Long ago, age about 15 (end of 9th grade), in a fit of gratuitous tinkerishness, I decided to turn my little brother's 24" wheel miniature Hero into something I (5'10") could ride. This was before I scavenged the front wheel for my first complete bike build in 10th grade.
I found some sort of pipe to replace the tiny seatpost; this was so long it put the saddle, a Brooks clone, over the rear axle. To support my weight (125 lb), I rigged metal struts, from a wheelbarrow, between saddle clamp bolts and axle. The cottered crank had a ring of about 30 t and the fw was about 18 -- it was waaaay below 50". Anyway, I rode it the 7 miles or so from our house at the south end of Rosslyn to the Nairobi International School, though square miles of coffee and wonderful wooded valleys. The penultimate approach to the 1 mile long dirt road accessing the school was a 1/2 mile, steepish hill. With a 40" gear, handlebar near my ankles, and saddle south of the rear axle, every little bit of torque on the pedals had me fighting to keep from going over backward. Good times, of a sort. The bike was abandoned on campus (at the huge, dark, grim bamboo cluster in the main drive) until The Great Pot Bust of spring, 1970 when I and it were hauled off back home by irate parents. Gad, my daughter just entered 9th grade. I'm very glad that she is a far, far more reliable child than I was. On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 5:55 PM, Garth <garth...@gmail.com> wrote: > Ride it ! Ride that wheelie ! > > Alright . . . . . shift your weight forward . On really steep stuff , > it's almost like I'm standing out of the saddle , but my butt is still in > contact with the saddle, just less so . On drop bars on the hoods , on my > Alba bars I'm forward near the curve . > > > > On Friday, August 21, 2015 at 7:29:29 PM UTC-4, Lungimsam wrote: >> >> So I rode my first 18% grade today and found myself poppin' a wheelie by >> accident. >> >> It was hard to get into a comfy position and just get into a rhythm. >> >> Do you lean forward a lot, into hoods, or sit up more on the tops with >> drops to get into the zone on those kinda grades? >> >> The only rhythm I got into was my anaerobic gasping. >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Resumes, LinkedIn profiles, bios, and letters that get interviews. By-the-hour resume and LinkedIn coaching. Other professional writing services. http://www.resumespecialties.com/ www.linkedin.com/in/patrickmooreresumespec/ Patrick Moore Alburquerque, Nouvelle Mexique, Vereinigte Staaten ************************************* *The point which is the pivot of the norm is the motionless center of a circumference on the rim of which all conditions, distinctions, and individualities revolve. *Chuang Tzu *Stat crux dum volvitur orbis.* Carthusian motto -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
