Re: Dazed and Confused

[Jeremy Parker]

"Paul D" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I posted a thread yesterday, entited; "stressed and depressed",
because that's
> just about how I felt trying to come to some sort of a decision
about upgrading
> my bike.
>
> Today, despite quite a few people posting advice, and a definite
flow of
> knowledge in my direction, I am just as stressed, and even more
confused.

[snip]

> 12 years or so back, when I decided to start cycling again, I just
bought a
> cheap BIKE.

[snip]

> So I went along to my LBS (not knowing that abbr. at the time), and
said I
> wanted to buy a bike.

I think the answer might be to borrow a book on the subject from your
local library. That would not only answer the questions you have,
but might also tell you some things that you didn't know you didn't
know. It might even suggest that some ideas that you thought were
true actually weren't.

Which raises the question, which is the best book to read? Right now
I can't think of any. The newish books that I can think of, I
specifically wouldn't recommend. What's happened? are publishers
scared of being sued by anyone who falls off their bike?

But with luck not all libraries will have thrown out the books that
now are out of print.

Jeremy Parker

 

[Paul D]

On Tue, 03 May 2005 09:18:42 +0100, Peter Clinch <[email protected]>
wrote:

>I think it's fair to say neither of us covered ourselves in glory last
>week. I regret that and apologise for being over-nuclear: even if it
>was in reaction to getting my head bitten off for trying to help, it was
>My Bad.

I in turn apologise for getting so ratty, but apart from the problems I was
having trying to get a handle on what I needed (or thought I needed) to know
about buying a bike, having my current one returned in a non-functiong state did
very little to improve my mood - especially as people were telling me to find a
good bike shop, and these people were the only ones in my town!

>> Being then told that you are obsessed because you want to know WHY people are
>> saying that is, again, unhelpful (and offensive).
>
>What I was /trying/ to say was that IMHO you were concentrating on some
>particular fine details which were clouding your view of a bike as a
>whole (and relatively straightforward) package.

As I said, I needed a certain amount of information before I could see if and
where I was making incorrect assumtions.

Simply being told I was confused wasn't going to persuade me that I couldn't
calculate the effective gearing, or that I was wrong to be trying to. I needed
to know where the error lay, or where I was drawing a false inference - or
indeed where common sense and physics must give waay to overwhelming anecdotal
evidence.

>Unfortunately you seemed to take it a different way, which is a good
>demonstration of how Usenet is not a perfect communication medium...

Indeed. When I carelessly used the phrase "decent bit of pressure on the
pedals", a couple of people quite reasonably assumed that by "decent bit" I
meant "quite a lot", whereas what I _intended_ to say was enough that I can
continue to transmit power for a few extra MPH (i.e. as opposed to my current
state when going downhill: no more pressure than is needed to spin the pedals
against transmission losses). I'm still not quite sure I'm explaining that
properly!