Lovely yellow folding bike, spotted on campus outside my building. Soooo cuuuuuute!
Two comments:
(1) I wish they’d raise the seat on this bike, give it a bit of self respect so that it does not look like a children’s toy. (Assuming it is not… I am not familiar with this model. [Update: It is a “Zport” folding bike.]) Granted, I guess that it could be a small person riding it…. but most bikes are so often mal-adjusted to suit the rider, so I’m betting the person is taller than it would appear.
(2) Love the yellow. Obnoxious on a Hummer… cute on minis, beetles, and folding bikes.
(3) Ok, three comments. Poor thing, left outside on its own. Sad thing to do to a folder. Very sad. Should always be picked up and taken inside.
On point (1), since people can’t get past the small wheel prejudice….. you can have a properly adjusted seat post, and -on well designed models like the Brompton and others- have enough spread to allow as comfortable ride as on any bike regardless of size…. actually, sometimes more comfortable.
Here they are (the bike and my B) in conversation, in their respective park modes:
My student, Tameem, almost got an injury from laughing at this picture. I’ve no idea why. He said, over IM (which I’ve cut and paste here with permission):
it almost looks like a bike bully trying to get money from the smaller bike….
wow, my head hurts from laughing so hard….
My response was to be “So how’s that calculation coming?” But he might have thought I had a sense of humour failure….. and actually, it is sort of funny.
-cvj
I wonder if anyone has noticed that all over New York City, there are bicycles chained, locked or otherwise secured to some sort of pole or fence. The same holds true at some bus stops and train stations that link New Jersey to New York City. Ladies and gentlemen, it may be a safe bet that many of these bicycles are still there because the owners perished in the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
Where I live the are two Schwinn cruisers, his and hers, same color, blue. They are a mystery since they were in very good working order when i first saw them ( fall 2001). I have seen them slowly waste away unclaimed….chained together to suffer a similar fate of perhaps those that once rode them?
Your student probably laughed excessively because your bike looks like a wild cat about to pounce on the smaller folder for breeding purposes. Less bully, more in lust.
-CHug
I have friends with bromptons that have done full-blown cycle touring in the Lake District on theirs. They are great for commuting in London — you have to cycle like a dick (RLJ, scattering peds, cutting off cars) to go fast enough to get held back on one. Hell, people even ride the Dunwich Dynamo (120 miles) on them!
I have a normal hybrid commuting bike, but one day I fancy getting a nicer touring bike + a brompton (in, yes, racing green) since our flat is too small to hold a stable of bicycles. They are amazing little things!
Yeah, I don’t run traffic lights either (except the one that stays red for 90 seconds with no cars using the green, and I’ve seen cars go through that one too). And I run stop signs the same way that car drivers do. Fortunately the city has been busy designating streets as bicycle routes, so those things have been reduced to less than one per kilometer.
But for me the exercise is part of the reason for cycling to work, so the sweat is not much of a problem. Besides, I live in a place that isn’t as hot as LA (this spring I went out and bought winter cycling gloves and earmuffs for when the temperature gets down near freezing) and I work across the street from a community centre where I can get a shower if it’s necessary.
Like you say, it’s all about the individual’s needs.
I’ve seen at least one penny-farthing in LA. Not part of a parade or anything…. just a guy out cycling. I kid you not You wait long enough on a street corner in this city and you can see anything go by.
-cvj
“Recall that gears and gear ratios as we have them now were invented on bikes to reduce the size of the giant wheel of the peny-farthing. Well, who says you can’t reduce the size further? Just convention, and people’s fear of looking different, of walking a different path.”
I do soooo want a penny farthing. Now they’re cute.
–IP
Your top speed will be greater than on the folding bike. But I’m one of those cyclists who likes to obey the rules of the road, so I don’t run traffic lights, or stop signs…. So I find that over a few miles, the not being able to meet the top speed of a 27in wheeled bike is irrelevant. (And actually, I routinely pass people on such bikes anyway, so a lot of these issues are more to do with your ability to pedal than the bike itself….) I find people spend too much time worrying about the “in principle” issues, rather than the practicalities of what actually typically happens for their commute. If you want to go 15 miles across the city as fast as you want….. for heaven’s sake, don’t get a folding bike. If you want to do some miles at a resaonable speed, or a few miles here and there, and maybe regularly combine those miles with public transport, then get a folding bike. (Sometimes, I do go all the way home on it and not use the bus…. I do fine… but I’ve no interest in running a race…. So I’m not terribly concerned about how long it might take. But like I said… once you take into account traffic lights and stop signs, and your own inherent ability to pedal, and the fact that there’s this marvellous invention called gears, 16 inch wheels are just not that much of an issue, even over longer distances. One more thing, which might be more relevant…. when I go on a leisurely ride with other cyclists who are using “regular” bikes, even on cycle paths that don’t have lights and stop signs, I don’t fall behind. So I just don’t think it is an issue, unless you’re really trying to race. That’s not what I have a bike for. And I’d not want to race on my way to work anyway. I’d be all sweaty when I got there. Who wants that?
