How can you ride it like that?

[screenman]

Nah... he looked a bit rough and I couldn't tell if the bike was brown or just completely rusty (I suspect the latter). If I'd had a skip I might have stopped and helped.

I can understand your feeling, but I blame us cyclists for not helping educate the non cyclist out there.

 

[Blue Hills]

You do not have to read many of his posts to be insulted, if like myself you like to spend yor money on things of your own choosing. Maybe not a civic duty but did your job or the one you have now not depend on people spending money.

you remind me of someone I used to work with - in PR would you believe. Despite a very good education she didn't question much.

She was outraged when I said I didn't believe a certain bit of market puffery on some product and I'd buy something cheaper/better value that was just as good/better.

I well remember her saying "you can't think that" - clearly thought I had offended some god and the sky would fall in.

She seemed to think that I had to sell my complete soul and intelligence because of our job.

In a similar vein, she appeared to think that folk should take certain sorts of holidays as part of their image development.

Bonkers.

You say your job depends on folk spending money - many do - but of course there are different things to spend money on - I do hope this doesn't mean you hand over dosh to folk just because they tell you to.

Anyway I'd re-read skipdiver's post and stop being so insulted.

Here's to happy riding and lubing

 

[Smokin Joe]

I can understand your feeling, but I blame us cyclists for not helping educate the non cyclist out there.

It isn't our job to do that, unless somebody asks. And in my experience unsolicited offers of help to strangers are met with resentment rather than gratitude. Going back a few years I advised someone I happened to be alongside in a sportive that his rear derailleur needed a tweak on the adjuster to stop the awful racket it was making and offered to show him how. I got a very snotty, "No thank you, I'd rather let a bike shop do it properly" in reply.

 

[Blue Hills]

I have a few times pointed out to folk that their saddle is to low.

Don't remember any bad reactions - maybe it's the way I made the suggestion - or my inoffensive yellow look.

I did for a while, after some oddball (in my opinion) posts on here think that I should maybe only proffer this suggestion to folks of the same gender in case I was accused of being outrageously patronising but then thought - nah - folks is folks. We's all cyclists.

Only bad reactions I remember are from cyclists I have had words with over close passes, particularly on the inside.

Riding towards Vauxhall in the summer I did catch up at the lights with one person of opposite gender and gently point out that she had passed very close without so much as a bell. She was very nice and said that she had - she rang it for me - we agreed that it was an over-designed pretty useless bell. She said she couldn't really say this publicly though as the boyfriend had bought it for her.

So a nice exchange.

Sad if you can't talk to folk - many exchanges are positive.

Part of the reason I ride a bike is to be in touch with my surrounding world/people.

Oh forgot - I used to ride with my saddle too low - until years ago a polite word from two priests who adopted me for a while on the Dunwich Dynamo.

 

[screenman]

I also have never come across a problem when passing on tips about bikes and cycling, but I suppose we are all different.

 

[Smokin Joe]

I also have never come across a problem when passing on tips about bikes and cycling, but I suppose we are all different.

It depends on the circumstances. Advice to someone you know will probably be accepted, approaching complete strangers to tell them their tyres are too soft or their saddle is to high is likely to be ignored or worse.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Skipdiver wasn't criticising the original purchase but buying something good, hopefully designed and built to run sweet, then grinding it away to something that rides less well than a hack bike.

I see you actually read what I posted with regards to people neglecting expensive machinery, whereas @screenman just automatically assumes if I post any remark about idiots wasting money, that I'm alluding to him!

 

[screenman]

I see you actually read what I posted with regards to people neglecting expensive machinery, whereas @screenman just automatically assumes if I post any remark about idiots wasting money, that I'm alluding to him!

I read your posts and so many of them degrade people who have a few bob and like to spend it how they wish and why not, after all I bet you do the same.

 

[palinurus]

I can remember when I was young that I used to cycle with my heel gripping the back of the pedal. I found that it was the easiest way of riding with ordinary shoes on wet rubber block pedals .

I've recently (re-)discovered this is the best way of pedalling my Elephant Bike if the pedals are a bit damp. It's the best technique under some circumstances.

 

[MontyVeda]

I can understand your feeling, but I blame us cyclists for not helping educate the non cyclist out there.

Reminds me of Harry Enfield's character...

"You don't wanna do it like that!"

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

degrade people who have a few bob and like to spend it how they wish and why not, after all I bet you do the same.

True, I'm not exactly skint either and I do spend how I wish, but I have never had a reckless or frivolous approach to money. I'm not saying you necessarily have either, but a lot of people are total muppets and have this amazing ability to turn large sums of cash into much smaller sums of rapidly depreciating consumer goods which then get "upgraded" on a frequent basis. On one level, I'm happy like @GuyBoden that there are so many bargains out there as a result of this throwaway attitude, but on the other hand it really is inexcusably wasteful - and I'm no do-gooder tree-hugging save-the-planet type, I just abhor rampant big-business driven consumerism.

 

[Blue Hills]

Confession john - long long ago, not long after buying the bike that got me back into cycling (a steel Ridgeback with canti brakes) I almost bought another bike just because it had V brakes

I fear a lot of folk are a bit like this - don't really understand their bikes, see them as akin to a car/new model which is mysteriously better. As in product B is better than A.

Years later, knowing more, I did actually stuff some V brakes on that original Ridgeback - and took it from the dizzy heights of 7 speed, after everything had pretty much worn out, to 8. I still ride it. Nice bike. Real triggers broom.

 

[Johnno260]

If I see a fellow cyclist I will stop and ask if they need help, paperboys using bikes always stop me if they’re having troubles as they think I look like a proper cyclist lol

Also to play it forward, as I was stuck with a mechanical issue and a fellow cyclist in a camper van stopped and offered his help, then a lift home when we couldn’t fix it.

 

[Blue Hills]

Yes, by the side of the road I quite often get cyclists asking if I need any help.

Never taken offence yet, even if a woman.

Why would I?

Two or three months ago in the dark on a night ride from Wolverhampton to Lancashire a chap in a van coming the other way stopped and asked me if I was OK.

I'd just pulled over to peer at the GPS to try to busk a diversion off my marked route to avoid a bit of canal.

Nice.

Simple exchanges like that are the stuff of life - anyone who takes offence at a well meant offer of help deserves a going over with a chain whip

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I almost bought another bike just because it had V brakes

I fear a lot of folk are a bit like this - don't really understand their bikes, see them as akin to a car/new model which is mysteriously better. As in product B is better than A..

A lot of the Weekend Warrior Lycra merchants have this relentless cyclical change/upgrade mindset, but I'm not sure that many pure utility/too skint to afford a car type riders do. Most of them don't seem to care about any aspect of their bike so long as it is mechanically operative and rideable. I'm of the view that marketing is, at best, comprised of 90% BS with some vestige of truth lurking in the other 10%. As such, I'm highly cynical of any supposed "improvements" or reasons why I should be persuaded to replace a perfectly good 20/30/40 year old bike with a new one that all said and done, will do exactly the same job but at vastly more cost.