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Old July 14th 17, 04:32 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc,alt.usage.english
Joy Beeson
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On Tue, 11 Jul 2017 07:20:40 +0100, John Dunlop
wrote:

Over here we sometimes say "granny ring" for the wee ring.


I've heard "granny" only in "granny stop" and "granny gear". A granny
gear was an extra gear below your shifting pattern. You might, for
example, have an inmost sprocket a couple of steps bigger than the
next-larger sprocket (I think we called them "cogs" back then: more
metonymy) and set up your preferred pattern on the remaining four or
five sprockets.

I use a modified crossover -- big ring with the outer five sprockets,
small ring with the inner five sprockets -- and no granny. But upon
climbing Ninth Street for the first time, I said (after we
congratulated each other.) "But I did hit granny.", meaning I'd used
my lowest gear. (Sigh. I'd forgotten that I used to be able to climb
Ninth Street.)

I've forgotten what other shifting patterns were popular. I do recall
that "alpine" came only on department-store bikes, and "half-step"
used two chainrings that differed by half as much as the cogs. I
suppose half-step might achieve a granny gear by adding a wee third
ring.

--
Joy Beeson, U.S.A., mostly central Hoosier,
some Northern Indiana, Upstate New York, Florida, and Hawaii
joy beeson at comcast dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.


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