lucky day.
 
i was out at lunchtime riding over potholes with a gopro on my helmet & bars for some people making a pothole documentary for the BBC. Actually seemed quite hard to find any bad ones, unusually. They interviewed me the other day about my accident in April too.
 
You want potholes?

There's a 50 metre stretch of road about 200m from here which the local council refuse to "adopt". Despite the fact that people have to use the road to get to and from a Local Authority school as the school's on a cul-de-sac. The coucil say the "frontages" (all eight of them) will have to pay for the road to be brought up to standard before they'll adopt it. The previous estimate was £250,000...

So it's a real pothole fest!

And every year the council turn up and make a token effort to fill in the worst potholes. A month later most of the tarmac has broken up and it's back to being virtually off-road again. Earlier this year the council resurfaced the road either side of the unadopted 50 metre length - it's ridiculous.

</rant>
 
Just had my bike serviced. Wheels trued; new brake blocks and cables, new rear cogs (cassette) new front cogs; new chain and a good clean. Paid £140 for it. Old chain had stretch quite a lot. Feels different riding it to work today. Slightly tougher going up the hills had to use a slightly lower gear sometimes.
 
I love a nice tailwind. Think a lot of people had today off, fairly light for traffic and mostly good luck with the lights.

First sub-29 minute commute for me, 28:10 (or 27:49 'moving time), 18.1mph average. Chasing someone for most of the last five miles helped too.
 
I never paid as much attention to the weather forecast until I started riding to work regularly, sometimes I'll plan my week around a good wind, choosing the days when I'm in the office and not out on site.

I'll pay for it tonight on the way home. 18mph headwind and rain forecast (rain that wasn't forecast last night when I checked! :mad:)
 
That's it. I've got a Radio 3 live broadcast thing to go to tonight, so not on the bike.

Commuting through 2014
Distance: 2,784.4 mi
Time: 182h 32m
Elev Gain: 70,732 ft - that's like two times up Mt Everest :)
Rides: 332
Fractured Wrists: 1

given I had 6 weeks not riding thru injury, I'm not seeing that as too shabby.
 
I still have a couple more rides to go, so won't do the sums until I'm done for the year. I haven't separated my commutes out from shopping or general pissing about, but total so far is 3,040.3 km (1889.2 miles) and 22,263 metres of up. I recently set the target of breaking 2000 before the end of the year but I've had a lot of site work over the last few weeks and have been driving places in a hire car rather than slogging up Selby Rd every day. I think I can still make it if I do a nice leisure ride while I'm down at my folks for Christmas.

At the start of the year I said I'd aim for 5000 miles, but I wasn't counting on having 5 meters of my small intestine lopped out in July, two weeks off for concussion following my crash in late April or having a girlfriend to go on holiday with rather than doing my usual billy no-mates solo touring in the summer. I haven't actually done more than about 30 miles in a single ride this year,
 
Windy today, and few cars about, great conditions for a bit of tearing about. Got myself geared up for a sprint on the dual carriageway just before the end of the commute, stripped off a layer, coasted up to the roundabout just before it starts, threw on full power and the fucking pedestrian crossing lights change 50m in front of me. No fucker crossing it either. Fucksticks. Nearly turned round for another go at it, but already running a bit late for work.

1,914.9 miles in the bag for the year, creeping towards that 2000 mile target.
 
My last commute of 2014 is tomorrow. I'm not going to miss it for a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed for a dry winter.
 
Last one for me today, decentish tailwind and few cars again, plus I seemed to keep ahead of the rain that was promised for around 8am. Had a nice bit of sprinting on the middle bit of the commute, needed to race through some lights as they started changing when I was about 50 m away, then kept going full pelt up to the next set, got a third overall on Str*va for my efforts. Up to 1935 (recorded) miles for the year now. Moving time just under 30 minutes which is pretty good for winter.

I had a look into changing the freewheel block on the back last night, I always thought I had something like a 12-28t on there, and I wondered if I could get an 11 to boost my speed a bit, but it turns out I've got a 14t, and that screw-on blocks like the one I have don't seem to come in anything smaller than a 13t (hard to find much about them on the internet as they're old tech). Think I might have to order myself a 13 just to get a little more speed, but that's the best I can do without custom building a wheel (27" wheels only seem to come with screw-on threaded hubs). The 13t one is also a seven-speed set and my changer is for a 6, so I'll have to get a new one of those too.

Would I need a thinner chain for a seven-speed set? I need a new one anyway as this one is getting a bit worn and is suffering from winter riding (which is part of what got me looking at getting a new block). The front cog is a modern one and can take narrower chains.
 
Oh, and the quiet roads things only seems to apply in the morning, everyone who isn't at work is doing their Christmas shopping/visiting in the afternoons/evenings so roads are still packed going home, and lots of impatient reckless dickheads (doing what I call 'Friday driving') about too.
 
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