Clip-in pedals are optional because dangerous they are. My only serious accident on a bike was when I weared SPD pedals. Unlike a helmet, clip-in pedals trade security for efficiency.
I’m curious why you say that. I put clip ins on my bike and it made a world of a difference being able to pull and push while pedaling. Are there better options?
There’s no better option, it just didn’t make as much of a difference as you think it did. They add about 10 percent more power but more at the high end. If you’re pushing 500-600 watts that’s where the difference is clear.
I think the difference is worth it for amateur riders also, stability on the pedals and being able to both push and pull on your stroke should give you at least 15-20% more power. It might not benefit you in your 5Km commute to work, but it will in that 50Km weekend ride.
I don't really see it as a matter of efficiency. It's more that I never have to really think about where my feet are on the pedals. They're just always in the right spot and no extra work has to go into keeping them there.
Mechanical efficiency is not that important when most people only ride a few miles a day, at a slow pace, dictated by traffic conditions. If you take a broader view and consider vantage point, ease of mounting, mechanical efficiency, aesthetics, convenience, weight etc, bikes are pretty damn optimal.
A vegan roommate used to get really worked up about drinking cow's milk, pointing out that humans were not evolved to do so in nature. He would say, "Can you imagine crawling under a cow to drink milk directly from the udder?"
The idea seemed to frustrate him more than the concept of humans eating meat or wearing leather shoes.
Wow, that is a thing that you do not want to do. Milk straight from the udder is full of e.g. chunks of fat. It goes through multiple steps before it is recognizable as the same stuff we buy in the store.
Plus, the cow would probably step on you.
Why would it be gross? Breast milk is the first thing we drink, it's an almost perfect food. Drinking cow milk isn't very far fetched, especially when you keep cattle for meat. Seems like the most natural thing in the world frankly.
For a lot of human history (and even up to the present in some places), but certainly around the time cattle were domesticated, starvation was only ever just one bad harvest away. When last year they were deciding whether it's better to eat their own kids, let the kids eat them or just all die painfully together, drinking cow lactate was probably the least bad thing that happened to Grog and Grag this year.
What do you mean "chunks of fat"? Do you mean the fact that milk naturally separates after some time? I'm pretty sure chunks of anything in a cow's milk that is only a minute old is a serious sign of disease.
Ask basically any dairy farmer, and they will be happy to tell you they drink the milk straight from the cow. They probably have a couple of jugs in the fridge.
> Ask basically any dairy farmer, and they will be happy to tell you they drink the milk straight from the cow.
Not modern dairy farmers with cows loaded up with antibiotics, which generally all accumulate in the fat (cream). Even for organic farmers drinking unpasteurized milk would be an exception not the rule, it’s just an unnecessary health risk.
I grew up on a farm, and I milked the cows and sheep.
When milk is brand new, it is not homogeneous. To get what we buy in the store it must have excess fat removed off of the top, pasteurized, and homogenized.
We had a machine the size of a large water cooler with three different spouts on it to do the initial separation.
But you don't have to do any of that to actually drink that milk, get nutricients and be fine. Two of these are basically matter of preference. And "people deep in the past", whatever what it means, would want to eat fat with all its calories and all that.
And pasteurization makes it safer, but is not necessary strictly speaking. I can even still buy unpasteurized milk - but it is more expensive due to higher hygiene requirements currently. But in the past, they would just drink it (and get sick occasionally).
Cows are pretty docile during milking. I mean, it’s not a great idea to crawl under _any_ object that size that can move unexpectedly, but if you’re in a quiet barn (to avoid the cow getting spooked) you could get away with it.
People drink raw milk all the time (and until pretty recently in history, that's the only way it really came, until that Pasteur guy figured it out).
Modern milk is homogenised to death because of squeamishness about food being biological in origin, people don't like lumps in their tea, and some people think cream bits means it's off. But within living memory, I remember cream on retail milk being quite common (and I'm sure it still is in places with local fresh milk).
True, it's not a great idea to drink raw milk due to various diseases, so you'd be better to heat treat it first, but you certainly don't have to homogenise it to drink it.
Just to add, drinking milk is pretty much only a thing of people from European descent — the gene responsible for digesting lactose can cause 3 variations: you can digest it as a baby (human milk also has it), you can digest it to around your teenage years, or you will be able to digest it afterwards as well. This variation is suspected to mutate during famines.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert but lactose intolerance depends on gut microbes which doesn't require evolution to change. You can alleviate symptoms of lactose intolerance with probiotics/kefir.
From what I’ve read the evolution of adult lactase was almost instant. Humans naturally produce lactase as babies, but what had to happen was to extend that production into adulthood. This is really a straightforward mutation then, what had changed was the non silencing of the gene that is already active at birth.
I rode a recumbent for years. It actually ended up giving me back problems and I switched back to a diamond frame. Also recumbents are bigger, heavier, and way more expensive.
Critical to my enjoyment of longer rides on a "normal" bike:
- upper and lower body strengthening (lifting moderate weights)
- suspending my body weight with my arms and legs, don't rest on the saddle
- yoga regularly
I'm intrigued by some of the modern cruiser-style ebikes, e.g. RAD. Seems to me that these are pretty darn comfortable. Perhaps this problem is finally solved!?
And with recumbents being so low to the ground, it's dangerous to mix with cars as cars can struggle to even see you, even with that little reflective flag.
