Fixie Riders: don't Slipstream Mountain Bikes

It's January, and you can see who is out and about on their new fixie bike. This rear view video show our (expendable, tax-dodging) reporter turning off St Pauls Road, Clifton, onto Pembroke Road,
at a double-mini-roundabout put in to break Satnav. And coming up from the triangle, along Queen's Road, here comes someone in a shiny clean fixie, who decides to slipstream our reporter (expendable, tax-dodging).



This is where they a number of mistakes

1. Cycling behind someone on a bike without letting them know you are there. Risk: the rider in front might perform some manoeuvre without warning.
2. Cycling directly behind the bike, rather than off to one side, generally further from the pavement. Risk: you have to be able to stop as fast as the bike in front.
3. Cycling behind a mountain bike while you have a fixed wheel bike,
   albeit with a front brake.

We'll assume they were a bit drubbed from the climb and so didn't feel like passing, but they should have hung off to one side. At the very least, when they got behind our reporter (tax-dodging, expendable) they should have looked at the bike, and realised that it was a mountain bike.

In the video, you can see that the fixie rider (tax dodging, expendable, not so good at braking fast), gets to cycle behind the mountain bike until 00:30, when, in front of our reporter, someone on a phone steps out onto the zebra crossing. This puts our reporter into an aggressive-but-non-emergency brake. All well, until someone one a bike shoots up their left, almost into the aforementioned pedestrian. Which was a bit of a surprise.

It was only later, when the question "where did that rider come from", went through our reporters idle mind, that they went for the rear camera and had a look to see what happened. As you can see, they had their hands on the bars, drifted in right behind our camera, and, when the bike in front has to do that stop, nearly ride straight into the back of them, only avoiding it by swerving to the side.

Mountain bikers don't do chain gangs. They don't go along taking turns at the front, slipstreaming each other for performance, before hanging at the back to cycle no handed while you rummage in your back pocket for a gel with the same texture and flavour as baby food. Nor do they try and communicate with each other with little twitches of the hand, or pointing down and waving to say "there's something on the tarmac to avoid".

Instead they cycle along with enough of a gap between the rider in front so that they can see, enjoy and then learn from the mistakes the rider in front makes, rather than join in the crash. Food? Maybe, but they'll stop for that as they are generally lazy and view "cycling no hands" is one of the precursors to a trip to A&E. As for pointing out gravel, potholes or other surface hazards, those are not things to swerve around, they are there to jump over.

And, unlike fixie bikes with one front caliper brake, a modern MTB has hydraulic disk brakes, which, if the bubbles have been squeezed out of the cables, lets the rider bring the bike sliding to a halt with only the light touch of one finger on the brakes.

Because of that one-finger braking, mountain bikers are generally split into the "index finger faction": cycle with their index fingers on the brakes and the "middle finger faction", who use their middle finger. Whatever the choice, except on uphills, they're going to be cycling with their chosen finger on the brakes at all times. And when needed, they'll know to put that on, push their butt backwards to keep maximum weight on that rear wheel, with its 2.2+ inch surface on the ground, and so rather than skid, bring their bike to a halt faster than you could stop a British Leyland era Austin Mini (*).

When you come up behind a bike, see that its got wide tyres and disk brakes on the back, instead of cycling close enough to see whether the brakes are Shimano, SRAM or Hope, you need to think "this is a bike which can stop fast ridden by someone who may know how to use them", and not cycle right up their arse without even saying hello.



Do you know this rider? Are you that rider? Whoever it is: either hang off the side or stay back, especially to mountain bikes. Thanks

(*) MkI Minis had non-servo assisted drum brakes and to stop rear-wheel skid depended on that battery in the boot along with the WD-40, the hammer and the tow rope. As a safety feature, it was designed not to go very fast.

What's wrong with this picture?

Our Friday quiz this week is what is wrong with this photo of two fixie bikes down in Cabot Circus.

Suggestions?

Men: bicycles are not the answer to your mid-life crises

We like seeing Bristol on TV, and right now the TV show that has coverage is the BBC's Mistresses, one that shows pretty women driving round the city having extra-marital relationships with men who are also driving round Bristol. Got that? There's a link there: cars=sex. 

This fact is important as there a lot of press right now saying that the new mid-life crisis toy is not a sports car, a motorbike or a woman half your age -it's a racing bicycle. These articles are appearing both in proper papers and socialist rags.

This is wrong.

Men: whatever issues you have in later years -  a bicycle will not solve them.

You may have seen the Tour de France, seen Andy Schleck go to-to-toe with Contador in the Pyrenees, and thought "I could do that", but sadly, you can't. You just penalise the rest of us.

Oh yes, it sounds nice, and makes for some articles showing shiny bicycles against mountain backdrops, such as here, Crater Lake, Oregon. Oh yes, you can dream of such things while stuck in the traffic jams on the A370, or the M32.

But look at those mid-life crisis cyclists. Has it really solved their problems? No, they just fill their lycra clothing too much for everyone else to enjoy, and have strange looking legs. The one on the left: drinks too much beer for that top. The one on the right, scrawny, and apparently has not only continued with his bicycle obsession, gone on to come in at #5 in the veterans category of US Cyclocross rankings, and dragged his daughter in that same obsession.

Well, it's their choice, their money you may think. But as well as damaging the family, we, the motorists suffer. You don't see it in those news articles showing the fat men gasping up the mountains, but we know. We get stuck behind them on our trips to cribbs causeway when we get held up by packs of these middle-aged lycra-louts on their Saturday training rides up the A38. We get stuck behind them on our weekday commutes when their training regime mandates mid-week rides. We get stuck behind them when they spend so much money on bikes and bits that they can't afford to drive and have to cycle to work -on our roads.

