Cycling

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delinquent
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Re: Cycling

Post by delinquent »

Question:
I'm riding a downhill bike with massive fuckoff tires. Is it normal for them to appear slightly flatter than thinner tyres under my weight? I have them filled to bursting point.
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ppotter
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Re: Cycling

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sinewav wrote:
Phytotron wrote:Way to follow Tom Owen's safety observations—be seen! And with that thing, be fierce (::snap::) while you're at it, I guess, heh.
My girlfriend in Austin yelled at me today about not wearing a helmet. So I went to the store and looked at them, but damn, they seem pretty flimsy. I guess anything is better between your skull and cement/metal/glass, but I haven't been able to visualize myself in safety gear yet. This is the immature 10 year old sinewav on dirt BMX trails taking over my reasoning again. Strangely, this is counter to how I am at work. On the job I wear full safety gear (glasses, gloves, steel-toes, etc) where the other guys only wear steel toes when they remember.

I'll get there soon. Austin girl was like "you are important in my life don't die" and I was like "oh, yeah, I should work on that..."
I realise this is a rather old post, but one of those "flimsy" helmets pretty much saved my life, or at least saved me a pretty severe head injury. It was in pieces after the impact but I walked away with just a nosebleed.. I used to wonder how effective they actually were until I needed one. :)
delinquent wrote:Question:
I'm riding a downhill bike with massive fuckoff tires. Is it normal for them to appear slightly flatter than thinner tyres under my weight? I have them filled to bursting point.
Yeah, I'm not an expert but if you are using it off road most people run them with pretty low pressure so they can run faster over an irregular surface, so they're probably designed with this in mind.
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Jonathan
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Re: Cycling

Post by Jonathan »

ppotter wrote:[…] one of those "flimsy" helmets pretty much saved my life, or at least saved me a pretty severe head injury. It was in pieces after the impact but I walked away with just a nosebleed.. I used to wonder how effective they actually were until I needed one. :)
Non sequitur. Where are your controls? That sentiment is way overrepresented compared to the actual incidence of head injuries without a helmet. The efficacy of bicycle helmets is really rather limited, with indirect effects shifting the balance way into the negative. If you got off fine with a helmet, you couldn't possibly be much worse off without one. It could quite possibly be better, because those helmets shuffle types of injuries around more than they help overall.
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ppotter
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Re: Cycling

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I fell headfirst onto a sharp/jagged rock, the helmet was in pieces afterwards and there was a deep gouge in the polystyrene type bit. I was able to get back on and keep riding, I would have been unconscious or worse without it.
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Bytes
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Re: Cycling

Post by Bytes »

Yeh those 'green boxes' are all over the place around where I cycle to work. A lot of drivers just ignore them or there isn't room between cars to get yourself to the front. Plus it can be a bit iffy if the lights go green while you're working your way through to the front.

What I have seen was a cool thing where you get laser projectors on the sides of your bike which give you a kind of box that drivers would keep out of. Would work better if they sliced the car up as well XD
Here's the first example I found

And lastly, I would like to express my hatred of strobing front lights. It makes it really difficult to tell where the cyclist actually is.
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Jonathan
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Re: Cycling

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ppotter wrote:I fell headfirst onto a sharp/jagged rock, the helmet was in pieces afterwards and there was a deep gouge in the polystyrene type bit. I was able to get back on and keep riding, I would have been unconscious or worse without it.
Ah. Helmets do indeed protect against cuts (as would a leather cap). But once they break, they lose most of their ability to distribute force over a larger area, if there ever was a whole lot of it. How much of the polystyrene was compressed? I'm not saying the helmet couldn't possibly help, but I'm skeptical of the extent to which it did. Especially if you peddle such hypotheticals.
Bytes wrote:What I have seen was a cool thing where you get laser projectors on the sides of your bike which give you a kind of box that drivers would keep out of. Would work better if they sliced the car up as well XD
Here's the first example I found
Déjà vu.
Bytes wrote:And lastly, I would like to express my hatred of strobing front lights. It makes it really difficult to tell where the cyclist actually is.
There are varieties that run at constant low brightness in between strobes. Now to get more people to use them. Oh, and in the Netherlands only indicators are supposed to blink. Some years ago blinking lights were fairly common (those cheap early LED lights), but nowadays I hardly ever see them. In practice you're also more likely to see cyclists with too little light than too much. I'm not necessarily happy about that, but I'm glad we can afford it. :)
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ppotter
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Re: Cycling

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Jonathan wrote:
ppotter wrote:I fell headfirst onto a sharp/jagged rock, the helmet was in pieces afterwards and there was a deep gouge in the polystyrene type bit. I was able to get back on and keep riding, I would have been unconscious or worse without it.
Ah. Helmets do indeed protect against cuts (as would a leather cap). But once they break, they lose most of their ability to distribute force over a larger area, if there ever was a whole lot of it. How much of the polystyrene was compressed? I'm not saying the helmet couldn't possibly help, but I'm skeptical of the extent to which it did. Especially if you peddle such hypotheticals.
Yes, once they break, you might as well get rid as it's useless. The indent was maybe half way through the inch(?) or so of polystyrene, I didn't really pay that much attention. I've seen someone fracture their skull falling off a stationary skateboard and banging their head, I got concussed falling about 5 feet onto my face, whereas in this situation is was travelling maybe 15-20mph and falling from a greater height, I'm fairly certain the helmet aided me in walking away unscathed. Not sure quite what you mean by a leather cap but I doubt it would have had the same effect in this scenario.
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Phytotron
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Re: Cycling

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Jonathan
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Re: Cycling

Post by Jonathan »

Underground bike park? Why can't you be normal and have underground bike parking? :)
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Durf
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Re: Cycling

Post by Durf »

This is normal for the Japanese:
Bicycle vending machine / public parking
Bicycle vending machine / public parking
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Phytotron
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Re: Cycling

Post by Phytotron »

Opening Monday! We're gonna go take it off some sweet jumps, try to get like three feet of air.
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sinewav
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Re: Cycling

Post by sinewav »

Post pics!
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