On 2016-12-29 16:25, Phil Lee wrote:
Joerg considered Wed, 28 Dec 2016
07:47:21 -0800 the perfect time to write:

On 2016-12-27 13:05, Phil Lee wrote:
Joerg considered Tue, 27 Dec 2016
08:03:05 -0800 the perfect time to write:

On 2016-12-26 13:10, Phil Lee wrote:
Joerg considered Sun, 25 Dec 2016
09:01:18 -0800 the perfect time to write:

On 2016-12-25 01:15, Phil Lee wrote:
Joerg considered Fri, 23 Dec 2016
12:56:32 -0800 the perfect time to write:

On 2016-12-23 10:24, Phil Lee wrote:
Joerg considered Wed, 21 Dec 2016
14:19:25 -0800 the perfect time to write:

On 2016-12-21 13:11, Phil Lee wrote:
Joerg considered Tue, 20 Dec 2016
13:27:04 -0800 the perfect time to write:

On 2016-12-19 18:59, Phil Lee wrote:
Joerg considered Mon, 19 Dec 2016
13:57:12 -0800 the perfect time to write:

On 2016-12-17 21:12, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/17/2016 5:22 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2016-12-17 14:05, Phil Lee wrote:
Joerg considered Fri, 16 Dec 2016
13:51:14 -0800 the perfect time to write:



[...]


Maybe this works:

https://ixquick-proxy.com/do/show_pi...026ed2d5844401

It's the tunnel underneath Highway 50. Quite spooky because in summer
there can be rattlesnakes in there that want to cool off. Or some
muggers with knives jump into the path when you emerge.

Similar to the one under the A14 near Stow-cum-Quy, but ours doesn't
have lights - I can't remember if they are fitted but broken or simply
not there. You'd have to stand in there for a few minutes for your
eyes to adjust enough to be able to see broken light fittings, which
would be foolish at best, given the high level of cycle use and the
fact that most are riding blindly towards the light at the other end.


I never rely on road lighting, my bikes both have powerful headlights.
In our tunnel that can really save the day because rattlesnakes in
"cooling off mode" are often coiled up and they blend into the pavement
color. Coild up snakes can strike if you see them too late. So far I
only ran over one on a trail and it was stretched out where they'd have
a hard time striking.

But any decent cycle light will be pointing the light where you really
need it - which isn't the ceiling of the tunnel!


On high beam it should. On MTB it is even essential in a thick forest.
However, why would you want to see the ceiling of the tunnel?


[...]


There are a few fully suspended touring bikes, which would seem to fit
your needs better than an MTB.


They'd break on the trails. Trail riding is a necessity out here.

They're designed for unsupported expedition touring around the world,
mostly on tracks and unsealed roads. They would survive even your
abuse, unless you set out to deliberately destroy them to prove a
point.


I never saw anything like that here. Or in Europe for that matter.

A good trail bike must survive undamaged when the whole enchilada
becomes airborne and lands hard. I never do that on purpose (except with
the front wheel, of course) but it happens.

If you are doing jumps on a normal utility ride, you need to do it
slower, but never mind, with the weight of bike you want, you will be
anyway. No wonder you find cycling so risky, if you ride as if you
were in a competitive MTB event on every ride.


It's par for the course on some singletrack routes here. Good bikes must
withstand that. Your can't pussyfoot over every rock or tree root.


They aren't cheap mind you, but that is as much because of the tiny
market for them as the actual building cost.


I have not seen anything with the robust trail performance of a Fuji
Outland or similar.

Try looking at something like the ToutTerrain PanAmericana - you can
even have it with a generator and full wiring harness, with a power
take off for satnav or whatever.


http://www.en.tout-terrain.de/bicycl...ricana-xplore/

Probably very expensive.

But appears to fit your needs without even more expensive
modification.


Not really, I am sure I'd see frame damage quite soon and I can imagine
the price tag to be very high. What I need is almost the same structure
as on a GS1200 Dual-Sport which I soon will have.


I have seen this kind of classic construction, it was popular in the
90's even for forks. The suspension linkage at the axle is too weak.
Could be beefed up by a custom made part though. However, where it would
most likely fail first is where the upper welds to the seat tube are and
then the frame is toast.

