Quiet bike and smart trainer

[ColinJ]

If I was going to bolt a bike to a trainer, I think I'd try to find a secondhand womens framed one that was large enough to fit me at least with a tolerable level of comfort. That would solve the dismount problems. For some reason they also often appear to be cheaper used than mens frames when it comes to the old-school steel variety.

I was using an old bike of mine which I had pinched loads of parts from so it didn't cost me anything. I was caught out by the extra couple of inches that the bike was above the floor. I could probably get away without the wooden blocks now I am aware of the dismount problem but I'd rather not take the chance of forgetting when tired after a tough TT session!

Given that some trainers allow all sorts of load variations, why do you need gears on a trainer bike anyway? Surely a single speed could perform the task and that would be significantly quieter than any multi-geared bike!

I agree that extra gears are not needed. I converted the bike in question to singlespeed because the shifters were some of the parts I had removed.