E-bikes can also be tweaked to go very fast. In many jurisdictions, they're restricted to performance well below that which a competitive cyclist can achieve on a purely human-powered bike, but enforcement is difficult.
Motorcycles definitely are very convenient. Power to weight ratio is great, easier to maneuver in a city, has better parking options, gets great gas mileage (my speedy v-strom gets about 53mpg), and other nice conveniences.
It has one major flaw though. You're pretty much guaranteed to get injured in an accident and the chance of dying is much higher than in a car. Cyclics see some of these issues as well when they ride on the street but generally they're going slower and able to react to a situation a little faster than a motorcycle rider.
I get what they're getting at here, but isn't cycling still wildly more efficient than walking/running? Maybe they haven't changed because they are already reasonably optimal.
FTA: It has survived, largely unchanged in dimension, philosophy and architecture, since the time of The Boer War, precisely because it is not that bad. It is actually reasonably good at low to moderate power outputs.
What makes you say "reasonably good"? It's excellent. Ten kilograms of metal makes you three times faster at a quarter the energy spend, I'd say it's amazing.
Biking is wildly more efficient than running. Heck, if you’re on the large side (250-300pounds), you burn as much energy (~0.25kWh or ~200Calories in terms of human food, which—unless you’re eating almost entirely bulk staples like corn meal—has a really high footprint, especially fruit and meat) to run a mile as it takes to drive a Model 3 for that same mile. Biking is a quarter that. (Walking is a bit more efficient than running, but not much.)
The usual study/reference for this is someone biking at ~10mph. Bicycles become progressively less efficient at higher speeds due to air resistance.
Fairings and reduced frontal area (recumbent/supine positioning) can help this considerably. The combination is commercially sold as velomobiles and they're not especially popular but they do work. As an example, dedicated amateur enthusiasts do 3 hour century rides in commercial velomobiles regularly.
>Why has the bicycle design survived if it is so bad?
The standard upright bicycle has one major advantage over more efficient designs: better situational awareness. The rider's head is free to turn without obstruction and high enough to see over cars. I choose to ride an upright for this reason. If I lived in a country with good cycling infrastructure I might have made a different decision.
No. I need to look at many different angles, so it would have to be attached to my head, which would be hazardous in a crash, and would negate some of the recumbent's comfort advantage. Additionally, the field of view would be smaller than looking directly.
It's possible that technology could usefully augment my senses, but I'd be very skeptical of anything complicated. If it's safety critical I want to be confident it won't fail.
With the fast ones - you tend to not need much situational awareness because you’re going fast. Nothing is likely to come up behind you or even to the side of you (without you seeing it ahead of you first) because… you’re going fast.
Imagine thinking that the only thing that matters to riding a bike is the efficiency with which you can extract power from your legs.
Normal bikes are way safer because you can actually see around you and you're also much easier to see. That's not even taking into account how much agility you lose on a recumbent, or how easy it is to get off of regular bike while it's in motion and let it do the crashing while you walk away.
The piece is based on a talk given a conference on cycling optimization. The author is not in any way recommending that day-to-day cyclists change to a different form factor. It seems entirely to be an intellectual exercise asking "what is the theoretically optimal form for transferring human energy to a bicycle".
Max power output indeed is not the most important consideration for most riders. However I do feel the need to point out how recumbents optimize for other things too.
On most recumbents, the gaze is naturally forward with no bending the neck. And legs forward with low center of gravity feels like a good position when headed for a crash.
It just doesn't make sense to replace the chain. They are incredibly efficient, cheap and reliable. Most of the issues with chain drives are due to improper maintenance on sport bikes. Modern bikes have 10 or more gears in their cassette, which means the chain has to be very skinny and shifting needs to be very precise.
On the other hand, a dutch style bike with a wide 1/8" chain and an internally geared hub instead of a derailleur is much more reliable and requires very little maintenance. Even an older derailleur bike with friction shifters and fewer gears will be very reliable.
In case you didn't know, they make bikes with carbon+rubber belt drives now, rather than chains. It's kind of nice for commuter bikes because there's no grease to get on your pants.
Much of the unpleasantness of biking on a diamond frame can be corrected just by mounting a mirror under the handlebars, slanted so you can look down at it to see ahead. It takes a remarkably short time to get used to.
This article seems to be pointing to, but never quite saying, that the most perfectly-evolved bike is a recumbent. Or maybe even the crazy one at the bottom of the page that puts the rider on a weird frame that has them lying down on their front with their chin a half an inch above a fenderless front wheel.
And, yeah, maybe that thing goes faster than my shitty $300 Retrospec, and is much more efficient at converting muscle energy into forwards motion. But there is no way I would want to get on that contraption and ride it around the pothole-strewn streets of New Orleans. Never mind issues like only being eye-to-eye with dogs people are walking down the trails, being completely invisible to people driving cars, stopping at a light being super-awkward, and having absolutely nowhere to put my laptop bag or my groceries. I am quite happy to sacrifice speed and efficiency for all of those. I spend a lot of my riding sitting straight up because it makes my back happier; I don't give a shit if it increases wind resistance and decreases my maximum speed.
This is not to say there could potentially be a better design for a two-wheeled device powered by its rider's muscles. But there's a lot more to consider than just "how fast can it go on a racing track".
(But apparently Cyclefit is a business focused solely on racing bikes, so for them, I guess that's the only measure.)