The gearbox is cool though. Their are a bit skimpy on specs but it looks
like the front axle is the standard QR deal. Like on my bike. In
conjunction with a large diameter disc brake up front and lots of load
on the bike that would be a big design mistake. Well, maybe not, hard to
see. They should learn more about web site design.

The skills to design good web-sites and design good bicycles are
rather different, and rarely coincide - that, as they say, is life.


Smart business people know where to find help. In a business all aspects
must be taken care of, not just 80% of them.

[...]



Right now I am building a strut system that allows a more safe carrying
of luggage on a full suspension bike that the simmple seat tube rack
that will (and has) failed over time. Has it really never occurred to
bicycle design engineers that trail riders need ... water? And clothes,
and tools, and food, and ...


When you can get a drivers permit at so young an age and so easily as
in all the states I know about, ....


It's changing. The recent generation is know for a serious lack of
interest in obtaining a driver's license. They are happy in their little
virtual cyber world. Sad.

Maybe - but if their lack of interest in travel leads to fewer of them
gaining driving permits, they are more likely to cycle when they do
need to travel, particularly for local trips.


Not at all. They generally do not even own a bicycle and don't want one.
They simply do not travel. Until some day ... oh dang ... they can't get
a job.

Many of them look like a blimp by the time they are past 20.

That's where policies like promoting active travel to schools help.
Although we do have that problem here, it is not as prevalent as
there, because the UK is a pretty compact place generally, and as long
as you don't live a long way out in the county, the chances are you
will be in cycle commuting range of some kind of job, even if you are
unfit.


Here they often don't even have bike racks at school. Our local high
school (Ponderosa High, Cameron Park, CA) can only be reached by narrow
2-lane fast roads. Nobody in their right mind cycles there regularly.

So rather similar to the narrow 2-lane roads that nearly all cycling
in the UK takes place on, except for ours being generally more
twisting, narrower and with a higher speed limit!


People die on those out here and many more are hurt so bad that there
are nasty consequences for them. I and nearly all my cycling friends
will not ride there. They certainly won't let their kids cycle there.

Yeah, we know.
Danger, Danger!
As long as you and your friends keep telling people it's dangerous,
they'll use it as a reason not to ride.


We know better. The last rider here died a week ago.

We don't, because we don't know why.
If he was riding along at night without lights or even reflectors, you
can't claim it's any indication of a general level of danger - 9pm
wasn't it?


They get hit during day and during night. Typically a high speed impact
from behind.

Data from outside your head?


No, from news media.



With the right training, they are as safe or safer than the routes you
prefer (I noticed the very solid bollards hidden nicely in the shade
of the bridge over that route you posted the link to - how long before
you were even found after hitting one of them, never mind how long for
an ambulance to get there?


It's about car drivers, not cyclist. Hence no training effect. I know
perfectly well not to careen into a bollard and this is fully under my
control. However, I cannot control the driver coming from behind, slowly
drifting because he is looking at who may have just text-messaged him.

Those bollards are a hazard, and if you are following another rider (I
know that's very unlikely as long as you keep scaring them off, but
still, it is a slight possibility) who swerves at the last moment to
avoid it, your first sight will be too late to avoid it.


Seriously? You swerve Kamikaze-style where you can't see? Yikes!

An attentive cyclist won't without good reason, but not all cyclists
are attentive - and as cycling is far more popular, so the proportion
of poorly trained cyclists is larger.


They should switch to a car :-)


And paths are poorly swept compared to roads, so the need to make
sudden swerves is more frequent.


Huh?


We've had a few cyclists in this area quite badly injured from
striking such bollards, with the result that they are being replaced
with a more visible design. Those ones under the bridge in your video
would be re-sited out of the shadow and painted yellow with reflective
bands.


They can be painted and most of them out here are bright yellow. Again,
a participant in any sort of traffic shall ride in an attentive manner
and at speeds commensurate with the surroundings. I admit that I
sometimes push it a bit on singletrack but I have also learned how to
properly roll in a fall. Or not to fall in the first place, meaning
letting the bike careen a bit where possible.

