On Mon, 11 Mar 2019 09:10:17 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

Phuket, Thailand has several extremely steep hills on the western side
of the island, steep enough that it is difficult to push a bike up
them.

Out of curiosity I did push the bike up one and coasted down the
eastern side.

Having read all the hoopalla about the rims getting hot and tires
blowing I stopped about half way down and felt the rims... they were,
perhaps, a bit warmer than ambient temperature.

But. As the east side of the hill is a series of "S" turns one can't
just coast down the mountain but must slow down every hundred yards or
so to make the next corner so my braking was a series of pretty hard
brake applications followed by, perhaps, an equal period of coasting.

I have since used that method when descending hills and an occasional
check shows that the rims do not get excessively hot.


I have never even considered dragging my brakes, except that one time
in Schenectady when I got caught in a pace line of automobiles. Cars
are so squirrely that I had to stand on the pedals while dragging the
brakes to match the oscillations in speed. Surprised me a lot, since
heavier bikes are more stable than lighter ones, I had thought that a
very heavy vehicle would be very stable.

When I lived in Albany County, New York, I would stop every mile or so
on downhills and feel my rims, but never found them hot.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/