You seem to be mixing up recumbents with low-racer recumbents or trikes. There are are also high-racer recumbents where the rider is as high as on a standard bike. And by potholes, I think you seem to think that recumbents must have small wheels? Finally, recumbents have tons of places to put shopping and laptops.
The #1 benefit of recumbents [especially trikes!] isn't speed. It's that they are far more comfortable than uprights.
With regards to potholes and lack of carrying capacity and whatnot, I am specifically throwing shade at this thing featured in this article: https://www.cyclefit.co.uk/uploads/obree1.jpg
This article ends with a list of bullet points; the final one is "[the guy who made that bike] is a genius".
His dedication to going as fast as possible on human power is legendary (they even made a movie about him). At no point did he have in mind the practicality of his devices for the average commuter. They are extreme machines and nobody will force you to don your spandex and show your butt to the skies on your weekend ride.
As I said in my root comment, this article seems to be vaguely waving in the direction of saying that his speed-at-any-cost contraption is THE ULTIMATE EVOLUTION OF THE BICYCLE!!!, and I am noting that there are a lot of fitness criteria for a bicycle that this ignores.
As I understand it, crocodiles and sharks have looked basically the same for tens of millions of years, unlike humans that were basically pre-chimpanzees 6 million years ago, even 1 million years age we were quite different from today.
Well, it’s not that hard to believe that crocodiles are at a local-maxima of the niche (but effective) category of sneak attack from under the water.
But evolution can’t really create absolute-maximums, e.g. going all the way to pig-like mammals (so descending from a different point) you get orcas that absolutely murder sharks in both meanings (where smartness is a huge huge advantage)
You could say this about anything. Humans didn't evolve to drive cars and look cars are the same now as they were in 1895! They still have wheels, seats, engines, and a control device. It's silly to say that a modern car is the same as an 1895 car (that's 10 years before the Model T even).
Bicycles have changed just as much as cars. Disk breaks, lights, carbon and aluminium frames, clipless and magnetic pedals, handlebars are totally different as shifters and breaks, saddles are far more comfortable (made not just out of different materials, modern saddles are fundamentally different from old-style saddles), wheels are much lighter, tires are much more durable, we have far better shifters and even have electronic shifting. And much more. We wear helmets now! All of that is before get into how different lights are, things like GPS and tracking, or even radar to alert you about cars!
Obree's achievements are very cool. But saying that we should be more like him is crazy! He was mechanically efficient on those bikes, but he was not comfortable. You wouldn't want to ride his bikes for fun.
Even his latest bike where he is laying prone. Hard pass. That can't feel good on your neck! It looks super dangerous in cities with potholes (you will end up face planting). You have a very low profile and are much more likely to get hit by cars. And you will see far less around you because you're so low.
This is not some UCI conspiracy to prevent progress. The reason why the basic layout of the modern bike is the same (just like the basic layout of a car is the same) is because it's great at what it does. It's not some dumb compromise. 99% of cyclists don't care about power output to the exclusion of comfort and safety!
> This is not some UCI conspiracy to prevent progress.
Actually, it is a UCI conspiracy to prevent progress, full stop. The UCI didn't just ban recumbents, thus dooming them to the nerd crowd. They also banned small-wheel bikes. You might be aware that the primary speed records not held by recumbents are held by Moultons, which have a wheel diameter about half that of the standard wheels, plus a tight suspension. Why don't people ride small wheels? Because racers don't, making it hard to market them. And racers don't because UCI banned them expressly to keep Moultons out of races.
The UCI tried (and failed due to safety uproar) to ban disc brakes. It banned the superman position. It banned fairings. It has a long history of banning solid, well considered and superior designs and technologies, and as a result effectively eliminating them from the mainstream market.
I hate conspiracy theories: but this one is entirely with merit.
This is the kind of conspiracy talk you hear from people who deny the moon landing. There's something amazing, so superior, so great, that the man is holding us down and refusing to let us have. When in reality there are simple engineering reasons why the supposed superior thing is really just terrible.
UCI stopped recumbents, the superman position, fairings because they're so incredibly superior? That's ridiculous! Recumbents are far inferior, they're huge, they're clunky, you have limited visibility in the city. The superman position? Please, everyone can see why we don't ride around in that position. And fairings? You can install one today. It's on Amazon. It's cheap. No one does it.
UCI is just a mirror of what the vast vast majority of cyclists want. Had they not put bans in, professional cycling would be people going around in carbon fiber tubes sitting horizontally. That is not cycling as 99% of people know it, and as 99% of people want it to be.
You bring up disc breaks. That's the perfect example of how things work. People adopted them. So the UCI approved them.
> Why don't people ride small wheels? Because racers don't, making it hard to market them
People ride small wheels all the time! Foldable bikes. BMX bikes. They have small wheels. They're perfectly marketable and sell very well.
I guess you mean, why don't normal hybrid bikes have small wheels? Simple, they're not as good as big wheels. They're far worse at handling bad terrain like cobblestones, potholes or gravel. Big wheels provider a smoother more comfortable ride, and they're less twitchy than small wheels.
If small wheels were superior, given that basically every bike shop has such a bike you can get today, people would be trying a small wheel bike and a large bike and deciding on the small one. Every bike store associate would be telling you that they discovered something awesome to make you ride better: small wheels.
This really tells me you don't know much about the history of bicycles, nor did you actually read the article.