[...]


Meanwhile, one census point in Cambridge (and not in one of the
busiest cycling areas - the site was chosen so that a linked display
counter would be highly visible to a very congested road, so that
motorists would be encouraged out of their cars, not because it
carried the most cycle traffic) was passed by over a million cyclists
this year, with only about 280,000 people living in what would
conventionally be called cycle commuting range, and around 130,000
actually in the city and it's semi-attached necklace of former
villages.
Your sprawling cities will need to collapse in on themselves and
become far more compact for anything like that level of popularity
there though.


Most American do not want that. They want space and breathing room.

And to be enslaved to the car (which makes a bit of a mockery of the
"breathing room" part).
I've also found that city centre gentrification is happening just as
much there as here, so clearly you aren't speaking for all Americans.
There are clear downsides to living a long way from work (and all the
other facilities) like wasting a lot of your life traveling to and
from work, stores, and other necessary facilities, and poor internet
speeds (which is a matter of physics).


You should come visit. Then you'd know that this isn't true. One has to
be smart and find the best way to handle any potential impact. For
example, my work today happens right here in this office, at home. As it
does every day. My commute is 10 seconds and it's a leisurely stroll
instead of standing jam-packed in some subway.

Fine to work from home if you can, but not all work can be done that
way - in fact, only a tiny proportion can.


A lot of it can but not everyone understands. Engineering like I do can
almost always be done remotely to a large extent. People are leaving
money on the table hand over fist. For example, I can't find any
freelance tech who'd whip up prototypes at home. Many are unemployed yet
they don't do it. The investment on their part would be less than $1k.
Just one example of many.

Sure, but that is mainly knowledge based work ...


Not really. They are building something strictly per instructions
without a need to understand how the electronic circuitry works.
Prototypes, usually several.


... - if you are building
anything physical that involves more than one family, you need to have
a separate workplace. That is a high proportion of workers who will
never be able to telecommute.


This is what Fedex is for. I use them all the time.


... Increasingly, that is being
taken into account in people's home purchase decisions. You want fast
internet, you have to be close to a major exchange, because fast
digital signals don't get far on existing telco cabling, and running
fibre to your door is expensive, particularly if it's a long way from
the nearest concentrator.
It'll be a longer process in the US, as you have further to go, but
it'll happen.


Nope. We figured this out a long time ago. I have 6MB/sec and could have
a lot more. But since it's used mainly for biz I don't need more.

Unless you are using an unusual notation, you may mean 6Mbps - network
speeds are measured in bits (lower case b), not bytes (capital B).


Yes, sorry, 6Mbits/sec.


I get 55 Mbps down, and 12.5Mbps up - but I have teenagers in the
house!


I can have that from a cable company but then only in conjunction with
cable-TV. No way.

I get it on my telephone line, with fibre reaching to a few hundred
metres away. It's known here as Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) and uses
VDSL rather than the ADSL used on pure copper lines.
I'm able to limit the amount of the bandwidth the youngsters take, so
that my pet Network Time Protocol Stratum 1 server always has
bandwidth available - I see clients from all over Europe (although
mostly in the UK, and occasionally further afield than Europe) using
my GPS/PPS system to synchronise their computers (and whole networks)
to. I'm rarely outside the +/- 5µs range.
Note that the last minute (UTC) of this year will have 61 seconds, as
a leapsecond is occurring at that time.


Thanks, I'll start my next ride one second later then so I don't arrive
at the pub at 2:59:59 and find the door locked :-)


There is still a copper link back to the exchange for voice traffic,
so that phones work even in a power cut, when people are most likely
to need to contact emergency services.
The availability of fast (defined officially as 24Mbps+) internet has
become a major factor in house prices here in the UK.


Not here. We can always get Hughes Net via satellite. Most people around
here abhor living in a cramped city space.