Cheers,
-cvj
Hmm… in the picture the wheels look tiny, but on the zport website I see they are actually 16 or 20 inch wheels. On my commuter bike with 27 inch wheels I average 25 km/h on my half-hour ride to work, so I’m trying to figure out what I could do on that bike. Obviously it’s easier to turn small wheels (moment of inertia) but on the other hand you have to turn them faster to cover the same distance. Which I probably could do with a higher gear or a higher cadence, since turning the wheels should be easier.
I suppose I could do the calculations (I only dropped out of physics because I couldn’t hack the labs) but some of us here are professional physicists, if you know what I mean. 🙂
Habit has something to do with my choice. The first bicycle I bought, when I was in my mid-teens, was the so-called racing bike style, and I’ve stuck with that ever since. (Although I own half of a mountain bike that I keep at a friend’s house in another city, where I visit frequently.) Fantasy even plays a part: after watching the Tour de France every year, I can go out on my own bike and imagine I’m runnin’ with the fast boys.
But if it were a little more practical for me to commute to my job, Clifford’s sensible comments might persuade me to buy a folder.
Now, the real lightwaght solution is to go with a unicycle….(my best friend uses one to commute from where we live up (2.2km almost all literaly up) to campus every day)
As a note, racing bikes are only bike shaped because the powers that be (governing bodies) mandated that configuration (they also have minimum weights for the frame..awhile ago there was a cannondale that needed to be weight to be legal to race….).
I do not beleive I ever claimed (2). It is not true that it is the same gear ratios apply…. However, the immediate silly question people have about smaller wheels does sometimes make one wonder if people have forgotten that gears were invented. I have six gears on my bike. It compensates a lot for the smaller wheels….. Recall that gears and gear ratios as we have them now were invented on bikes to reduce the size of the giant wheel of the peny-farthing. Well, who says you can’t reduce the size further? Just convention, and people’s fear of looking different, of walking a different path.
What is true is that for a typical city commute, it is largely only the herd instinct that makes people limit themselves to the “traditional” giant-wheeled bikes…. You’re schlepping around a ton of extra metal that you don’t need. Get rid of it and you have a smaller bike that can go as fast as you need most times in the city, can go anywhere (under a seat on the bus, on the train, under your desk and not get stolen… in the back of your car to take to the beach, in a suitcase to take on a trip….) and by definition your power to weight ratio is improved vastly.
All I am saying is that you use the right tool for the right job. If I want to win a bike race, I get a racing bike. If I want to do mountain biking down a rugged incline… I get a mountain bike. If I want to travel around a city and enable me to do all those other things I mentioned above…. I use a folding bike.
-cvj
back at cosmic variance he posted at least one, maybe several posts on the subject. I think they were around early spring, but I’m not sure.
If Clifford is not offended (if he is I apologize), I will paraphrase what he said as I remember
1) lighter -> more efficient
2) gear ratios are still fine so you don’t lose anything at the top or bottom, pedal strokes still normal,
3) easier (possible) to travel with
I did protest some of these claims last time but will refrain until I manage to have some data to argue from 😉 (like weighing my bike) (I cede 3, but still contest 1 and 2)
By the way, the last two times I’ve submitted a comment here, it’s led to a string of about four error messages, though the comment itself always appears.
Clifford, have you written anywhere about your reasons for preferring a folding bike? Judging from comment 3, I’d guess one reason is that you can often take it indoors with you instead of leaving it at some risk outside. Do you also travel with it?
Cornellian’s remark reminds me that in New York City I often see adandoned bikes locked up outdoors in varying stages of disrepair and decay. I’ve thought of starting a photo series on this subject, but somehow I find the spectacle a little too pitiful to contemplate. It’s also mysterious. Among the many untold tales of city life are those of bicycles left locked and alone. What happened to their owners?
You would be very sad if you saw the folder that is locked on north campus at Cornell….it has been there for close to a year and has two flat tires. (and one of those hugungous krytonite chains so there is no way to liberate it)