One Hour Design Challenge Winner!

Source : Core77 Design Blog

What the.....!!!

I guess this is what happen when you lock the wheel and not the frame. What a clever bike thief!

Source : Crank and Pedal Manila

The higher gear myth

With Around the Bay in a Day coming up everyone wants to know how to make their road bike perform better. Retailers are regularly approached by (often young male) customers who want to put “higher gears on their bike so that it will go faster”. They claim that even in top gear they are spinning their pedals so fast that they could speed up if only they could change to a higher gear. This is just plain untrue. Any rider who can spin the pedals at maximum revs in top gear on the flat for more than a few seconds at a time should be in Europe training for next year’s Tour de France.

How fast you travel is determined by the balance between how much power your body can generate and how much wind and rolling resistance you have to work against. More power or less wind resistance: you go faster. The power your legs generate has nothing to do with the gearing of the bike. It makes no difference whether you are pushing hard pedalling at 50 revolutions per minute (very slowly) or spinning the pedals at 110rpm (very fast), the power output will depend on how old you are, how fit and strong you are and how well you chose your parents. Unfortunately the only one of these which you can control is your fitness and strength, so increase your training, not your gearing.

A quick hint: An easy way to reduce the rolling resistance of your bike is to pump up your tyres. To make sure you waste as little as possible of the power of your legs lubricate your chain.

Source : Facts & Fictions- Bicycle Victoria

Cycling Tips

With the advent of 10 speed shifting, the overwhelmingly most popular choice for the 20 gears is 53 x 39 in the front with 12 - 25 in the back. In using this setup, feel free to run your 53 up to your 21t. But stay off the 23 and 25 except for very short periods. The sharp chain angle for these two cogs adds a lot of wear and tear as well as friction to the chain. And in your 39, try to stay away from your 12 and 13 tooth cogs even though this crossover is easier for the chain to handle than the wide crossovers on the big ring. For those of you running 9 speeds of 12 - 23, stay away from that 21 and 23 when you are on your 53, as well as the 12 and 13t on the 39.

Source : Bikyle.com/ photo from dkimages.com

Underground Bicycle Parking

Source : YouTube

Carrying Soap on a Bicycle Tour

Soap can end up having a considerable weight penalty on a trip if one carries 1) hand soap, 2) shampoo, 3) dishwashing detergent, 4) soap for washing clothes, and 5) a degreaser. To save weight and yet have all the soap I need, I carry a single bottle of concentrated dish detergent. It is an excellent hand soap and has anti-bacterial properties and seems to clean my hair just fine and of course works on dishes. A small amount washes my clothes without being harsh on them, and I will explain how to use it as a degreaser in the next tip.

One environmental note of warning: never discard soapy water into or use soap in a stream or lake. Instead, wash yourself and your pots away from the water and rinse away from the water too. I have found that a good swim in a creek or lake will clean the body fairly well without the use of soap. All that soap does, anyway, is to dissolve grease, and there is only a small amount of skin oil on our bodies.

Source : Ken Kifer's Bike Page : Tips and Tricks for Bicycle Touring / Photo from Bike Nerd.

Lance Armstrong Says: Commute by Bike!

Lance Armstrong can do amazing things on a bicycle (most notably, ride it very quickly up very steep mountains). Yet it turns out that, for all the individual glory he has achieved as a professional cyclist, his greatest contribution to cycling may be his promotion of the bicycle as a form of transportation and recreation. Armstrong is about to open an 18,000 square-foot bicycle store in his hometown of Austin, Texas where, apart from selling the usual bicycle products, he will "promote bike culture and bike commuting" by providing showers and a locker room, as well as bicycle storage, for bicycle commuters that lack those facilities at their offices. As Armstrong himself noted, "This city is exploding downtown. Are all these people in high rises going to drive everywhere? We have to promote (bike) commuting..."

So you don't have to have Armstrong's quads to commute to work (although it wouldn't hurt), but having him in your town certainly helps.

Mat Touring'd say...GO LANCE!!!!

Source: Trehugger.com

Cycling Tips of the day

After a long uphill, don't coast downhill without pedaling. As you climb up the hill, lactic acid builds up in your muscles and can contribute to muscle soreness. By pedaling lightly but constantly while coasting downhill (even if there's little resistance) you can help remove the lactic acid.

Source: UC Berkeley Wellness Letter.com

Street Surfer

When browsing the Net today, I found this 'funny' looking bike and wonder whether we would see it on Malaysia roads soon. (Bet, we will coz Malaysian cyclists are 'kiasu' too!) After watching the video (below), it seems to be more an 'X-treme' kinda biking rather than the 'normal' on-road or off-road cycling. Due to its 'free-styling' ability similar to the bmx, i think it will be big one day and who knows, may be we will see it in the Olympics or at least the X-Games.



Visit the website here

Source: Tasty Adventure

Sheldon Brown: RIP

Sheldon Brown: 1944 - 2008

Visit his website (click here)

Source : harris cyclery - visit their website for 'hard to get' parts & accessories.

Apology

Being a guy who love cycling, I set up this blog to provide information for my friends and other cycling enthusiast and I don't make any profit out of it. However, on September 4, 2007, I have been warned about one of the photo that was used in my blog titled 'Tire Rotation' that was used without permission. Hence, I would like to apologize to www.DownTheRoad.org for my error and have taken out the photo from my blog to avoid any legal implication in the future.

SORRY..