Fenders. Or maybe mudguards.

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 23:24:19 -0800 (PST), Lou Holtman
wrote:

English is not my first language but if someone is
stunned/bemused in my world they don't understand
the choice of those people or in other words question their choice.

A person who is "bemused" doesn't know what to think. It's a far
weaker word than "stunned", or even "puzzled".

A bemused person has encountered something for which previous
experience has not prepared him, or a datum that doesn't fit with the
other data. He may seek out more data, try to understand, or just say
"there's nowt so queer as folk".

--
Joy Beeson, U.S.A., mostly central Hoosier,
some Northern Indiana, Upstate New York, Florida, and Hawaii
joy beeson at centurylink dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.

On Fri, 12 Feb 2021 22:47:07 -0500, Joy Beeson scribed:

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 14:40:25 -0800 (PST), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:

A lot of bicyclists like to use a bicycling rain cape in conjunction
with full fenders. That can make for very pleasant riding in milder
weather.

I thought a hooded rain cape was a wonderful idea, and started carrying
one when the weather was iffy. One day it started to rain just as I was
leaving a parking lot, so I stopped, put on the cape, re-mounted, looked
back to see whether it was safe to resume riding,
dismounted, and took off the cape.

What made you change your mind?

I've never liked any of the commercial capes, so I made a cape of that
was basically a big tabard with small neck hole. I tied the back across
my waist and sat on the tail. The front had loops for thumbs or would go
over the gear levers. Generally good except or spray from the wheels
flung upwards or heavy winds(too much sail). Being open, there was good
ventilation rather than the sweat boxes plastic raincoats/capes are


It hung on a hook in the back entry until it fell apart.

On Friday, February 12, 2021 at 2:49:10 PM UTC-6, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/12/2021 2:20 PM, wrote:
On Friday, February 12, 2021 at 7:54:40 AM UTC-6, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/12/2021 2:27 AM, Axel Reichert wrote:
" writes:

On Thursday, February 11, 2021 at 4:45:13 PM UTC-6, Axel Reichert wrote:
If I remember correctly, there was a strong correlation between "Did
Not Finish" and the non-use of fenders

That was most likely 2007 Paris Brest Paris.

Yes, it was. I now found the reference, see below.

So I am very skeptical of Jan Heine's Bicycle Quarterly correlation of
no fenders and Did Not Finish status. The people who did not finish
were not strong enough and gave up. Fenders were irrelevant.

https://www.renehersecycles.com/shop.../issues/bq-22/

I read the full article online at some point, but cannot find it
any more. At least the summary in the link given hints as follows:

Riders with fenders suffered less than half as many DNFs due to
problems with their lower extremities on this rainy ride.

Best regards

Axel

That's reasonable logic. It may also be that riders
unprepared with mudguards were generally less prepared or
less conditioned in other ways as well. I don't know.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

That's possible. In the randonneur world, fenders and handlebar bags are the mark of the elite, hardcore brevet rider. And a beard and a fixed gear bike and sandals and WOOL (shorts, jersey, socks, beanie) and a cycling cap and cantilever brakes. So maybe those dedicated ones were also the ones most likely to have fenders and also be the best trained and conditioned and ready for anything. Whereas those of us who rode modern bikes of carbon or titanium(me) and fancy dandy click shifting shifters and lycra and NO fenders were not as well prepared to begin with. And gave up in the 50s cold weather and pouring rain. Very possible. Fenders didn't make any difference in whether you finished or not. Fenders were merely a correlation.

PBP 2007 was bad bad bad for parts of it. About 8 hours, 10PM to 6AM, on Wednesday night it got cold. Mid 50s F. And poured buckets of rain out of the sky. But PBP is not officially a race. Even though they keep track of time. You can stop and rest whenever and wherever you choose. On the route the control towns with beds, showers, food, shelter, are about every 60 miles apart. There really are no small towns to stop in between the big control towns. Its very rural France. I happened to get it the worst. Started pouring and got super cold shortly after leaving one control town and was just miserable for the next 5 hours until I got to the next control town. Where I stopped and showered and ate and slept until morning. Then the weather was sunny and 70s for the next 150 miles. Just like it was the prior day before the 8 hour pouring rain and super cold night.

The 8 hour cold rain were enough to make you stop if you wanted to stop anyway. But you could find shelter from it if you tried. Maybe not good shelter if you were cowering under a roof overhang and still cold and wet. And it was just 8 hours out of a total of 80-90 hours of the event. 10% of the total time. I'm sure many, most of us have it bad for 10% of our life. Yet suicides count are not the main headline in the news everyday. Do half the bicyclists throw their bike away if they have a flat or wreck?

I have a great deal of respect to you and other PBP riders.

I seem to recall that at one time lights and mudguards were
required?
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Unfortunately I have forgotten many of the rules and requirements for PBP. Its been 13 years since I did it. And more or less stopped randonneuring after it. I'm happy and proud I did it. But I would not advise anyone else to do it. Riding such long distances just isn't enjoyable. Most of the time its not miserable. Like some of 2007 PBP was. But the joy and fun aspect of bicycle riding goes away after so many miles. Much better to ride a distance where you are happy the entire ride. Then eat, sleep, and do it again the next day if you want.

Lights are required. And I think they have to be mounted on the bike lights. Not a helmet light as your only light. You can add a helmet light to compliment the bike mounted light. But not helmet only light. I think there is some kind of official brightness too. But weak pitiful halogen lights are fine and legal so the minimum is pretty small. Currently fenders are not required. But I think you are right that in years past they were a requirement. A reflective vest meeting some official certification is required. They do check for that. You do have to get your bike and you officially checked before the ride start.

Op vrijdag 12 februari 2021 om 23:52:06 UTC+1 schreef Frank Krygowski:
On 2/12/2021 3:27 PM, Lou Holtman wrote:

I have only one bike where permanently mounted full fenders make sense for the reason Frank mentioned and that is my utility bike. On all other bikes permanently mounted fenders are useless and/or a nuisance.
Here's an honest question (and I'll carefully say I'm not trying to
disagree with you in any way):

What, specifically, makes fenders a nuisance for you?

I do have some aspects of fenders that I don't like. But I'm curious
about others' views.

--
- Frank Krygowski
My biggest practical nuisance is that I can’t put that bike on my work stand and cleaning the bike is harder. It makes no sense to me to put permanently full fenders on a bike that is ridden 95% of the time when it is not raining and in a way that I have to shower and wash my clothes afterwards.
When it happens that I am caught in the rain on such a ride I have to clean that bike anyway, with or without fenders because they all are equipped with derailleur systems and an open chain. If I had to ride in the rain as often as Jay my rain bike(s) would look different.

Lou

" writes:

[PBP]

Much better to ride a distance where you are happy the entire ride.
Then eat, sleep, and do it again the next day if you want.

My great respect for your achievement and these words of wisdom.

My guess is that many would glorify their miserable experience in order
to avoid looking like a fool. Not that I ever fooled myself this way.
(-;

Thanks!

Axel

Frank Krygowski writes:

I'm pretty skeptical of his concept of "planing" regarding bikes -
i.e. that there's an undefined property in certain frames that makes
them significantly faster than somewhat similar frames of identical
weight with identical components. His justification for that seems
entirely anecdotal.

Yes. When I (trained as a Finite Element Analyst) first read about this,
my bull**** detector was heavily triggered. While it is clear (contrary
to folk wisdom) that the energy put into a flexible frame does not
vanish (damping in metal frames is extremely low), I strongly doubt that
a frame stiffness "tuned" to the cadence of the rider will make a bike
"perform better". Here is why I think so:

First, the cadence is not fixed but varies (we are talking about
climbing here) between, say, 40/min and 80/min, depending on slope,
(whimsical) gear choice, mood of the day, etc.

Second, the stiffness (or first relevant eigenfrequency) even of "soft"
frames is so high that upon unloading they return to the undeformed
configuration almost immediately, definitely NOT within a time scale of
a second (which would match a cadence of 60/min). The pedalling is slow
in comparison to the fast spring-back, so there is no point in "matching"
here.

While in fact it was shown both with FEA and experiments that a deformed
frame will return the stored energy by helping turn the crank during
unloading, this result kind of trivially follows from first
principles. Unfortunately, the dynamics of the process was ignored, and
this is the crucial point if you want to achieve some "matching" between
riding style and frame stiffness.

So in my opinion the effect in theory is there, but a frame that would
properly be tuned to the (typical) cadence of the rider (Jan likes to
employ a trampoline analogy, which I am sceptical of, because here the
time scales match better) would be so soft that even the most
retro-grouchy steel advocates would not dare to speed downhill on such a
wobbly piece of metal.

Best regards

Axel

On 2/12/2021 9:48 PM, John B. wrote:
rOn Fri, 12 Feb 2021 18:59:13 -0600, AMuzi
wrote:

On 2/12/2021 5:57 PM, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 12 Feb 2021 12:34:49 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Friday, February 12, 2021 at 1:47:22 PM UTC-6, AMuzi wrote:
There's always humor:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20210...d0baa11a6.html

Winnie the Pooh banned coal imports from Australia... Just
in time! Coal prices in China were Y450/tonne in January,
now Y850. Time to export some nice Nederlands ice skates!
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971


1 Yuan equals 15 US cents. Roughly. So 450 Yuan is $67.50. 850 Yuan is $127.50. About double the price for one ton of coal. Google search said in 2019 in the USA, price of one ton of coal delivered to the power plant was $38.53. National average. Delivered price is cost at mine, $30.93, plus railroad transport of about $7.60. I do not know if there is any retail sellers of coal left in the USA. I'm not sure anyone uses coal burning furnaces in their houses anymore and has a pickup load of coal delivered to their house. Guessing China does use coal in individual houses for furnace heat and has a retail delivery system.

http://en.sxcoal.com

The Chinese report seems to show that "coal " varies in price, over
some 19 grades and types, depending on quality and use with the
highest currently charted price being 2050 RMB/ton and the lowest
being 352 RMB/ton as of 2021-02-05. Or, in U.S. dollars from
$307/ton to as low as $52.80 and only two of the lower priced coals
are listed as "import" and cost about $48/ton.

The largest change in coal price is for something called "Liulin
Low-sulphur" from about 1400 RMP on 2020/6/09 to about 2600 RMB on
2020/12/18.

The only two coals I see with a current cost in the 800 -900RBM/ton
range are "Guangzhou 5500", currently at 930/ton having decreased from
a high of about 1,000/ton and "Jincheng Anthracite Mid-lump" which is
currently at 960/ton which seems to have been at about 950/ton on
October, dropped in price and then risen to the current price.


'I only know what I read in the papers'.
Mine has a paywall on their internet version.

Here's a similar article not including price chart:

https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-...14-p56u0c.html

Not only coal price, but also from Sydney Morning Herald:

"It's pushing up the cost of supply of coal, it's increasing
the cost to coke, but it's also affecting the quality of
material they are producing because there's not that much
low-sulphur premium coal around, so they're having to use
higher sulphur-content coal which has an impact on blast
furnace productivity and strength of steel you produce."

Yes, but I also read that China is increasing their coal imports from
Indonesia to make up for the door closing on Australian coal and in
fact the Indonesians recently announced that they had signed a deal
with China to sell them something like 200 million tons next year.

As for the higher cost of coal in China I wonder whether it being the
coldest winter in 50 years of Chinese history has anything to do with
it?

Sulphur in steel is a funny thing. Generally, I believe, one wants to
hold levels of 0.04% or lower but at the same time "free maching
steel" has a sulphur content of up to 0.4% and they even have stuff
called "resulfurized steel". The most apparent result of high sulphur
content is that the high sulphur steels do not weld as well and may be
more brittle although I can't find any data on sulphur content and
brittleness, only a general statement.


We're drifting to other areas here but, yes, there are a
wide range of steels. Yes, there are several fuels crises in
China in this record cold season.

https://news.maritime-network.com/20...g-and-propane/

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 2/12/2021 5:52 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/12/2021 3:27 PM, Lou Holtman wrote:

I have only one bike where permanently mounted full fenders make sense
for the reason Frank mentioned and that is my utility bike. On all
other bikes permanently mounted fenders are useless and/or a nuisance.

Here's an honest question (and I'll carefully say I'm not trying to
disagree with you in any way):

What, specifically, makes fenders a nuisance for you?

I do have some aspects of fenders that I don't like. But I'm curious
about others' views.

My only practical nuisance with fenders occurs when I take the front
wheel off the bike and load the bike into our hatchback, laying the bike
on its side. The front fender is slightly fragile and takes up more room
than a fenderless fork.

