Tuesday, June 27, 2006

THE HANDLEBAR

Just between you and me, do you think the gears on a bicycle actually do anything?

Nobody really knows what they're there for, I'm thinking. You're going up a steep hill - sure, change gear. You're going down a steep hill - what the hell, change gear. You're carrying a heavy load - are you a crazy mixed up fool? - you obviously need a lower gear.

No, seriously. No one knows.

Thirty years ago I don't think bikes even had gears. When you see those old bicycles in museums, they don't have gears, do they? There's no gears on the penny farthing or the old bone shaker. (Okay, in context, there's also no suspension and no rubber tyres on those old bikes, but even so, my point still stands.)

And there's no uniformity to the gear change on a bicycle like there is with a car. On one you might get to twist the left or right handlebar, click it round until you reach the gear of choice. On another bike, it's a little lever off to the side, next to the bell. Sometimes it's been inconveniently placed somewhere along the crossbar, so you end up having to reach down somewhere around your groin while travelling at high speed - that's never a comfortable operation, is it?

But, honestly - do you think the gears are doing anything? Maybe if you're riding in the Tour de France there might be some relevance to the various gears on offer, but for the vast majority of people, well... we're really just using the bike to get to the station or bus stop so we can start to use a vehicle that has a clearly defined purpose for the use of gears. Two wheels, two pedals and a bit of control of direction - that's bike enough for everyone. If we want to go faster while expending less energy we'll just choose a road that's going downhill.

1 Comments:

At 11:46 AM, Blogger Andrew Ironwood said...

Completely agree with you -- when it became obvious that buying a new bike without gears was going to be nigh unto impossible, that's when I pretty much gave up on bicycling meself...

 

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