The Gerry Attrick bike: Mixte or Bent?

Tom Sherman wrote:

Andre Jute wrote:
wrote:
"(Don't get me wrong dept.): If you haven't "heard" me say before,
"there's a bent in everyone's future" .... But, at 58-1/2 (three
quarters, actually), with a bad back, arthritis in the hands, and a
difficulty with one of the saddle contact areas (doing much better,
thanks), I'm not there yet."

In considering ordering a custom stainless frame to see me out, I
thought of the top tube and the obstruction it might be in time, when
after the nth hip replacement I can no longer swing my leg over the
saddle. Or of course, leglifting might be become non-PC and outlawed,
and bicyclists will be hunted through the streets with smokers.

I looked into recumbents and even bought one to try and hated it; it
lasted a week before I sold it on. It reminded me of driving to work
in the city in a Porsche, eyeing the nuts holding on bus wheels --from
below the hub. For me a recumbent seemed too much like assisted
suicide by truck.

Then I thought of the opa/oma Dutch bikes, which are low stepthrough
styles for ladies of a certain age and uncertain future. That was just
too depressing. (Chalo is looking for one...)

Then a compromise solution struck me: the Mixte. the style has a
downtube but the seattube is angled down parallel, or almost, with the
downtube. Or in the classic Mixte application there are two thin tubes
from the head tube parallel or almost to the down tube and running all
the way back past the sides of the seat tube to the junction of the
chain- and seat-stays. You can still lift your foot through the gap
reasonably easily and the bike will be reasonably stiff, or at least
stiffer than those U shaped things...

Of course there is no point in ordering a custom bike and having it
fillet-brazed. It has to be lugged, and preferably with fancy lugs
which can be painted a contrasting colour or at least lined with my
house colours of maroon and yellow.

The difficulty of finding stainless lugs for a Mixte is holding up the
project.

The other difficulties that drive people to bents are easily solved: a
seat rather than a saddle, geometry to put your feet on the ground (if
you/re too old for legover, you're old enough to want to sit upright,
right?), an automatic gearbox to keep pedalling effort in the most
efficient range, front suspension to keep the inequalities of the road
out of arthritic fingers (in fact the only arthritis I have was caused
by a bike falling on my little finger a few months ago; when I catch
up on the driver of the car that caused the accident he'll be in pain
for very long time), a suspended seatpost to keep piles comfortable,
and so on. I've even got adaptive front suspension -- electronically
set to hard when you set off, softer riding at speed on the level,
hard to conserve energy when pedalling uphill -- in the Shimano Cyber
Nexus groupset I bought for this Gerry Attrick bike.

Of course, planning such a bike keeps one young, thus defeating or at
least delaying the purpose.

Andre,

Please take a look at the crank forward (CF) bicycle RANS offers and
tell us what you think: http://www.ransbikes.com/. These CF bicycles
have something more like a real seat than a conventional upright bicycle
saddle, a geometry that allows the rider to put both feet on the ground
when seated, and a step-over height mid-way between a diamond frame and
a woman's step-through city bicycle.

I'm not too impressed with the RANS recumbents. The one I might try if
given a choice (Stratus XP ali) seems pricey, the spaceframe isn't,
and so on. The ones with the crankwheel out front I just purely hate
on sight.

However the RANS Crank Forward concept bikes (Fusion, Cruz, Dynamik
and Zenetik, some derivatives of these) seem like a clever solution,
the Fusion and the Cruz most of all. The seating position of the
Fusion is just about how I sit in my office chair with my feet flat on
the ground and the handlebars would fall just about where my keyboard
sits on a special desk. These guys got something there all right. On
the other hand, I suspect, looking at the front of the fork and the
wheelbase that it will be a slow-responding bike. One of the reasons
one buys a Dutch citysports at a premium over the black crow types
(besides premium parts) is the shorter wheelbase and slightly steeper
angles for a quicker response in traffic. Still, that's not a killer
argument: you learn to work with a bike's response. A couple of
dealers I spoke to in The Netherlands before I bought those Dutch
bikes told me that some of their older customers thought the new
citysports bikes "unstable", and so they are compared to a real
citybike, though I prefer to think they're quick-reacting. It's a
matter of outlook, what you're used, what you can become used to, a
price you're willing to pay for other desirable features. In any
event, a derivative of the Cruz, the Street, has a more upright front
end and a shorter wheelbase which would probably be a lot nippier to
change direction. One desireable feature of the CF bikes are that one
might just walk over the seat from behind.

The Fusion seems reasonably priced for a bike with specially developed
parts (seat, fork, front derailleur), though it would have to be
specced up with lights and rack and mudguards and so on to be a year-
round bike.

