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Old December 10th 10, 10:53 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Chalo
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Posts: 5,093
Default Insular roadie rubbish about seats/saddles

Duane Hébert wrote:

Chalo wrote:

The bicycle industry defines "comfort bikes" as MTB-derived bikes with
steeply sloping top tubes, rudimentary suspension forks and seatposts,
and high adjustable stems with riser bars. *Oddly, most of these bikes
also have steep seat angles, making for a uniquely impotent rider
position.


http://www.chicagobikeblog.com/2007/...ort-bikes.html


Yikes. *My ass hurts just looking at that.


That's 'cause you don't use a seat, but rather a perch. My prostate
hurts when I look at those. With the right seat, a comfort bike is no
less comfortable than a barstool.

Anyway, the problem with comfort bikes is not that they're
uncomfortable in any way, but that they interfere with the rider's
ability to propel the bike. Kind of like a barstool in that regard,
too.

Most of the people who buy typical comfort bikes don't ride them very
much, from what I can tell. *The Electra Townie is an exception, in my
neck of the woods anyway, with noticeable representation among daily
transportational riders.


One of my friends has a Giant hybrid with the shocks and "comfy seat"
that he swears by. *He's always chortling about how roadies don't
understand comfort. *Then after 100k or so, he's complaining about his
sore ass, bitching about the wind and generally having a miserable time.


You understand that you are making a better case here for 'bents than
for real bikes, right? A bike that sucks for riding to the liquor
store still sucks, even if it's "less worse" after riding hours on
some nameless backroad. That goes the same for a 'bent or a spartan
road bike.

A perfect city car isn't ideal for long road trips, and to be fair a
comfort bike isn't ideal for anything at all except selling to a
certain kind of underinformed coward. But in the same way as it is
folly to buy your daily driver based on the two times a year you tow a
boat (or once every couple of years you go play on a racetrack), it's
folly to chose your everyday bike based on the every-couple-months
cycle outing you may or may not get around to doing.

I've offered to let him try my touring bike but he tells me he's into
more comfortable rides. *Go figure.

Sitting straight up, catching the wind directly in my chest with all of
my weight on my ass and the wide saddle chafing my thighs doesn't sound
like my idea of comfort.


Having my thumbs and pecker go numb for weeks from a too-low drop bar
and a mockery of a bike saddle doesn't sound like a heck of a lot of
fun to me, either. The bike industry dishes up plenty of foolishness
at the extremes. Good sensible moderate (and therefore old-fashioned)
bikes are comparatively underrepresented, though. Tried and true
conventions are difficult to market.

Here are some tried and true-- and truly comfortable-- bikes that my
shop carries. They are not fancy, but they don't make fundamental
mistakes in their layout.

http://www.linusbike.com/models/

Chalo
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