We even get stuck behind them in the mountains.


The photo above may look nice, but this is the Going to the Sun Road,  the road from the opening scene of the Shining, the only road through Montana's Glacier National Park, a road that last month the Guardian listed as one of the "must visit" roads in the US.

Yet it is somewhere a single mid-life-crisis roadie could hold up line of Recreational Vehicles, each of which could be towing an SUV carrying a quad bike and a jetski. There to enjoy nature, to bring revenue to the area, not faff around pretending they were six again. At least in the US, they recognise this and ban bicycles in summer, but that just means these people ride up illegally. Whoever took this photograph was not only a tax dodging cyclist, they must have illegally ridden up this mountain pass which is rightfully kept free for important people. Us.

Yet still they come, naively believing that spending money on a bicycle, some silly clothing and then pedalling round the mountains is a noble thing to do.  Then there are these "sportives", which is where hundreds of them come out and block through traffic, such as here, on the RAMROD "Ride around Mount Ranier in One Day" event.

As the cyclists block our roads -here there are even signs up to warn us of the inconvenience- the rest of society pays the price of your inability to settle into middle age with a few beers in front of the TV.

For all those men who have been spending too much time loitering around at Fred Baker's, Mud Dock or that fancy shop at the bottom of Park Street, print out this article and read the points below before you fritter away your money.

1. The main mid-life crises toys for men are sports cars, motorbikes, and a women closer to the age of your offspring than your own year of birth.
2. Motor vehicles -especially the open topped car, help you get that woman on the side.
3. Motor vehicles reward those with money: the more you spend, the faster it goes.
4. It doesn't matter how much you spend on a road bike, you will still be overtaken by the 22 year old riding a fixie one-handed while texting a friend and smoking a cigarette
5. That student girl you were after will find that 22 year old fixie-rider cuter than you.

Think about it. Open topped fast cars have a purpose, road bikes don't. 

More on this topic another day. In the mean time, we are watching you. Act your age -get a sports car.

Barely rebellious

We know the bicycles in the city are lawless subsersives who deserved to be imprisioned.

But exactly how lawless are they?

Here: someone carefully pootling over the junction of Coldharbour and Cranbook Roads, no helmet, no hi-viz, bag dangling from the handlebars.

Compare this with these fixie troublemakers in New York (link credit to "tag")

At least those subsersives are going to kill themselves and any pedestrians they run into, so saving the NYPD the effort of shooting them.

Now look at this messenger in London (link from Adam):

Again getting in the way of tax paying vans and taxis, as well as contraflowing one-way streets, but clearly cycling round the city like someone who has decided to commit suicide in London in a more interesting way than jumping under a tube train.

Now look back at the first cyclist, the one quietly going across a suburban road on red? They're not in the same league are they? They think they are rebellious, but they are as rebellious as those swiss teenagers who put on freshly ironed Iron-Maiden T-shirts every day and come home by 9pm after telling their mum where they aer going to be. Our city's cyclists -they think they are rebels, but they are not.

Fixed and Single Speed in Bristol

Fixed Wheels bike. Now that mountain bikes have gone from being cool and radical to the mid-life-crisis toy of men getting tubby, rebels need a different form of rebellion for the run to Sainsbury's. And here it is: the fixie

With no gears, less to go wrong. And with a fixed rear wheel, you can brake by not pedalling, so no need for bike brakes to make the handlebars look cluttered. A very minimal alternative to the mountain bike with hydraulic disk brakes, 6 inch front and rear travel -accessories that can only get stolen. Without even quick release wheels, there is little to get stolen. Hence, no need to lock up the wheels, or even the premium brooks saddle.

Before everyone rushes out to buy one, know that its illegal to use a bike on roads without two independent braking systems -a front brake is actually needed. Also, the requirement to push down the hill too, means that these are the worse possible bicycle for knees. Those mountain bikes are not just mid-life crisis bikes, they have the low gears you need as you age. Bear that in mind.

Single speed bikes do work in the city, though perhaps as they become more popular, the council should give away a new bristol bike map -one that does not show Nine Tree Hill on it


Without such information, single speed cyclists such as this one, may suddenly discover there is a 1 in 4 hill on their journey, and so be forced to get off and walk.

St Werburgh's Fair: the transport options

Lot of people chose not to drive to the St W's event, presumably the drink-driving laws getting in the way of sensible travel.

Here see a purple milk float with room for six, behind the three person sound-system bike. The front two are in charge of movement, while the one at the back powers the amplifier and manages the ipod-based music collection. He also gets to eat off a plate.

We see someone on a fixie, and while we are yet to decide whether this is fashion getting in the way of sensible, a discussion with this rider on their downhill-MTB related knee and leg surgery convinced us that some people do it as it is less dangerous than DH work. His daily commute up Park Street is good for fitness, apparently.

That said, he got very wistful when the trenchard street lift was mentioned to him. When will that facility become an official part of a cycling city, we wonder?

Nearby, a mix-yourself smoothie system. Finally, a use for small children.

Just outside the fenced off area -a large, supervised bike park. This is unusual, as even in years past when the Ashton Court festival was free, there was nothing like this. It will enable many people to cycle to the fair, get drunk, and then ride home.

Fixies? Fit or optimistic

We've heard of fixies before -fixed wheel bikes, courier kit turned into fashion items in London and NY. But those cities are mostly flat. you can get away with a single speed bike with no brakes other than your own two legs. To ride fixie in BRS, now that would take someone with serious hill climbing thighs, or they would have to commit to only visiting one part of the city.

This fixie rider was spotted making his way towards Cotham Hill, that is, a bit of the uphill. "It gets a bit hard sometimes" he says

As he rides off.

Leaving us behind.