Bike fit for the comfort/utility/trekking/city-sports bike

Lou Holtman wrote:
[...]
You know that Amsterdam is not in Denmark right?[...]

Per Red Cloud, "Armsterdam" (sic) is in "Dutch".

You mentioned the Rans Fusion[...]

No, no, no! RANS is always in full caps.

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007

On Jan 26, 4:50*am, DougC wrote:

Andre already knows of them but the RANS crank-forward bikes are pretty
nice for casual road/trail) riding, even longer-distance riding. RANS
even has a low step-over model now, as well as an XL frame. Their
drawbacks are a lack of touring capacity and the inability to stand
while pedaling. The riding position is far more comfortable for casual
use, but they are easy to ride and still look fairly normal.

Well, I never stand up in the saddle anyway; that's a habit of people
who came into cycling from racing. But fairly normal looks are
probably good with the general market, if of no concern to me.

A lot of people think that the Electra Townie is such a great idea--but
the RANS bikes take every good idea of the Townie, and extend it several
times as far. The RANS Fusion is the bike that the Electra Townie wants
to be when it grows up.

The RANS conception is definitely superior and better worked out. But
the RANS folk are engineers, while the Electra folk are marketers; I
knew this by merely looking at their products, before I made a single
enquiry. Those two bunches of bike makers sell an entirely differerent
zing to entirely different target markets. It is only when calmly
thoughtful people like me with a relevant background (product
development) start looking at both, as I did a few years ago, that
anyone wishes the Townie folk would get a little more engineering and
ergonomic clout behind the design of their bikes (and upgrading the
quality of the components would really help too!), and the RANS folk
would pay a little more attention to their presentation. Not that it
matters; the ones who care about both elements are too few to
constitute even a niche market, and can probably afford to buy
something a bit more exclusive than either. I went away and got a
custom bike because I couldn't bear to ride the RANS welded frames.
But it is a good joke just to try imagining me explaining to the boss
of RANS that he should make a special bike for me with 622 wheels
because I want to try the best available selfcontained suspension of
the widest Big Apples, and develop a lugged frame because I'm more
sensitive to ugliness of welding than his pal Liddell Tommi (who first
drew my attention to this maker of super-ergonomic bikes), and put
special frame ends on it for me because I thought it might be nice to
try a Rohloff box.

Andre Jute
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