Bikeuser shared blog

We could do with more information about interesting cycle events, and less of my ramblings, what?

Lots of cyclists don’t fix their own punctures. They think it’s hard or something. It’s not. The only “hard” part is getting tight tyres on and off.

Here, have an article about puncture repair.

Here, have some comments on it.

- you don’t have to take the wheel off unless you need to replace the inner tube (well, or the tyre). If you’re only patching it, you can do it while it’s attached to the bike. No really. Don’t take the wheel off. It’s a pain. Especially if you’re in a field and forgot your spanner. The first time I fixed a puncture on the back wheel of my old bike, it took me 45 minutes to figure out how to get the chain fixed around the gear mechanism when I went to put the wheel back. (If you think you might have this problem, draw a picture before you take the wheel off. I learnt.)

- but that means you need to find the puncture without dipping the whole thing in a bowl of water. Well, if you’re in a field and forgot your spanner, you probably don’t have a bowl of water anyway. Personally, I favour pumping the tube hard, and then listening for a hiss, or moving my hand around until I feel air escaping. Failing that, a bit of spittle will do for wetting the tyre one section at a time to look for bubbles. I’ve rarely needed to do this.

- On a carpet? Put some newspaper down first.

- When you’re fitting the tyre back, you shouldn’t need to use tyre levers. A couple of tips:
first, a bit of lick-and-spit to wet the tyre can make it slip on easier. Apparently washing-up liquid is even better, but I’ve never bothered. Second, move around the tyre to the furthest point from where you’re stuck, and pinch the tyre in. Work back to the stuck point, pinching your way around, and you should get it a bit further in.

- Snakebite punctures rarely happen if you keep your tyres pumped up hard. Keeping tyres to the recommended pressure or a bit above makes a lot of difference to the ride, too. Every time I pump mine up and set off somewhere I think “wow! I should pump up more often!”. Then I don’t get around to it…

Any more puncture repair tips and tricks?

The university has a new transport manager.

From the unilink website,

“As Transport Manager here at the University, I shall be responsible for a variety of tasks, namely cycle storage and security, the control of student parking, and the highly successful uni-link bus network. I hope to be able to bring my own sets of specialist skills, both in roadcraft and psychology to the role. The job will provide a number of challenges, including solving capacity issues on uni-link, where we have just carried our 10 millionth passenger since services began a little over 5 years ago. However, having seen the extremely busy nature of Hong Kong’s 10,000 strong bus operations at close quarters over many years, I might be able to suggest a few solutions!”

It’s good to see him mentioning cycles in his task lists, since the uni-link website itself seems to have scrapped all the cycle info (much of which can still be found in google’s caches) in favour of being a bus-only site. (Go and fill out the comment form!)

I think he must be this one.

His email is alec.gore @ soton.

It’s been a month. It’s passed me by rather in a daze. I’ve travelled up to Lincoln twice, and Bristol once, and been glad of taking my bicycle everywhere. A series of errors led to me sitting in a bus stop by the M3 junction at Bagshot in the rain at 3am, with a puncture. I thought about hitching, but most of the traffic was going in the London direction - and it was all so wet, and the bus stop had a roof. So I stayed there till it got light, by which time it had stopped raining, and then repaired the puncture and went on to Woking. It’s the inner tube with the continental valve, which is neither Schrader nor Presta; fortunately my pump (which I always carry on the bike) is capable of handling it. It was a German puncture repair kit too, but fortunately I’ve fixed enough punctures not to need to be able to read the instructions. The outer tyre is also German (hey, guess where I last had bike problems!), and I don’t know what caused the puncture; couldn’t find anything in the tyre. Some thorn, I guess. Always carry your puncture kits, kids, especially if you plan to cycle around the countryside at 3am in the rain.

They closed the railway bridge on the Southampton side of the Itchen bridge for a few weeks. The route around via St Mary’s involves two mini-roundabouts which are unexpectedly scary between 3pm and 6pm. When they re-opened the bridge, it was with proper bright green cycle lanes. Hurrah! The traffic used to queue along here waiting for the roundabout onto Itchen bridge, hanging right up against the curb and making it awkward for bikes. They seem to have achieved the cycle lanes by making the middle of the road narrower.

* my friend ran into a pedestrian the other day. My friend stayed on his bike, but elbowed the pedestrian. He’s rather pleased with himself for giving the ped something to think about. I can’t say I approve, but it is somewhat annoying when people walk out onto the road in front of you.

* a driver recently had a pedestrian do the same to him. His emergency stop was successful and he didn’t hit anyone, but when he ranted about the incident on his blog, a commenter asserted that avoiding idiots is *entirely* the driver’s responsibility—you need a license to drive, but not to walk down the street. Does one therefore always drive slowly enough to be able to stop instantly if any of the pedestrians casually walking down the street should suddenly change direction?

