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Richard’s Bicycle Book
Now the nights are drawing in, there are old copies of this on Ebay for £3 or £4. If you're under 40 and missed this, it's still worth a look. It rapidly takes you through what cycling is and can be, getting and keeping a bike.
Not sure what happened to mine, but this is the book that got me hooked and to some extent you might say radicalised me. All the stuff about drivers and cars 2ww talk about is charted in there - and they hadn't even got phones back then.
Steel was real and "10 speed" meant "10 in total" (minus the 2 illegal gears, of course.)
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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When you get a ticket???
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64 comments
Pretty sure I read an interview with the couple on whom the Joy of Sex illustrations were based.
sorry - that's all I got
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15309357
Something very 2022 about the power cuts:
Charles Raymond - responsible for the colour artwork - came to the rescue. He volunteered to do the modelling himself, with his German wife, Edeltraud.
Chris Foss, who was responsible for the book's black-and-white illustrations, took the photos. The book's author, Dr Alex Comfort, had given them dozens of positions to get though, and all were done for real over two hectic days in early 1972.
The miners were on strike and they had only limited light to work with before the power cuts would plunge them into darkness.
"We'd say: 'Charlie, we've only got another 20 minutes,'" recalls Mr Foss. "And he'd say: 'Oh I'm terribly sorry' and he'd go off to prepare himself to perform again, and Edeltraud would go: 'Charles, Charles, please, please come on, we only have 10 minutes, please two more positions.'
Weird to think of Chris Foss doing those pictures. When I think of him, I always think of those big fat spaceships he painted in the seventies.
No, no, no, if you're going to quote Roger Moore Bond to me, you had better be ready for the obscure references.
One of the nicest things my mum did [sniff] was take me to the cinema to see such delights as Moonraker, The Spy Who Loved Me, Star Wars, Superman, and Capricorn One.
Isn't Capricorn One the one with O J Simpson?
I love the old 70s scifi films - it was almost a golden age of interesting ideas, though cheaply made.
I apprecate it's a bit later, but don't forget Outland.
I remember watching it back in the day - like a remake of High Noon, but in space.
What I liked in the 70s scifi is the focus on the concepts (e.g. Soylent Green, Westworld, Rollerball, Logan's Run etc) whereas modern scifi films quite often just end up being a big chase with the good guys running away from the bad guys. I think modern scifi is better served by TV series rather than films (I'm a big fan of Arrival though - a heroic attempt to put Ted Chiang's writing on screen).
I think the 70s was when scifi moved on from being a sub-genre of horror as a lot of the earlier films were just themed monster movies.
Yes, OJ is in that one as one of the would-be astronauts. James Brolin, Elliot Gould, Telly Savalas, Karen Black...
"Beep! this is Paul Cunningham from Capricorn control..." one of those voices you never see, like the police radio despatcher in every modern American movie with police cars.
EDIT: No wonder his voice seemed such a familiar https://www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/paul_haney.html
He had quite the acting career, really. Wasn't he in The Naked Gun/Police Squad as well?
Don't forget The Towering Inferno too
We need to see fireman (Steve McQueen) squirrel and/or Architect (Paul Newman) squirrel.
He had quite the acting career, really. Wasn't he in The Naked Gun/Police Squad as well?
His greatest acting role was in a California court
"Surely you remember The Naked Gun/Police Squad?" "I do, and don't call me Shirley!"
"There's a Zucker Brothers movie I want to see at the cinema" "what is it?" "It's a big building that shows films, but that's not important right now"
Along with Airplane some of the funniest comedies ever made.
They never added the time delay to the communications.
NASA managed to do it when they faked the moon landings...
So in the fictional movie, the space vehicle runs empty to Mars (a genuine expected life support system failure) and NASA send out faked signals from it from sort of Hanger 18 set-up in the desert to keep the dream alive, etc.
Journalist Elliot Gould's technician buddy starts to notice the signal mis-match and he is disappeared - which helps puts Gould on to the story of the faked space trip. Then the empty space craft has another mishap, fatal, and the astronauts now realise they are in effect dead.
imagine a small boy watching this stuff on the big screen absolutely blown away!
Looking at that bike, I am wondering how many items on it are still designed the same way: looks to have a square taper BB, non-indexed gears, no disc brakes, quill headset, no integrated headset bearings, axles are bolted on, no clipless pedals, probably Woods valves too. I even wonder if the bottle cage would take a modern bottle?
Ian, that is a bike after my own heart and looks a lot like many of mine. Nice coachlining around the lugs. Band on downtube levers, I think. Those Cyclo top tube guides are pretty old school, though.
Obviously, I run SPDs and I'd have sprung it at the back to run the gears and hubs of today.
Woods valves - come on. Front QR lever visble. 700c or 27" I wonder?
I think I read somewhere that bottle cage mounts are cycling's longest-lived and never deviated from standard.
It's a Mercian I think, very covetable touring bikes back in the day. Although Richard was an American living in Britain I seem to remember him advocating 700c standardisation...you're right about bottle cages, they were originally designed to fit the standard French wine bottle and haven't changed size since - a fact I've verified more than once, as this picture from last year demonstrates!
Cover bike is decal-ed as an F W Evans - do you mean Mercian built for them?
No, I mean I've got old eyes and haven't got my specs on!
It's important to be able to tell your Argos from your Ellis Briggs.
Ah, F W Evans. Youth of today probably won't believe that it was once a real bicycle shop! (Before it was bought and run by bankers.)
FTFY 🧐
GP 5000 - consumer test - I've been tyre shopping
Evans: £60 each (size, 23, only confirmed at checkout - £5 delivery disappears if you buy two)
Probikeit: £78 for a pair, free delivery - pretty fast, from past experience
PS In the end, I ordered something else from Mantel - that was Thursday and it's being delivered today, Tuesday; cheaper, even with £10 delivery. I hope there isn't a nasty shock waiting for me with some unseen customs surcharge.
I still love my square taper BBs, nutted axles and strapless pedal clips but I couldn't imagine ever going back to non-indexed gears, rim brakes or quill stems. Downgraded my last new bike to 8 speed too for longer service life, cheaper replacements and parts interchangability with my other two bikes.
There was never anything wrong with the quill stem, it was the double locking nuts that would occasionally cause a problem.
Bearing seals on wheel hubs and lights have come on in leaps and bounds and I wouldn't want to go back to the early 90s there.
Unless you want to change the handlebars. I bought a new set of drop bars in 1990-ish and they are still in the shed unused to this day.
With you on the lights though. My £15 ebay specials are so bright I have to run them on the lowest setting or cars coming the other way will keep flashing their lights to complain.
Syncros made a solution, their cattle prod stem with hinge.
Always lusted after one, but went for the standard cattleprod for my (now retired) Getting to Work bike.
I like a quill stem for light(ish)weight quick height adjust. Although actually I didn't do that very often. Which then brought out the other issue - they're in position to catch sweat as well as rain, and when they get frozen up...
+1 on the other things though. I'm not troubled by lack of indexing but then I don't race. I'm now over half with disc brakes so I may become accustomed to their charms. Currently appreciating the new belt drive and Alfine for city work with the occasional ramble too.
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