... The areas with the most cycle traffic are right in the
old city centre, which is (with a few exceptions) a car-free zone.
A similar counter next to great St Mary's church would probably run at
about twice the rate, since nearly all the traffic is cycles, and it's
crossed by a number of routes between colleges and university
departments so there is a lot of student traffic, very nearly all on
cycles (you have to be disabled or have some other special need to be
allowed to bring of keep a car anywhere near the University of
Cambridge as an undergraduate), and similar rules are in place for
Anglia Ruskin University - so strict that my wife will need special
dispensation when she starts her degree there, despite our being local
residents. She certainly won't be allowed to drive there, in any
case, and there isn't any parking for cars at all.
Eliminating the space allocated to the idle storage of motor vehicles
goes a long way towards making cities more compact, while
simultaneously making them more cycle friendly.


That's not how America tends to solve the problem and I am grateful that
it isn't done.

You LIKE your cities choked with cars?


No, I do not like cities at all. I have lived in them and cannot
understand why anyone would lile to like like in a can of sardines.

What I certainly do not want is some government entity telling me that I
cannot drive to and from my house. Like today where I need to buy fuel
pellets. It is a wee problem to haul half a ton on a bicycle in hilly
terrain.

Well, it might take a few trips, but it worked for the NVA better than
the massive motorised effort put in by the US in that conflict.


What is the NVA? I suppose you don't mean the former East-German army.

North Vietnamese Army.
The ones who used bicycle transport to hand the highly motorised US
their asses on a plate a few decades back.


Yeah, at almost twice the number of deaths among their soldiers.
Communists typically have a low regard for individual human life.



... There's little that
encourages motorists out of their cars more readily than sitting in
stationary motor traffic while a steady stream of cyclists passes
them, but of course if you move all that cycle traffic onto separated
facilities, they are out of sight and mind of the drivers.


I believe in the more positive encouragements to cycling. Like people
experience it in the Netherlands. Car use is not discouraged there, at
least it was not in the 80's when I lived there. However, they have a
near perfect cycling infrastructure and the mindset of the population is
such that if someone would suggest going to a nearby restaurant by car
people would squint their eyes "You've got to be kidding, right?".

Car use is not discouraged in the Netherlands?
They TAUGHT the rest of the world how to do it!


Nope. Unless it has changed. I lived there for many years in the 80's
and car use was easy. We just _chose_ to take the bikes.

I know it's subtle, but then there are none so blind as those who
don't want to see. THey even have a minor industry selling their
expertise around the world, with study tours showing how motor traffic
is subtly discouraged in some areas and from some routes, and how it
all joins up to create people friendly cities.


I think you are seeing ghosts here :-)

I know, personally, a man who makes his living conducting such tours,
and does so for groups from all over the world.


There is always a microscopic niche market, for just about anything.



Sure, you can get most places by car if you really need to, although
the entry cost is high compared to most places (both for the car and
the driver testing and licensing) but with very low (i.e cycle
friendly) speed limits in cities, and often very convoluted routes to
get from one part of a city or town to another. And nowhere to leave
your motor vehicle except briefly as you load or unload it.
Not to mention the cost of running a car in the NL - how many times as
much as in the US is it now?


Slightly higher than in Germany. No big deal for regular people. In the
US it is cheaper than probably most of Europe mainly because of lower
gasoline taxes but that's got almost nothing to do with car use. If
people want a car they have one.

Plenty of people have cars, but they don't drive nearly as much, on
average, than anywhere else. Partly because parking is difficult when
you get there, partly because you have to use routes which are subtly
diverted so as to be longer, in both time and distance, than those you
could use on a bicycle. And of course, fuel is expensive. So it's
made shorter by bike, quicker by bike, and less expensive by bike.


Let's debunk that myth right he

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...ts ,_2013.png

NL has more cars per capita than the UK.

https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2012/1...lometres-a-day

Average 13300km per car in NL.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-28546589

Average 12700km per car in UK.

I trust you can do the math.

[...]

All fairly old, and the dates don't even match, so apples and oranges,


Nonsense, it's all just a few years ago and the numbers surely will not
have jumped one year to the other.


particularly as the Dutch distance included foreign trips, but (due to
the greater barriers to motor travel to and from the UK) there is
almost none of that (in statistical terms) on UK average use patterns.


Driving is driving is driving. It pollutes the environment and clogs the
streets. It does not matter where. Maybe you should just admit that you
were wrong?

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/