The UCI has had a potent effect on the bike market: people buy "serious rider" bikes based on what they see the "professionals" riding. And bulk manufacturers figure people want lower-end bikes that look like the "serious rider" bikes -- and they're right, that's what customers want. What customers don't realize is that the professionals are riding rather poor machines because a corrupt swiss organization is largely forcing them too.
Putting recumbents aside, let's just go back to small wheels. There is no valid reason for the UCI to ban them: they simply banned them because Moultons started winning. Regardless of your thoughts on the disadvantages of small wheels (and small wheels hold practically every single upright land speed record), none of those disadvantages are the reasons you don't see small-wheeled bikes in races. You don't see them because the UCI won't allow them. And the UCI won't allow them because they would smash all the race records. Thus people think small wheels are for folders and kid's bikes, rather than what they actually are, which is for winning races.
So, your best argument to disagree with what I said is that I haven't read enough? Yeah, that's usually how conspiracy theorists argue. Let's move beyond this.
Use some basic critical thinking skills here.
What does the evil UCI gain from forcing everyone to use "inferior" big wheels as opposed to "superior" small wheels? Did someone take a pledge to some evil God who demands only large wheels? Is there a large wheel blood oath? There's no patent even!
This conspiracy theory is nonsense. It has the same incentive structure as flat earth: people are lying for the sake of lying with nothing to gain. That's just dumb.
We don't use small wheels because of engineering reasons. Not aesthetic reasons. That's why Moulton lost out.
The vast majority of riders don't care about professional cycling. Have never seen a single race in their lives. And would never watch one willingly. Yet, despite the fact that small wheeled bicycles are available in every bike shop, very few people ride them. It has nothing to do with what they look like.
Small wheels simply aren't as comfortable as large wheels. They aren't as forgiving and they aren't as good with potholes. It doesn't matter that they're faster in some conditions. The vast majority of cyclists want comfort first.
If the UCI didn't have this rule, professionals would be riding a bicycle that looks totally different from what regular folks ride. And that's a problem with attracting people to the sport. No amount of professional riding small wheels will convince the public to pick an inferior bike.
> So, your best argument to disagree with what I said is that I haven't read enough?
Look. The UCI has a long and well-documented history of banning new bicycle technologies and approaches specifically to prevent them from winning races. These aren't out-in-left-field claims: they're well established history. For example, the UCI really did ban recumbents on behalf of the safety bike industry in order to keep the velocar out of races. And the UCI really did ban small wheels in order to block the Moulton from winning championships. The UCI really did ban the superman position, fairings, and even attempted to ban disc brakes, among many other items. Your response seems to be to question that this happened this by demanding to know why the UCI would do such a thing, rather than going and looking it up for yourself.
> We don't use small wheels because of engineering reasons. Not aesthetic reasons. That's why Moulton lost out.
You keep making this claim about Moulton with no evidence for it at all. Small wheels are faster and stronger than large wheels, and permit many more aerodynamic frame design options. They allow a wider and more stable wheelbase. Small-wheeled bikes are unquestionably faster than large-wheeled bikes: the racing records make this clear. It is exactly because of their advantages that the UCI banned them.
There are basically three downsides with smaller wheels, all frankly minor. [1] They are harder to gear, but that's easily dealt with nowadays. [2] They are somewhat bumpier, but I've ridden 359s daily for a year on Rome's San Pietrini: it's not an issue. And, this is trivially dealt with using a tight suspension, which also glues them to the ground and makes them more efficient than large wheels (and is what Moultons did btw). The primary problem with small wheels is [3] that it's more challenging to design small-wheeled bikes with high mechanical trail, and racing bikes tend to have very high trail. None of these outweighs their significant advantages in races.
> If the UCI didn't have this rule, professionals would be riding a bicycle that looks totally different from what regular folks ride. And that's a problem with attracting people to the sport.
Right. That's why disc brakes were banned too.
I think I'm done with you. You keep calling me a conspiracy theorist for stating well established historical fact.
tangent/ It only clicked for me how dangerous penny-farthings really were when I absorbed that the modern bicycle design was marketed and known as the safety bicycle.
Well I didn't expect to see Cycle Fit mentioned on HN. They've designed and built several bicycles I've raced competitively on and factor in health issues, individual power output, style of riding, etc. They were one of the first to really push bike fitting to where it is now. It's a very science driven shop.
My first experience was when racing as a lowly cat 4 cyclist on a Cannondale off-the-peg bicycle. I experienced lower back pain and was pretty sure my position was wrong but my tweaking wasn't improving things. Phil put me on a Serotta cycle fit machine which looks like this: https://www.cyclefit.co.uk/fitting . It allows every aspect of the position to be adjusted until the best position for you is found... best with regards to whatever you prioritise. For me it was pain-avoidance first, then endurance and hill climbs power/stamina second. Once they found the best position, we dialled-in the Cannondale to as close as the stock frame allowed (changing steam, seat post, saddle, bars)... and I went from DFL (dead effing last) in races to top 10%.
I didn't really enjoy racing criteriums so didn't stick with that, but I did love the difference the bike fitting made to my enjoyment of riding and had changed to doing distance social rides instead (100+ mile on a weekend... London > Brighton > London for example). And it made me think, if Cycle Fit can do this to a stock bike, what could they do with a fully bespoke bike?