* another friend of mine hit a small boy in her car the other day. She was doing 27mph when he ran across the road. He has a broken leg. Cars scare the hell out of me, useful as they are.

* I cycled into a dog. I was braking, as I tend to slow down when there are dogs running around the path (it was the path along the river in Woolston), but it ran under my wheels. I fell off and bruised a foot and a thigh. It took a few minutes to unstick the bits of the bike that got knocked, and when I looked down the path before moving off, the dog was still running around looking fine. Maybe I should stop and walk every time I see a dog?

* There’s been a long thread on the Brompton-users’ mailing list lately about practising emergency stops, braking technique (put most of the weight on the front brake, brace with your arms so your bike doesn’t flip). Go out into the car park on a quiet afternoon and test out your bike. Experiment a bit. How fast can you stop?

* I was reading some cycling newsgroup’s FAQ. One entry suggested never cycling a route you don’t know alone - in case of scary dogs, no less. What a terribly boring cycling life that would be. Another entry on avoiding crashes, particularly when cycling with a group, was interesting - don’t look at the crash or obstruction (same deal for potholes in the road) - look for the space and head towards it, as fast as you can.

* The DebConf wiki entry on Edinburgh suggests that there aren’t many cyclists in Edinburgh because of the hills. In fact, people I know who’ve cycled in Edinburgh and then stopped or cut down have complained about how scary it is cycling in Edinburgh, because of the traffic and in particular the buses. That’s because there isn’t a culture of cyclists in Edinburgh. Cars in Cambridge know that there are idiotic cyclists about and they get the hell out of the way. You indicate right on a Cambridge road, and the car behind will slow down in case you pull across the road without checking. Indicate right anywhere else, and you have to wait for the traffic to clear. I’m not suggesting we need more idiotic cyclists on the roads, but having a culture of cyclists makes the traffic more cyclist-aware, and tends to result in cycling being more comfortable for the cyclists. Be brave, get on your bikes, and when the town sees that people are cycling, they might just start fixing things for the cyclists.

Having posted somewhat ambiguously about the cycle2work scheme we have registered with Halfords, I’d like to draw your attention to cyclescheme, which appears to be just the same thing.

I noticed a cyclescheme poster in Hargroves (Millbrook) yesterday, so if you like the idea of a tax-free bike but aren’t enthusiastic about Halfords, have a look at these five steps.

Any feedback welcomed…

People had muttered to me that Millbrook Roundabout is one of the cycling blackspots in this metropolis.

I never like roundabouts much anyway, not going right around as I was today. On a bike, do you hang close to the left-hand side and indicate right vigorously, or swing right out into the middle? I was floating around in the middle lane, one arm waving right, the chain slipping horribly (I was heading for Hargroves to get a new one), when the car drove onto the roundabout and into me.

He was terribly apologetic afterwards, offered me a lift to the bike shop, checked my bike didn’t need repairing, offered me his phone number, invited me to join him and his kid for a drink, but in fact I seemed fine, save a large bruise on my bum, and the bike fine except for one of the hooks that keeps it folded when I fold, so I carried on.

I changed the chain this evening. DIY++. Oily hands–.

Doh! Just noticed there was a problem with the map-drawing section of the site. I think I’ve fixed it … why not go and add a route (and comment here or email me if there are still problems)? Drawing lines on maps can be strangely addictive…

Warrington cycle campaign’s web-site features a cycling “Facility of the month” page (tongue firmly in cheek), with an archive of these pointless facilities going back to 2001. The archive is an entertaining way to spend a few minutes, and will soon have you equally amused and exasperated.

If it wasn’t so sad and serious, it would be truly funny, but at least humour and satire might be appropriate ways of getting these problems dealt with, and the need for REAL cycling facilities that are actually useful highlighted to the people who come up with these silly schemes in the first place.

Perhaps you can add a few examples of your own (I can think of one that I encounter every day on my commute to work) and I’m sure others can come up with some without too much thought.

A friend pointed out this article in a local Lincoln paper, about a park-and-cycle scheme.

“People can drive from all over the county, park their cars, hop on their bicycles and ride to work”.

I’m not sure I get it really … you keep your bicycle in the car park while you’re not in town? What if you want it at the weekend? Still, I suppose some people already do that with the trains; have a bicycle at each end. “Six special bike lockers”—do you share, or are they just expecting six users of the scheme?

But especially—why on earth do that with a Brompton, which will go *in* your car?

Still, I guess anything that gets the cars out of the town centres and bicycles in instead is a good thing.

But look at that caption, … on the fold-up bikes. Well, the one on the left is a Brompton, but the one on the right looks like a regular bike to me.