When I bike 70+ miles, I’m eating a Clif sugar gel every hours or so, plus a constant stream of various bars.
2 Likes
I came to the conclusion that as a professional juggler who performs on stage for multiple hours per evening, sometimes on back to back evenings, I need to pretend to be a professional athlete in terms of fitness and nutrition.
How did I come to this conclusion? By “bonking” so hard at the end of a slightly-longer-than-usual show that I could hardly hold my juggling clubs for the final trick, and the trick took five or six attempts, which kinda spoiled the end of the show.
Anyway, I recently listened to a podcast about nutrition for mountain biking, which I found pretty interesting. It gave some insight into hunger and satiation that I’d intellectually known before, but now I had more personal experiences so it all became way more clear:
1 Like
This is why I’m not a fan of bikes with just one brake. A cable can snap. A hydraulic hose can detach. Both failing at the same time is extremely unlikely. If all the brakes fail, it’s a really bad time. The rider can maybe try to get some friction with the ground or tires using the soles of their shoes. Maybe just bail out. If speed is too high during the failure, injury is all but certain.
1 Like
I’ve never seen a bike with only one brake that wasn’t a fixie or a coaster brake.
In the case of the stupid fixie, it’s an upgrade from their “no-brake” “I’ll just use my foot like a cool kid” nonsense.
Zero-brake guy:
These people are a thing. They’re dangerous nutjobs.
The arguments tend to be:
- I have to “pay attention” more so I end up being a better biker
- Brakes are dangerous (this guy claims he hit an old lady because he had a brake, but he “easily” would have drifted around her if he hadn’t"
- Having no brakes make you feel more “connected” to the bike
Meanwhile, I was on a longish ride a while back where my front brake cable partially snapped. I only had a rear brake, so I was riding like a car with its hazard lights on and being extremely careful until I replaced it. One functioning brake is, to me, a dangerous and risky situation.
This is so stupid, I’m amazed this is even street legal
It seems like an absolute nightmare to come across in a bike lane, slow to start, low top speed, and every time they break, they’d swerve around.
It’s not in most states.
Just a couple weeks ago I watched a guy on a fixie absolutely eat shit in front of me when he tried to “stop” with that stupid rear tire thing to avoid hitting a bunch of pedestrians. He fully faceplanted and I think he still hit one of them.
Like how?!
I know nothing about this company’s inner-workings but these bikes are really popular even in the Netherlands.
Because “the e-bike startup was backed by venture capitalists to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars”!!!
Reinventing the bike from the ground up sounds like an interesting project, but bikes have been around for 150 years or so, and there are many, many, many reasons why bikes are like they are. Even if VanMoof had a few innovations that were valuable, they came along with LOADS of problems that needed to be freshly solved, rather than relying on existing tech, products, sales channels, servicing opportunities, etc. Having everything custom designed and centralised doesn’t help when people just want to easily swap out parts.
For the investment they had, they’d have to have taken HUGE chunks of the existing bike market, and that kind carving out of an existing market doesn’t happen very often.
You want to be the iPhone of ebikes? Then your ebike has to be comparably better than current ebikes than the iPhone 3GS was over its competition, which was Nokias and Blackberrys. VanMoof bikes might be good, but not THAT much better to overcome the traditional companies and all the advantages they have.
3 Likes
And airplanes are 120. Nuts, isn’t it?
Very arguably that one lead to the other, as the Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics.
Their work with bicycles, in particular, influenced their belief that an unstable vehicle such as a flying machine could be controlled and balanced with practice.
or so Wikipedia tells me.
Apparently I know nothing about the inner workings of the bike either. I thought they were just pretty bikes that came with built in lights and all cables are hidden.
The “cables are hidden” means running them inside the frames, and THAT means that they can only be worked on at VanMoof service centres, and that work done anywhere else voids the warranty. If the cables run through propriety parts (like through the handlebars, stem and into the frame) you can’t just buy that off the shelf to fix it yourself.
There are some interesting stories from the service centres too. From a quick google:
“I worked here as a mechanic (bike doctor) for a couple weeks and quit once I realized how poorly the company was run. I was the only one out of four mechanics who actually rode a bicycle and had been formally trained in working on “acoustic” bicycles. The mechanics hired had zero experience with the fundamentals of a bicycle and had to learn everything on the spot from other people learning on the spot. Fortunately there wasn’t much to learn as we didn’t service any parts - we were advised to throw things away and just swap for new parts on bikes. Whole batteries and frames got thrown into dumpsters and inevitably landfills, customers would return their loaner bikes and request a second replacement loaner due to mechanical issues. There was at least 40 bikes regularly sitting in the shop in queue for service and it felt like we never got anything done other than give customers loaners and throw salvageable things into the dumpster. The pay was great and we were given around 20 paid days off a year so it’s no mystery why these opportunists ran outta money. Vanmoof sucks - I would rather ride a bird scooter or, god forbid, a real bike any day. Prayers going out to those struggling to get a refund and extra prayers going out to those that own these pieces of junk. Peace and love y’all, ain’t nothing wrong with pedalling a normal bicycle without pedal assist <3”
https://www.reddit.com/r/vanmoofbicycle/comments/14wexfl/la_service_hub_closed_down/
1 Like
I wasn’t able to watch much Tour de France this year, but I see Vingegaard and Pogacar went 1-2 again.
Was it 4 jumbo viziers beating up Pogacar by himself stage after stage again?
I made a video/slideshow to go with the podcast Emily and I recorded about our bike trip across New York!
3 Likes
I’m always delighted when I think “who does Emily remind me of?” and I realize it’s a friend who comes from Rochester. Must be an accent thing.
At 2:30 we have a new bike sport to ponder.
For me it’s like underwater hockey. As in, because I’ve lived in countries where it’s most popular, it doesn’t feel like that much of a novelty and I don’t consider it that remarkable until the internet discovers it.
It’s an insane sport though, with a very difficult skill layered on top of another very difficult skill.