The answer is a lot. I've owned a Serotta, Robin Mather, and a Seven, all made for me after geometry designed by Phil at Cycle Fit. Each bike was for a different purpose, and each one is subtly different. It's amazing, I no longer experience any back pain when cycling, not even for ultracycling and endurance events that last a few days. Riding these bikes feels like being roadrunner in the cartoon, floating through air and legs spinning effortlessly. Everything about them is superlative, but it's the fit that makes it so. The bikes I test rode were good, but not as good as the bikes made for me. I lost the Serotta due to a hit and run incident in London, but the other two remain my prized bikes.
As for Phil, he's become an essential tool for a lot of professional cyclists. His obsession with understanding the science behind how the human body performs on a bicycle has led to some major wins for a lot of professional athletes. He's also extremely humble and very approachable.
If you're ever in the market for a ridiculously good bicycle made specifically for you... then Phil is your man.
Very thought provoking - maybe someone reading it today will design a better layout!
Something really odd going on with the layout on mobile, I got the impression I was reading the article in the wrong order, or that a bunch of the paragraphs were really supposed to be footnotes to the illustrations.
What we need are not better bikes, but better bike lanes.
I mean what I want from my bike is cycle paths, car free paved areas that travel from my house to my kids school and local amenities so my kids have some degree of freedom with a constant fear of death.
I honestly don't care how fast a bike can go - the limits to the speed are basically risk aversion by the rider. Years ago I upgraded my commuter cycle from a fat tyred mountain bike to a decent road bike and the very next day I added 5mph to my time on a flat stretch in North London. My total commute time barely budged because although I convert power to speed, I was unwilling to weave through traffic to take advantage of it.
Hence, what we need are not better bikes, but better bike lanes.
I think it's interesting that the online recumbent community as I've encountered it is in general agreement that most styles of recumbent climb worse than a diamond frame. I say most styles because recumbent bicycle design covers a much wider range of options than upright bicycles. The consensus is that a good climbing recumbent loses 5-10% power on the climbs but is generally faster over a course due to aerodynamic advantage (lower frontal area, better CdA due to the body not being shaped like a parachute). You can, of course, have a recumbent that doesn't climb well. I have one (my casual recumbent) where my hip angle is really bad at producing power for some reason so I get like 2/3 the climbing speed at full perceived power but my other (my fast recumbent) doesn't have an issue.
I like recumbents in general from a tech perspective because there's no obvious correct way to design them. The most efficient chain line for a rear wheel drive bike runs through the rider's body for lowracer through highracer designs which usually means idlers. Long wheelbase (LWB) design moves the cranks down to below the rider's seat which works for some people and not for others. Driving the front wheel works but creates traction problems going uphill and requires deciding whether the bottom bracket moves as part of the steering (Moving Bottom Bracket, MBB) or the chain twists (not consistently named, I've seen 3-4 designs). There's also weird designs like the python where the pivot is in the frame itself below the rider. It's a fun thing to explore and think about.
Having been using bicycles since the early 1970s I would say they have evolved a huge amount. Modern bicycles have more variety of forms now and are much lighter and with more easy to shift gear systems.
Even on a personal level. My old steel road bike, modified extensively, now has a very short handlebar stem and compact handlebar. This happens to bring the modern brake/shift levers into a position where I can keep my hands on "the hoods" for many hours without having to switch hand positions to elsewhere on the handelbar for relief. Looks a bit weird, but works for me.
There's a reason the classic diamond frame bike has survived for 130+ years. People constantly invent better bikes but none of them ever seem to go anywhere, except of course recumbents and folding bikes, which really are better for a tiny fraction of cyclists. I'll bet they, too, have reached a pinnacle of evolution.
As someone that did long endurance bike races for many years, I would have to agree with the title alone. It never felt natural to be peddling a contraption for any length of time. I think if you got down to it, it’s really competitors striving to be as fast as possible on something that was invented, but not necessarily something that was invented to be the best or most efficient. At the lowest level, it’s really someone getting on a thing and seeing how much they can make the best of it.
Getting on a bike and pedaling a few blocks and getting there faster than walking, absolutely. Bikes have a lot of rolling resistance, so human effort hits a calorie intake threshold where now a fuel source need to be considered with longer distances vs. time.
ultra low profile sedans and rotary engines are the most evolved cars, so why do we have trucks?
or more on point, road bikes are more efficient than mountain bikes.
The monolithic view that a bike is about putting energy in and getting forward motion on a flat road out, misses the multirole requirement of a bike. Just as saying humans are unevolved because we aren't the fastest animals in the animal kingdom.
Bikes, like humans have many challenges other than just getting from point a to point b. sometimes we have to stop for short periods following traffic patterns. I suspect rolling onto the pavement each time will get old fast. More on that surface, bumps and jars from imperfect road conditions being solely absorbed by my laying down bits seems pretty awful. Being able to see those upcoming obstacles and potentially avoiding the more significant ones, is likely important.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadTo which the answer is: so what? The market doesn’t care about efficiency that much, else clip-in pedals wouldn’t be optional.
The idea seemed to frustrate him more than the concept of humans eating meat or wearing leather shoes.
Ask basically any dairy farmer, and they will be happy to tell you they drink the milk straight from the cow. They probably have a couple of jugs in the fridge.
Not modern dairy farmers with cows loaded up with antibiotics, which generally all accumulate in the fat (cream). Even for organic farmers drinking unpasteurized milk would be an exception not the rule, it’s just an unnecessary health risk.
