Really sorry to hear about the crash & subsequent treatment. Your coworker may be re-thinking bicycle commuting, which would be too bad, given the initial enthusiasm.
Ash, you may be onto something with your thoughts on wheelbase. Moving the rear wheel back seems to have no downside & plenty of improvement to stability & climbing. Add safety to advantages & what's not to like. Of course, your back to the $1.6k hurdle to entry again. (Heavy sigh). For what your co-worker described as his needs, I agree with the suggestion of an old rigid MTB with rim brakes. In the 80s & 90s, a gazillion were sold & many hit Craigslist with little use & original (now rotten) tires. They make an ideal first or commuter ride. Your fist bike is rarely your last bike. I too have encountered resistance to notion of spending Rivendell prices when someone is not sure they are going to even like biking. And the shiny new bauble at REI is tempting. For the person on the street, the difference between a $300-$500 bike and a $1,000+ bike is hard to see. On the subject of brakes, most of lower end bikes feature mechanicals which in my limited experience do not perform as well as average rim brakes. They are grabby, noisy and hard to modulate. Friends with disc braked touring bikes complain of short pad life. I rode a rental on a hilly tour a couple of years ago. The bike was fairly new. After a couple of long downhills requiring plenty of braking, the started squealing and did so for the rest of the trip. Hydraulic discs are an entirely different animal. I bought a new MTB last year, and even though it was middle of the line, it came with hydraulic discs. Big whoop, I thought. You can lock up a wheel with any V-brake, so would anyone want even more power? I found them amazingly easy to modulate and have grown to love them. But at the entry level price point it is unlikely one would find hydraulics. In my club, most of the riders have CF racing bikes, so my Atlantis draws some interest. Despite spending thousands more for their exotic bikes (DI2 is the current rage), they are amazed to hear the prices of Rivendell. "You spend how much on a steel framed, 30 lb bike with friction shifters & V-brakes????" Occasionally someone says they like the classic bike look and gets interested in Rivendell but nothing has ever comes of that interest. I never offer unsolicited advice, since IMHO, no one pays attention to solicited advice. dougP On Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 12:10:38 PM UTC-7, Ash wrote: > > A new coworker who's also new to bikes, was going to get one for his > commute. I commute to work on bike sometimes and may have talked about > bikes/biking in happy hours. Maybe because of that he came to me one day > to consult what bike to buy. I gave my *opinion* about what would make a > good commute bike: wider tires, rim brakes, cromo frame/fork, upright > riding, ability to carry some stuff, etc. I gave him an intro to > Rivendell as well. Offered to lend my Joe A for a fews days if he wanted > to get a better idea what I was talking about. > > Like most folks who are new to the world bikes would be, he wasn't sold > the need to spend $1.6k (a Clem) on a bicycle for his short 2 mile > commute. He ended up buying a bike that cost him 1/3rd of that. It came > with disc brakes. > > Quite sadly, he had a bizarre crash couple of weeks ago. Needed a surgery > to fix his wrist, get stitches on his face and so forth. He now has a > steel rod in his forearm. Here's what happened apparently: he was > peddling back from an event in his neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon. > He encountered a patch of potholes along the bike lane. He's not sure > what exactly occurred next, but all of the sudden he went over the > handlebars and landed on his chin :( > > I've been wondering how in the world a bike can simply flip at slow > speeds. That too, on a flat road. I'm beginning to think the combo of > disc brake and short wheelbase might have something to do. In my limited > experience with discs, my impression is that they can be much sharper > relative to rim brakes. They are perhaps less forgiving on someone not > experienced in biking. Someone who does not have a feel for how much to > sqeeze the front brake vs the rear. Once the front wheel is locked, an SWB > is more likely to flip over than, let's say, an Appa or Clem, I'm thinking. > > In 2016, a cousine of mine had similar accident while riding with his > friends on a flat trail. Both his wrists were shattered. It took him > nearly 5 months to recover and return to work. (majority of the time he was > dependent on his wife to shower, wear cloths, etc etc.) > > I’ve always appreciated LWB of my Appa and MIT Atlantis from comfort > standpoint. Now on I’m also be thanking them for being safer by design. > > In future if I hear about someone shopping for a bike, I'll be sure to > insert myself firmly into the process (even if it will annoy them) and try > harder make them get a Riv. Sometimes it is a delicate task. I have to > make sure I don't make them think bikes are unsafe except Rivendells. *A* > bike is better than no bike. > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
