what's the worst riding surface?

Bob wrote:

From a strictly roadie POV, my vote goes to old brick streets. Over
time, the inevitable shifting of the base makes for an unpredictably
wave-like surface even in dry conditions. Add even the slightest bit
of moisture (rain, heavy dew, or the runoff from people washing cars
or watering lawns) to brick that has been worn smooth by years of
traffic on it and you get something as slippery as the proverbial snot
on a doorknob.

And the bricks and cobbles downtown here in Seattle seem to be almost
all on very steep streets just to add to the insult.

The only good things about those streets are their usually low traffic
volumes and their low drag coefficient when wet cuts down on road rash when
one does fall. I've found even the latter to be a mixed blessing because what
stopped my sliding after a fall on one occasion was the tires of the parked
car I slid into and the "convenient" stopping power of a concrete curb on a
second occasion. Luckily, in both cases my head acted as a bumper so damage
was minimal. g

A good thing, bike parts are expensive!

--
Dane Buson -
"There's no set architecture in Linux. All roads lead to madness" -Microsoft

Fresh blood. Don't ask.

On Wed, 28 May 2008 22:43:35 -0700 (PDT), Robert Chung
wrote:

Fresh blood. Don't ask.

I was thinking pedestrians.

"Tom Keats" wrote in message
...
My vote is for wet shale. I've encountered
strafications of it that are bad enough when
dry, but when moistened, all those leaflets
form a slimy external layer of mud, so they
merrily slide over & under each other. It's
like accidentally slipping on cow patties on
a dewy early morning.

I've recently heard some complaints about chip-seal,
although I've never yet personally encountered it.

I know of a number of local urban residential street-side
spots where the pavement doesn't go all the way across
the street -- the car-parking areas along the sides of the
streets have this finely ground, floury sand/dust that bicycle
(and motorcycle) wheels like to go sideways on, and steer out
from underneath their riders. Those were typically near
neighbourhood corner grocery stores in the Vancouver's East End[*],
which are now an endangered species. On sultry July evenings,
little garbage tornadoes favour those spots, and kick grit into
the eyes of bystanders.

And in some areas The City has for some inscrutible reason
thought it would be oh so artsie fartsie to inflict short
sections of brick cobbles instead of the usual asphalt.
So when it's raining, you have to suddenly adjust your "feel"
of the street from asphalt to wet bricks, and then suddenly
back to asphalt again.

And we have a few (very few) concrete streets. I loathe 'em
something fierce.


cheers,
Tom


[*] Those little neighbourhood corner grocery stores
so enhanced the experience of urban riding.
I nostalgically lament their passing.

--
Nothing is safe from me.
I'm really at:
tkeats curlicue vcn dot bc dot ca


Sand.