I’ve never felt slow on my Cheviot—other than my more upright position in the wind, and this issue could be solved with a switch to drop bars.
With that said, there is a very noticeable difference in steering between the Homer and Cheviot. The Homer is much more responsive to turning the handlebars. Riv bikes are never “twitchy”. On my twitchy road bike at slow speed, climbing at maybe 5/6 mph, my only crash on that bike was when I dropped my water bottle and grabbed for it and my front wheel turned slightly and the bike flopped to the ground. Rivs never feel unstable like my above experience, but if you are at slow speed the Homer will feel more unstable as the front wheel wobbles. If you’ve ever climbed a hill at about the slowest speed you can—you will experience this effect because you will need to adjust your balance by turning the front wheel from side to side. With the Cheviot, I am confident that if I had no front cables I could spin my front fork in a 360 without falling because with a Cheviot I turn by shifting my weight and not by turning my bars. On the flip side, when I’m bombing down a twisty road, I want to be on my Homer because the more responsive steering will get me down effortlessly. I am confident I could go at similar speeds down a mountain on my Cheviot but I would need to commit my weight on every sharp turn. If you want to watch this type of riding in action, then the best example I remember is when Floyd Landis “won” the Tour de France on his famous breakaway stage. He rocketed down the mountain by throwing his bike and weight from side to side and not turning his front wheel. The commentary was that he was trained as a mountain biker. I think mountain bikes cannot be floppy at low speed, so they behave more like a Cheviot so you turn by weight and not by turning the bars. Floyd Landis showed that you can descend mountain passes at the elite level using this technique. Now, getting back to the “faster” discussion. If you equate faster with more steering input, I bet the Cheviot and Clem will be similar in terms of how the bike turns when you turn the bars. I bet the Cheviot being lighter will be more sensitive to weight shifts and will turn faster. I haven’t ridden a Clem, but I load my Cheviot regularly and know that I feel faster unloaded :-). It probably won’t be as dramatic as that! Toshi sheltering in Oakland On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 10:03 PM JAS <swanson.jo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Joe, thanks so much for the encouragement and your ideas for how to > lighten up this baby. I'll be interested to see what comes of this > discussion. I can see myself with fenders and a saddlebag with a rack or > some sort of bag support if needed with the objective of keeping it light > and agile. > > On Friday, March 27, 2020 at 1:51:01 PM UTC-7, Joe Bernard wrote: >> >> Joyce, >> >> I've owned 4 Clems (2 L, 2 H) and a Cheviot - which probably means I have >> a problem, but that's another story! 🤪 - and think I can double-up a bit >> on Leah's thoughts. >> >> The Chev is often misunderstood as a cruiser/tourer-type bike because of >> the mixte look but in reality it's a light-ish, stiff-ish road bike with >> road brakes. >> >> I think it's a perfect compliment to your Clem set up with alu bars, stem >> and post, and maybe don't load it down with front and rear racks and a >> bunch of bags. Fenders are fine and maybe a rear rack to support a >> medium-ish saddlebag is good. Go for it! > > -- > 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 view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/7d172ba4-fce5-4460-b7bc-7bd020a23f71%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/7d172ba4-fce5-4460-b7bc-7bd020a23f71%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CAGB59xwOgGai5%2BBKTA6qr6X%2BFDQa5tttwh9jTnNG45qhOmGx5g%40mail.gmail.com.