And pasteurization makes it safer, but is not necessary strictly speaking. I can even still buy unpasteurized milk - but it is more expensive due to higher hygiene requirements currently. But in the past, they would just drink it (and get sick occasionally).
Cows are pretty docile during milking. I mean, it’s not a great idea to crawl under _any_ object that size that can move unexpectedly, but if you’re in a quiet barn (to avoid the cow getting spooked) you could get away with it.
Modern milk is homogenised to death because of squeamishness about food being biological in origin, people don't like lumps in their tea, and some people think cream bits means it's off. But within living memory, I remember cream on retail milk being quite common (and I'm sure it still is in places with local fresh milk).
True, it's not a great idea to drink raw milk due to various diseases, so you'd be better to heat treat it first, but you certainly don't have to homogenise it to drink it.
I was responding to a comment that expressly said we evolved to consume milk after domesticating cows.
Not sure if my coffee gourd will go in the dishwasher or not, though.
Critical to my enjoyment of longer rides on a "normal" bike:
- upper and lower body strengthening (lifting moderate weights)
- suspending my body weight with my arms and legs, don't rest on the saddle
- yoga regularly
I'm intrigued by some of the modern cruiser-style ebikes, e.g. RAD. Seems to me that these are pretty darn comfortable. Perhaps this problem is finally solved!?
https://www.radpowerbikes.com/
I can see e-bikes for utility, but for travel etc. once you're on a big fast e-bile why not be on a motorcycle? You can even get an electric one.
I imagine motorcycles also have more overhead (in terms of both time and money) when it comes to registration, licensing, insurance, maintenance, etc.
I was referring to e-bikes
It has one major flaw though. You're pretty much guaranteed to get injured in an accident and the chance of dying is much higher than in a car. Cyclics see some of these issues as well when they ride on the street but generally they're going slower and able to react to a situation a little faster than a motorcycle rider.
Fairings and reduced frontal area (recumbent/supine positioning) can help this considerably. The combination is commercially sold as velomobiles and they're not especially popular but they do work. As an example, dedicated amateur enthusiasts do 3 hour century rides in commercial velomobiles regularly.
The standard upright bicycle has one major advantage over more efficient designs: better situational awareness. The rider's head is free to turn without obstruction and high enough to see over cars. I choose to ride an upright for this reason. If I lived in a country with good cycling infrastructure I might have made a different decision.
These bikes I ride get very little respect in my circles but I will not trade "better situational awareness" for peer respect.
I live in a country with good motorcycling infrastructure, still I prioritise the situational awareness.
Normal bikes are way safer because you can actually see around you and you're also much easier to see. That's not even taking into account how much agility you lose on a recumbent, or how easy it is to get off of regular bike while it's in motion and let it do the crashing while you walk away.
On most recumbents, the gaze is naturally forward with no bending the neck. And legs forward with low center of gravity feels like a good position when headed for a crash.
On the other hand, a dutch style bike with a wide 1/8" chain and an internally geared hub instead of a derailleur is much more reliable and requires very little maintenance. Even an older derailleur bike with friction shifters and fewer gears will be very reliable.
Just sayin'.
- way more comfort with 'situational awareness'
- more preference for the e-bike ...
... until I got my regular ("analog" vs "digital") bike kitted out with a mirror too.
And, yeah, maybe that thing goes faster than my shitty $300 Retrospec, and is much more efficient at converting muscle energy into forwards motion. But there is no way I would want to get on that contraption and ride it around the pothole-strewn streets of New Orleans. Never mind issues like only being eye-to-eye with dogs people are walking down the trails, being completely invisible to people driving cars, stopping at a light being super-awkward, and having absolutely nowhere to put my laptop bag or my groceries. I am quite happy to sacrifice speed and efficiency for all of those. I spend a lot of my riding sitting straight up because it makes my back happier; I don't give a shit if it increases wind resistance and decreases my maximum speed.
This is not to say there could potentially be a better design for a two-wheeled device powered by its rider's muscles. But there's a lot more to consider than just "how fast can it go on a racing track".
(But apparently Cyclefit is a business focused solely on racing bikes, so for them, I guess that's the only measure.)
The #1 benefit of recumbents [especially trikes!] isn't speed. It's that they are far more comfortable than uprights.
This article ends with a list of bullet points; the final one is "[the guy who made that bike] is a genius".
Yes it is. Like crocodiles or sharks, the reason they haven't changed much is because they are basically perfect. Deal with it.
https://theconversation.com/crocodiles-today-look-the-same-a...
But evolution can’t really create absolute-maximums, e.g. going all the way to pig-like mammals (so descending from a different point) you get orcas that absolutely murder sharks in both meanings (where smartness is a huge huge advantage)
Bicycles have changed just as much as cars. Disk breaks, lights, carbon and aluminium frames, clipless and magnetic pedals, handlebars are totally different as shifters and breaks, saddles are far more comfortable (made not just out of different materials, modern saddles are fundamentally different from old-style saddles), wheels are much lighter, tires are much more durable, we have far better shifters and even have electronic shifting. And much more. We wear helmets now! All of that is before get into how different lights are, things like GPS and tracking, or even radar to alert you about cars!
Obree's achievements are very cool. But saying that we should be more like him is crazy! He was mechanically efficient on those bikes, but he was not comfortable. You wouldn't want to ride his bikes for fun.
Even his latest bike where he is laying prone. Hard pass. That can't feel good on your neck! It looks super dangerous in cities with potholes (you will end up face planting). You have a very low profile and are much more likely to get hit by cars. And you will see far less around you because you're so low.
This is not some UCI conspiracy to prevent progress. The reason why the basic layout of the modern bike is the same (just like the basic layout of a car is the same) is because it's great at what it does. It's not some dumb compromise. 99% of cyclists don't care about power output to the exclusion of comfort and safety!
Actually, it is a UCI conspiracy to prevent progress, full stop. The UCI didn't just ban recumbents, thus dooming them to the nerd crowd. They also banned small-wheel bikes. You might be aware that the primary speed records not held by recumbents are held by Moultons, which have a wheel diameter about half that of the standard wheels, plus a tight suspension. Why don't people ride small wheels? Because racers don't, making it hard to market them. And racers don't because UCI banned them expressly to keep Moultons out of races.
The UCI tried (and failed due to safety uproar) to ban disc brakes. It banned the superman position. It banned fairings. It has a long history of banning solid, well considered and superior designs and technologies, and as a result effectively eliminating them from the mainstream market.
I hate conspiracy theories: but this one is entirely with merit.
UCI stopped recumbents, the superman position, fairings because they're so incredibly superior? That's ridiculous! Recumbents are far inferior, they're huge, they're clunky, you have limited visibility in the city. The superman position? Please, everyone can see why we don't ride around in that position. And fairings? You can install one today. It's on Amazon. It's cheap. No one does it.
UCI is just a mirror of what the vast vast majority of cyclists want. Had they not put bans in, professional cycling would be people going around in carbon fiber tubes sitting horizontally. That is not cycling as 99% of people know it, and as 99% of people want it to be.
You bring up disc breaks. That's the perfect example of how things work. People adopted them. So the UCI approved them.
> Why don't people ride small wheels? Because racers don't, making it hard to market them
People ride small wheels all the time! Foldable bikes. BMX bikes. They have small wheels. They're perfectly marketable and sell very well.
I guess you mean, why don't normal hybrid bikes have small wheels? Simple, they're not as good as big wheels. They're far worse at handling bad terrain like cobblestones, potholes or gravel. Big wheels provider a smoother more comfortable ride, and they're less twitchy than small wheels.
If small wheels were superior, given that basically every bike shop has such a bike you can get today, people would be trying a small wheel bike and a large bike and deciding on the small one. Every bike store associate would be telling you that they discovered something awesome to make you ride better: small wheels.
They don't. Small wheels are worse on the road.
The UCI has had a potent effect on the bike market: people buy "serious rider" bikes based on what they see the "professionals" riding. And bulk manufacturers figure people want lower-end bikes that look like the "serious rider" bikes -- and they're right, that's what customers want. What customers don't realize is that the professionals are riding rather poor machines because a corrupt swiss organization is largely forcing them too.
Putting recumbents aside, let's just go back to small wheels. There is no valid reason for the UCI to ban them: they simply banned them because Moultons started winning. Regardless of your thoughts on the disadvantages of small wheels (and small wheels hold practically every single upright land speed record), none of those disadvantages are the reasons you don't see small-wheeled bikes in races. You don't see them because the UCI won't allow them. And the UCI won't allow them because they would smash all the race records. Thus people think small wheels are for folders and kid's bikes, rather than what they actually are, which is for winning races.
Use some basic critical thinking skills here.
What does the evil UCI gain from forcing everyone to use "inferior" big wheels as opposed to "superior" small wheels? Did someone take a pledge to some evil God who demands only large wheels? Is there a large wheel blood oath? There's no patent even!
This conspiracy theory is nonsense. It has the same incentive structure as flat earth: people are lying for the sake of lying with nothing to gain. That's just dumb.
We don't use small wheels because of engineering reasons. Not aesthetic reasons. That's why Moulton lost out.
The vast majority of riders don't care about professional cycling. Have never seen a single race in their lives. And would never watch one willingly. Yet, despite the fact that small wheeled bicycles are available in every bike shop, very few people ride them. It has nothing to do with what they look like.
Small wheels simply aren't as comfortable as large wheels. They aren't as forgiving and they aren't as good with potholes. It doesn't matter that they're faster in some conditions. The vast majority of cyclists want comfort first.
If the UCI didn't have this rule, professionals would be riding a bicycle that looks totally different from what regular folks ride. And that's a problem with attracting people to the sport. No amount of professional riding small wheels will convince the public to pick an inferior bike.
Look. The UCI has a long and well-documented history of banning new bicycle technologies and approaches specifically to prevent them from winning races. These aren't out-in-left-field claims: they're well established history. For example, the UCI really did ban recumbents on behalf of the safety bike industry in order to keep the velocar out of races. And the UCI really did ban small wheels in order to block the Moulton from winning championships. The UCI really did ban the superman position, fairings, and even attempted to ban disc brakes, among many other items. Your response seems to be to question that this happened this by demanding to know why the UCI would do such a thing, rather than going and looking it up for yourself.
> We don't use small wheels because of engineering reasons. Not aesthetic reasons. That's why Moulton lost out.
You keep making this claim about Moulton with no evidence for it at all. Small wheels are faster and stronger than large wheels, and permit many more aerodynamic frame design options. They allow a wider and more stable wheelbase. Small-wheeled bikes are unquestionably faster than large-wheeled bikes: the racing records make this clear. It is exactly because of their advantages that the UCI banned them.
There are basically three downsides with smaller wheels, all frankly minor. [1] They are harder to gear, but that's easily dealt with nowadays. [2] They are somewhat bumpier, but I've ridden 359s daily for a year on Rome's San Pietrini: it's not an issue. And, this is trivially dealt with using a tight suspension, which also glues them to the ground and makes them more efficient than large wheels (and is what Moultons did btw). The primary problem with small wheels is [3] that it's more challenging to design small-wheeled bikes with high mechanical trail, and racing bikes tend to have very high trail. None of these outweighs their significant advantages in races.
> If the UCI didn't have this rule, professionals would be riding a bicycle that looks totally different from what regular folks ride. And that's a problem with attracting people to the sport.
Right. That's why disc brakes were banned too.
I think I'm done with you. You keep calling me a conspiracy theorist for stating well established historical fact.
My first experience was when racing as a lowly cat 4 cyclist on a Cannondale off-the-peg bicycle. I experienced lower back pain and was pretty sure my position was wrong but my tweaking wasn't improving things. Phil put me on a Serotta cycle fit machine which looks like this: https://www.cyclefit.co.uk/fitting . It allows every aspect of the position to be adjusted until the best position for you is found... best with regards to whatever you prioritise. For me it was pain-avoidance first, then endurance and hill climbs power/stamina second. Once they found the best position, we dialled-in the Cannondale to as close as the stock frame allowed (changing steam, seat post, saddle, bars)... and I went from DFL (dead effing last) in races to top 10%.
I didn't really enjoy racing criteriums so didn't stick with that, but I did love the difference the bike fitting made to my enjoyment of riding and had changed to doing distance social rides instead (100+ mile on a weekend... London > Brighton > London for example). And it made me think, if Cycle Fit can do this to a stock bike, what could they do with a fully bespoke bike?
The answer is a lot. I've owned a Serotta, Robin Mather, and a Seven, all made for me after geometry designed by Phil at Cycle Fit. Each bike was for a different purpose, and each one is subtly different. It's amazing, I no longer experience any back pain when cycling, not even for ultracycling and endurance events that last a few days. Riding these bikes feels like being roadrunner in the cartoon, floating through air and legs spinning effortlessly. Everything about them is superlative, but it's the fit that makes it so. The bikes I test rode were good, but not as good as the bikes made for me. I lost the Serotta due to a hit and run incident in London, but the other two remain my prized bikes.
As for Phil, he's become an essential tool for a lot of professional cyclists. His obsession with understanding the science behind how the human body performs on a bicycle has led to some major wins for a lot of professional athletes. He's also extremely humble and very approachable.
If you're ever in the market for a ridiculously good bicycle made specifically for you... then Phil is your man.
Something really odd going on with the layout on mobile, I got the impression I was reading the article in the wrong order, or that a bunch of the paragraphs were really supposed to be footnotes to the illustrations.
I mean what I want from my bike is cycle paths, car free paved areas that travel from my house to my kids school and local amenities so my kids have some degree of freedom with a constant fear of death.
I honestly don't care how fast a bike can go - the limits to the speed are basically risk aversion by the rider. Years ago I upgraded my commuter cycle from a fat tyred mountain bike to a decent road bike and the very next day I added 5mph to my time on a flat stretch in North London. My total commute time barely budged because although I convert power to speed, I was unwilling to weave through traffic to take advantage of it.
Hence, what we need are not better bikes, but better bike lanes.
It will be a reddit-level comment but I chuckled at this typo
I like recumbents in general from a tech perspective because there's no obvious correct way to design them. The most efficient chain line for a rear wheel drive bike runs through the rider's body for lowracer through highracer designs which usually means idlers. Long wheelbase (LWB) design moves the cranks down to below the rider's seat which works for some people and not for others. Driving the front wheel works but creates traction problems going uphill and requires deciding whether the bottom bracket moves as part of the steering (Moving Bottom Bracket, MBB) or the chain twists (not consistently named, I've seen 3-4 designs). There's also weird designs like the python where the pivot is in the frame itself below the rider. It's a fun thing to explore and think about.
Would this mean the best bicycle is actually more like a rowing machine on wheels?
Even on a personal level. My old steel road bike, modified extensively, now has a very short handlebar stem and compact handlebar. This happens to bring the modern brake/shift levers into a position where I can keep my hands on "the hoods" for many hours without having to switch hand positions to elsewhere on the handelbar for relief. Looks a bit weird, but works for me.
There's a reason the classic diamond frame bike has survived for 130+ years. People constantly invent better bikes but none of them ever seem to go anywhere, except of course recumbents and folding bikes, which really are better for a tiny fraction of cyclists. I'll bet they, too, have reached a pinnacle of evolution.
Getting on a bike and pedaling a few blocks and getting there faster than walking, absolutely. Bikes have a lot of rolling resistance, so human effort hits a calorie intake threshold where now a fuel source need to be considered with longer distances vs. time.
The monolithic view that a bike is about putting energy in and getting forward motion on a flat road out, misses the multirole requirement of a bike. Just as saying humans are unevolved because we aren't the fastest animals in the animal kingdom.
Bikes, like humans have many challenges other than just getting from point a to point b. sometimes we have to stop for short periods following traffic patterns. I suspect rolling onto the pavement each time will get old fast. More on that surface, bumps and jars from imperfect road conditions being solely absorbed by my laying down bits seems pretty awful. Being able to see those upcoming obstacles and potentially avoiding the more significant ones, is likely important.