It's a pity RANS doesn't list a frameset with horizontal track
dropouts, because their CF bikes appear to be a match made in heaven
for hub gears. You could build up a very cleanlooking "singlespeed"
summer bike on the Cruz frameset (if only it had longer or preferably
horizontal dropouts) with a Nexus hub and nothing else, no guards, no
rack, no nothing. Of course you and I are too sensible to do anything
as juvenile as building a bike-equivalent of a Deuce.
..
..
..
..
Like hell we are!

Andre Jute
Habit is the nursery of errors. -- Victor Hugo

PS. I did sit for a few seconds on some kind of Giant "cruiser" with
similar laid-back geometry. But I didn't even take it for a spin; the
thing was all glitzy and "styled" to death, a little gangbanger's
ride; in retrospect, not trying it might come to seem a mistake. After
all, a bicycle's geometry is forever, a new paint job is only a spray
can away.

"Andre Jute" wrote in message
...
Peter Clinch wrote:

Andre Jute wrote:

In considering ordering a custom stainless frame to see me out, I
thought of the top tube and the obstruction it might be in time, when
after the nth hip replacement I can no longer swing my leg over the
saddle. Or of course, leglifting might be become non-PC and outlawed,
and bicyclists will be hunted through the streets with smokers.

Plenty of high performance bikes with low stepovers.

My interest isn't in high performance bikes even now that I'm whole
and and hale and hearty. One suspects that with advancing years one's
interest will focus even more closely on comfort and utility.

If you are not interested in high performance recumbents, then why the hell
are you bothering with the likes of Tom Sherman and Peter Clinch, two nut
cases who have never had a sensible thought about anything.
[...]

Recumbents have other serious problems. I was never a bike racer, so I
never learned to pull on the upstroke and I'm not planning on learning
now. Cleats and shoecages and straps are a nuisance I don't need. I
get off my bike and walk up hills or into the library, so I just wear
fairly stiffsoled street shoes. The thing I learned about recumbents
in those half-dozen rides is encapsulated in something truly shiver-
making that Tom Sherman said when he mentioned riders "trained" for
riding recumbents. I don't fancy retraining for cycling, an activity I
consider should be fun rather than a socially acceptable form of sado-
masochism.

What kind of nut are you anyway? Recumbents are made for folks like you!
There is no "training" involved other than learning how to sit on your dead
ass, something that we are all world class experts at.

Tom Sherman and Peter Clinch are nut cases. They always have been and they
always will be. Very funny that you haven't been able to figure this out on
your own!

Regards,

Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota

Ozark Bicycle wrote:
On Jan 31, 10:35 pm, Tom Sherman
wrote:
...
The CF will likely be slower than the road bicycle but considerably more
comfortable.

Hmmm.....I do not find my "road bicycles" at all uncomfortable. And I
wouldn't expect a CF to be "fast", I have others for that purpose.

Well, one would generally expect regular cyclists to not have too much
problem with comfort - after all, true masochists are rare. Regular
cyclists are a biased (statistically speaking) sample when it comes to
judging the comfort of bicycles.

Despite the protestations of certain parties, I believe that there are
people out there who would be cyclists except for comfort issues;
therefore there is a market out there for something more comfortable
than a conventional upright, but is not as different as a recumbent. If
a substantial number of these people could be served with CF bicycles,
it would be of great benefit to cycling in general.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth

Andre Jute wrote:
Tom Sherman wrote:

Andre Jute wrote:
wrote:
"(Don't get me wrong dept.): If you haven't "heard" me say before,
"there's a bent in everyone's future" .... But, at 58-1/2 (three
quarters, actually), with a bad back, arthritis in the hands, and a
difficulty with one of the saddle contact areas (doing much better,
thanks), I'm not there yet."

In considering ordering a custom stainless frame to see me out, I
thought of the top tube and the obstruction it might be in time, when
after the nth hip replacement I can no longer swing my leg over the
saddle. Or of course, leglifting might be become non-PC and outlawed,
and bicyclists will be hunted through the streets with smokers.

I looked into recumbents and even bought one to try and hated it; it
lasted a week before I sold it on. It reminded me of driving to work
in the city in a Porsche, eyeing the nuts holding on bus wheels --from
below the hub. For me a recumbent seemed too much like assisted
suicide by truck.

Then I thought of the opa/oma Dutch bikes, which are low stepthrough
styles for ladies of a certain age and uncertain future. That was just
too depressing. (Chalo is looking for one...)

Then a compromise solution struck me: the Mixte. the style has a
downtube but the seattube is angled down parallel, or almost, with the
downtube. Or in the classic Mixte application there are two thin tubes
from the head tube parallel or almost to the down tube and running all
the way back past the sides of the seat tube to the junction of the
chain- and seat-stays. You can still lift your foot through the gap
reasonably easily and the bike will be reasonably stiff, or at least
stiffer than those U shaped things...

