The things people dump..

[Peter Korsten]

Andrew Tarpinian schreef:

> On Sep 8, 2009, at 5:10 PM, Peter Korsten wrote:
> 
>> One thing I don't understand, what's this obsession with a fixed  
>> ratio?
>> Gears were invented for a reason.
> 
> You wont get it till you ride one. I have geared bikes, and they have  
> their purpose certainly, but in a lot of situations multiple gears are  
> overkill and not necessary. It's more like a zen thing, it's so  
> smooth, so responsive, so simple and so quiet (silent.) It's weird but  
> I compare it to a car with a automatic vs manual transmission, gears =  
> automatic, fixed = manual, think of you as the transmission/gears,  
> want to go slower, pedal slower, much more control.

Well, being Dutch, my first bike (which I inherited from my brother) 
didn't have gears. Then, I got another piece of junk (presumably from my 
brother again) that didn't have gears. I asked my parents for a bike 
with gears, but didn't get one. So, as soon as I had saved enough money, 
I bought one with three gears. This was in 1984, and I never looked back 
since: my current bike has 21 gear combinations, about nine of which I 
would actually use.

The difference would be, though, that with those fixed-gear bikes, you 
brake by paddling in the opposite direction.

> Fixed track bikes just work wonderfully in city environments and are  
> so much fun to ride. On hilly roads and mountains sure stick with a  
> geared.

Well, I've cycled through Amsterdam, and that's quite an interesting 
city to cycle through, especially if you accelerate to around 30 km/h 
(say, 20 mph) and try to avoid tourists, cars, trams, taxis and other 
dangers. Lots of bridges, too, and those aren't flat either.

I can't even begin to imagine driving there without anything other than 
a bicycle with wide tyres, hand brakes and enough gears to always have 
the optimal rhythm of moving my legs around, regardless of my current 
speed. (There might be a slow car before me that I can't overtake.)

But your comparison with car gears doesn't make any sense, at least to 
me it doesn't. For me, it would be exactly the other way around: fixed 
is automatic, and gears is, well, manual.

I wouldn't even know how to drive a car with automatic gears, maybe that 
has something to do with it. Here in Europe, automatic gears are 
considered something for old ladies and Americans, although there are 
some clever automatic gearboxes sneaking in lately. (Volkswagen, for 
example, has an engine that is more economical with that clever 
automatic gearbox that with manual transmission.)

When I'm driving my car, I'm constantly shifting gears, also because 
Malta is like one very large village, and there are no major roads to 
speak of, let alone that they would be straight. The longest stretch of 
straight tarmac is the airport runway. (On which you can land a B52, to 
be fair.)

Therefore, I'm used to shifting gears. Just like my car wouldn't like it 
if I drove everything in 3rd gear, so wouldn't I like to have a single 
gear. Seems a bit daft to me to have to exert so much power just to get 
the thing going.

- Peter