For a brief time, I complained that the bottom end of the front fender
prevented the bike from standing on its fork ends, and it interfered
with my fork-clamp roof rack. So I cut an inch or two off the fender and
use a longer mud flap to solve that problem.

I have had two bikes that had insufficient clearance for normal fenders
at the rear brake and its seatstay bridge. For each, I cut the fender at
the bridge and fabricated an aluminum mount to support the fender just
behind and just in front of the bridge. Those work well.

Our tandem's front fender cantilevers pretty far in front of the fork
crown and seems unusually flexible. For a while, it would occasionally
flex in a way that touched the tire and made a slight scraping noise. I
fabricated a little brace to connect it to the headlight mount at that
location. That stopped that problem.

And I've had plastic fenders that cracked after only a few decades of
use. But nothing lasts forever, I guess.

I think that's the total of all fender problems I've had.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 2/13/2021 6:51 AM, Axel Reichert wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

I'm pretty skeptical of his concept of "planing" regarding bikes -
i.e. that there's an undefined property in certain frames that makes
them significantly faster than somewhat similar frames of identical
weight with identical components. His justification for that seems
entirely anecdotal.

Yes. When I (trained as a Finite Element Analyst) first read about this,
my bull**** detector was heavily triggered. While it is clear (contrary
to folk wisdom) that the energy put into a flexible frame does not
vanish (damping in metal frames is extremely low), I strongly doubt that
a frame stiffness "tuned" to the cadence of the rider will make a bike
"perform better". Here is why I think so:

First, the cadence is not fixed but varies (we are talking about
climbing here) between, say, 40/min and 80/min, depending on slope,
(whimsical) gear choice, mood of the day, etc.

Second, the stiffness (or first relevant eigenfrequency) even of "soft"
frames is so high that upon unloading they return to the undeformed
configuration almost immediately, definitely NOT within a time scale of
a second (which would match a cadence of 60/min). The pedalling is slow
in comparison to the fast spring-back, so there is no point in "matching"
here.

While in fact it was shown both with FEA and experiments that a deformed
frame will return the stored energy by helping turn the crank during
unloading, this result kind of trivially follows from first
principles. Unfortunately, the dynamics of the process was ignored, and
this is the crucial point if you want to achieve some "matching" between
riding style and frame stiffness.

So in my opinion the effect in theory is there, but a frame that would
properly be tuned to the (typical) cadence of the rider (Jan likes to
employ a trampoline analogy, which I am sceptical of, because here the
time scales match better) would be so soft that even the most
retro-grouchy steel advocates would not dare to speed downhill on such a
wobbly piece of metal.

Well said. I agree.

Jan, like everyone else, has his preferences. And that's fine. But when
a person moves into technical justifications for those preference, the
technical aspects become open to analysis, discussion and debate.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 2/12/2021 11:12 PM, News 2021 wrote:
On Fri, 12 Feb 2021 22:47:07 -0500, Joy Beeson scribed:

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 14:40:25 -0800 (PST), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:

A lot of bicyclists like to use a bicycling rain cape in conjunction
with full fenders. That can make for very pleasant riding in milder
weather.

I thought a hooded rain cape was a wonderful idea, and started carrying
one when the weather was iffy. One day it started to rain just as I was
leaving a parking lot, so I stopped, put on the cape, re-mounted, looked
back to see whether it was safe to resume riding,
dismounted, and took off the cape.

What made you change your mind?

I've never liked any of the commercial capes, so I made a cape of that
was basically a big tabard with small neck hole. I tied the back across
my waist and sat on the tail. The front had loops for thumbs or would go
over the gear levers. Generally good except or spray from the wheels
flung upwards or heavy winds(too much sail). Being open, there was good
ventilation rather than the sweat boxes plastic raincoats/capes are

I don't like riding in rain. But if the rain is anything more than a
gentle mist, I like a rain cape better than the other options I've tried.

I use the brake lever loops and sit on the rear portion so the cape is
fairly tight around me. I sometimes wish the sides were somehow more
rigid to reduce flapping. And I'd like to avoid the puddle that collects
between my arms.

Hmm. Maybe a drain tube?


--
- Frank Krygowski