Of course there is no point in ordering a custom bike and having it
fillet-brazed. It has to be lugged, and preferably with fancy lugs
which can be painted a contrasting colour or at least lined with my
house colours of maroon and yellow.

The difficulty of finding stainless lugs for a Mixte is holding up the
project.

The other difficulties that drive people to bents are easily solved: a
seat rather than a saddle, geometry to put your feet on the ground (if
you/re too old for legover, you're old enough to want to sit upright,
right?), an automatic gearbox to keep pedalling effort in the most
efficient range, front suspension to keep the inequalities of the road
out of arthritic fingers (in fact the only arthritis I have was caused
by a bike falling on my little finger a few months ago; when I catch
up on the driver of the car that caused the accident he'll be in pain
for very long time), a suspended seatpost to keep piles comfortable,
and so on. I've even got adaptive front suspension -- electronically
set to hard when you set off, softer riding at speed on the level,
hard to conserve energy when pedalling uphill -- in the Shimano Cyber
Nexus groupset I bought for this Gerry Attrick bike.

Of course, planning such a bike keeps one young, thus defeating or at
least delaying the purpose.

Andre,

Please take a look at the crank forward (CF) bicycle RANS offers and
tell us what you think: http://www.ransbikes.com/. These CF bicycles
have something more like a real seat than a conventional upright bicycle
saddle, a geometry that allows the rider to put both feet on the ground
when seated, and a step-over height mid-way between a diamond frame and
a woman's step-through city bicycle.

I'm not too impressed with the RANS recumbents. The one I might try if
given a choice (Stratus XP ali) seems pricey, the spaceframe isn't,
and so on. The ones with the crankwheel out front I just purely hate
on sight.

The RANS Rocket is a great overall bicycle for the price. I would claim
it was the most fun bicycle I have ever owned, if I had no experience
with the Earth Cycles Sunset Lowracer. However, the latter is not a
reasonable option for most, since only 20 exist, and at least one person
is hoarding two of them.

However the RANS Crank Forward concept bikes (Fusion, Cruz, Dynamik
and Zenetik, some derivatives of these) seem like a clever solution,
the Fusion and the Cruz most of all. The seating position of the
Fusion is just about how I sit in my office chair with my feet flat on
the ground and the handlebars would fall just about where my keyboard
sits on a special desk. These guys got something there all right. On
the other hand, I suspect, looking at the front of the fork and the
wheelbase that it will be a slow-responding bike. One of the reasons
one buys a Dutch citysports at a premium over the black crow types
(besides premium parts) is the shorter wheelbase and slightly steeper
angles for a quicker response in traffic. Still, that's not a killer
argument: you learn to work with a bike's response. A couple of
dealers I spoke to in The Netherlands before I bought those Dutch
bikes told me that some of their older customers thought the new
citysports bikes "unstable", and so they are compared to a real
citybike, though I prefer to think they're quick-reacting. It's a
matter of outlook, what you're used, what you can become used to, a
price you're willing to pay for other desirable features. In any
event, a derivative of the Cruz, the Street, has a more upright front
end and a shorter wheelbase which would probably be a lot nippier to
change direction. One desireable feature of the CF bikes are that one
might just walk over the seat from behind.

Randy Schlitter (RANS founder and current proprietor) rides a lot on
unimproved roads, so the handling of the CF bicycles may reflect that.

The Fusion seems reasonably priced for a bike with specially developed
parts (seat, fork, front derailleur), though it would have to be
specced up with lights and rack and mudguards and so on to be a year-
round bike.

People in the US are used to pricing bicycles without accessories, so it
is a hard sell to include such items as standard equipment.

It's a pity RANS doesn't list a frameset with horizontal track
dropouts, because their CF bikes appear to be a match made in heaven
for hub gears. You could build up a very cleanlooking "singlespeed"
summer bike on the Cruz frameset (if only it had longer or preferably
horizontal dropouts) with a Nexus hub and nothing else, no guards, no
rack, no nothing. Of course you and I are too sensible to do anything
as juvenile as building a bike-equivalent of a Deuce.

RANS might well build such a bicycle if the suggestion was made - they
have in the past implemented suggestions made by their dealers. They
will also on occasion build a customized frame.

Like hell we are!

Andre Jute
Habit is the nursery of errors. -- Victor Hugo

PS. I did sit for a few seconds on some kind of Giant "cruiser" with
similar laid-back geometry. But I didn't even take it for a spin; the
thing was all glitzy and "styled" to death, a little gangbanger's
ride; in retrospect, not trying it might come to seem a mistake. After
all, a bicycle's geometry is forever, a new paint job is only a spray
can away.

