Education We Like to Ride Bicycles

Absolutely. As an example, you can get some fantastic steel framed Ridley audax bikes. Another way to put it is most sub £100 bikes are steel and a bit heavy, but not all steel bikes are heavy or sub £100.

 

Thanks for all the advice, I need to do a lot of reading before I purchase..

 

I was rather reluctant to post in here seeing all the nice kit you guys have... But what the hell.

I got a bike off of Gumtree for £50! I looked around and the same model goes for 2/3 times that on the bay so was rather pleased. My inital thoughts were that it could be stolen but I have a rather spot in instinct about people and the guy seemed genuine.

Cleaned it up and its in rather good condition. Haven't ridden a mountain bike since I was about 16, and felt like a child again riding round on it with a massive grin on my face!

Is it worth going and buying some WD40 and giving it all a good spray?

 

Not WD40, get some proper bike lube.

 

GT85 or Halfords Bike spray is what I use on mine.

 

Get a silicone based lube. Oil based will just pick up much and dirt and cling to it.

 

how about a thread pointing @?$%& etc etc dangerous cyclists to INSURANCE and Road TAX websites if you want to claim your rights to the roads ..

 

... what?

 

+1

I concur.

 

Ahhh young padawan troll kindly #### off.

 

??

 

Trolling on about road tax and insurance is very weary some, so if that's your intent please ride off. If not accept my most humble apologies.

 

I wouldnt call it trolling .. in so much I do think its a valid statement I do believe strongly that ardent cyclists need to be insured for personal injuries caused or received whilst cycling, both for themselves and to others, same would apply to the horsey set

Ok the Tax bit was just a snipe.. as I was cut up and had to break heavily yesterday for some smart arse dressed in lycra undertaking me and then cutting in, scaring the beeejessssuss out of me, god knows where he came from as I am uber observant being an ex biker myself.
(motorised not manual)
So maybe I'll offer up some apologies also

 

Third party insurance and personal injury insurance is so cheap for cyclists its included in your home and contents or included in your ctc subs, there is a reason for this.... Cyclists cause very little damage on very rare occasion they're the cause of an accident. So why bother realistically any damage done could be covered by a few weeks wages. Car insurance is very different, a £500 rolling wreck can destroy a 500k car also a driver is many times more likely to cause an accident.

As for dodgy cycling, i'm cut up or carelessly overtaken 2 or 3 times a week by cars, whats your point maybe we should make all drivers sit a test, have insurance and number plates... Oh wait...

 

So what your saying is that when you hit me, you want my insurance to pay for the Mexican migrant worker to scrape my disembowelled guts off your windscreen? This is obviously a gross exaggeration, but 160-200lbs of meat won't do much to a 4,000lbs metal cocoon. Sure you could argue for a dented fender, or a cracked windscreen, but I don't feel that really compares to the damage a cyclist can endure with even the slightest graze.

Your high-horse: get off it.

Cyclists and motorists are not in a "us or them" death-race to the finish, we're both just trying to use the road together, and the more considerate and helpful you are to your fellow road user, irrespective of type of vehicular transport, the better the road will be for everybody. While it is true that one group is particularly prone to extreme bodily injury and death from even the slightest mishap on the road, this doesn't change the fact that both groups are in this together, and the sooner everybody realises that, the better.

I'll relate to you a rather typical story (I have many): this morning on my way into work, along a rather busy road, I pulled to a stop at a lit intersection just as the light turned red. Sitting in the left-hand part of the left lane a little blue car pulled up beside me, mere inches off my elbow, and decided he didn't feel like sitting at the stop line with me, and so parked fully forward of the stop line, right in the middle of not just the cross-walk, but the nearest lane of oncoming traffic. Despite his ostensibly rude driving candour, the driver also felt it necessary to tell me off for getting in his way, and slowing him down in a rather confrontational tone out his car window.

This type situation happens daily to not just myself, but just about every other cyclist out there, and these people in their motorised vehicles don't seem to quite realise just what they're doing, and just how they're putting the cyclist's life on the line. If that driver had been a couple inches over, or if I had shifted my weight a little bit to that side, it isn't unimaginable or far-fetched that I could have been knocked into oncoming traffic and seriously injured, or killed.

Cyclists are not out there because they've decided to get in everybody's way, or that life goes too fast and thus want to slow everybody else's life down; we're on the road for the same exact reason that every body else is: to get to work/school/grocery store/salon/ect. It isn't a noble act to eschew the entrapment of a metal coffin with a fossil-propelled motor, but it is a choice we've made for a multitude of personal reasons, and one that puts our lives on the line everywhere we go.

Try to have a little bit of decency, will you?

 

Cyclists and Motorists are both guilty of selfish road use and unthoughtful actions that is not up for debate its a fact

Mal if I hit you on the road it would definately be due to your poor road sense and not my driving prowess oh and road kill is usually left to the Magpies in the UK as we dont have many Mexicans here in the UK

 

I must admit sometimes I see some awful cycling and i personally race and ride quite often but i still stop for reds, try not to weave through traffic and make it very obvious where i am going.
I do think there should be more cheap road cycling courses available as i see incredibly nervous people out who get scared and make irrational decisions....but you'll always have them just like bad drivers.
Does anybody else get drivers turning out of junctions then being alongside to them? Happens to me alot and drives me mad!

And also before anybody starts on high viz - tried that, just the same amount of problems as black clothing - the people that dont see you dont see anybody but their own fastest route home. Very bright lights flashing, now they are hard to miss

 

I own a car, I pay my 'road tax', better know as vehicle excise duty. I also cycle so when I'm on my bike you can't pull the 'I've paid to be on the road' gaff. I imagine a lot of cyclist also have cars.

Also, I am insured, as a silver member of British Cycling I have a very good liability insurance for any incidents that happen whilst I am cycling.

If you don't like cyclists so much why are you reading our thread?

 

will you all stop being so defensive

Jamie, I am merely debating the vadility of cyclists carrying an insurance and acting responsibly on the road as you clearly have and do.

 

Only if you stop be so offensive

So what is your point exactly? I've already demonstrated most cyclists have insurance even if they have not explicitly set out to have it. As for irresponsible use of the road this is not something endemic to cyclists all road users need to grow up a bit. Difference of course is that if i'm irresponsible on the bike i only (for the most part) endanger my self, dodgy driver in my large car on the other hand can easily kill.