The Giant Revive has had some positive reviews for its ride qualities,
but I can see how the styling can turn some off. The RANS CF bikes
certainly look better than the other CF offerings currently made.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth

Peter Clinch wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:

In considering ordering a custom stainless frame to see me out, I
thought of the top tube and the obstruction it might be in time, when
after the nth hip replacement I can no longer swing my leg over the
saddle. Or of course, leglifting might be become non-PC and outlawed,
and bicyclists will be hunted through the streets with smokers.

Plenty of high performance bikes with low stepovers. The Moulton
springs to mind as an obvious one, look at http://www.tsr.uk.com/ for
the cheaper ones, http://www.alexmoulton.co.uk/ for the more expensive
(the Bridgedale isn't cheap, but ,much cheaper than the others listed
there).

Also gives you a good road-going suspension to help with those other
joint grumbles.

How do the Pashley versions of the Moulton compare in quality and price
to the ones mentioned above?

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth

Andre Jute wrote:
...
Recumbents have other serious problems. I was never a bike racer, so I
never learned to pull on the upstroke and I'm not planning on learning
now. Cleats and shoecages and straps are a nuisance I don't need.

That is why I am such a fan of Power Grips for utilitarian bicycles -
inexpensive, effective and bloody simple to use:
http://powergrips.mrpbike.com/pg_benefits.shtml.

Power Grips work well on both uprights and recumbents with relatively
low bottom brackets (near seat height or less).

The most annoying thing about Power Grips is the "why didn't I think of
that?" factor.

I
get off my bike and walk up hills or into the library, so I just wear
fairly stiffsoled street shoes. The thing I learned about recumbents
in those half-dozen rides is encapsulated in something truly shiver-
making that Tom Sherman said when he mentioned riders "trained" for
riding recumbents. I don't fancy retraining for cycling, an activity I
consider should be fun rather than a socially acceptable form of sado-
masochism.

Injury type pain is no fun. Hammering until one is exhausted is fun. As
always, your mileage may vary.

Thanks for sharing your expertise, Pete.

Pete.

Andre Jute
Man is an upright ape for compelling reasons

I like having my feet higher that what I am sitting on. My ideal bicycle
has the bottom bracket about 25 cm above seat height.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth

Edward Dolan wrote:
...
If you are not interested in high performance recumbents, then why the hell
are you bothering with the likes of Tom Sherman and Peter Clinch, two nut
cases who have never had a sensible thought about anything....

Hey Eddie,

I thought I was a "whacko nut", and not just a plain nut?

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth

Chalo "99.99th percentile" Colina wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
Then I thought of the opa/oma Dutch bikes, which are low stepthrough
styles for ladies of a certain age and uncertain future. That was just
too depressing. (Chalo is looking for one...)

For what it's worth, opafietsen have top tubes. They have higher
standover than any up-to-date bike frame of equivalent size, in
fact.

http://www.workcycles.com/workbike/b...a-bicycle.html

Here's the size that interests me:
http://www.workcycles.com/workbike/b...e-gt-70cm.html

Yes, the Dutch are the tallest people in the world on the average, so
Chalo is merely huge instead of gigantic by their standards.

You might have a point, though, about the depressing nature of
traditional Dutch bikes:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleverchimp/1589947928

What brand of pannier?

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth

"Tom Sherman" wrote in message
...
Edward Dolan wrote:
...
If you are not interested in high performance recumbents, then why the
hell are you bothering with the likes of Tom Sherman and Peter Clinch,
two nut cases who have never had a sensible thought about anything....

Hey Eddie,

I thought I was a "whacko nut", and not just a plain nut?

You are a whacko nut when it comes to your liberal-socialist-communist world
view. You are merely a garden variety plain nut otherwise.

Why are you advocating the CF type of bicycle? They are neither fish nor
fowl and are a screwed up idea from Kansas. RANS should stick to proper
recumbents.

Regards,

Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota

Edward Dolan wrote:
"Tom Sherman" wrote in message
...
Edward Dolan wrote:
...
If you are not interested in high performance recumbents, then why the
hell are you bothering with the likes of Tom Sherman and Peter Clinch,
two nut cases who have never had a sensible thought about anything....

Hey Eddie,

I thought I was a "whacko nut", and not just a plain nut?

You are a whacko nut when it comes to your liberal-socialist-communist world
view. You are merely a garden variety plain nut otherwise.

Why are you advocating the CF type of bicycle? They are neither fish nor
fowl and are a screwed up idea from Kansas. RANS should stick to proper
recumbents.

Anything that get more people riding bicycles is a benefit to all cyclists.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth