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go compare
in my previous, pre-hebridean life, i worked in the flight catering unit in scotland's original 'transatlantic gateway', which, situated on the coast, was renowned for being more-or-less fog free. itself completely fog-bound, pretty much everything was diverted to my place of work, with little prospect of going anywhere for the rest of the day. this meant a great deal of work for those of us rostered on the particular day (i worked for just under twenty-four hours), and many who'd expected to have a day off, found themselves called in to help cope.
catering, of course, demands not only the supplying and cooking of the necessary meals, but invariably cleaning the crockery, cutlery and associated hardware, placing serious demands on the two industrial-sized dishwashing machines sited close to the truck ramp. as a result, we'd to place substantial orders with the supplier of cleaning products, a company that impressively sent two fully-loaded trucks from the scottish borders to ensure there was no breaks in transmission.
as you'd perhaps expect, the sales representative who handled our account, was rubbing his hands with glee, thinking of the commission that would be heading towards his bank account. however, that smile was deemed missing in action one year later, when his sales manager called him into the office, complaining that his january sales figures were well down from the previous year. with little logical forethought, the company had lifted his sales target with little concern for the one-off circumstances that had created the monthly high.
now, bear with me, while i create a more velocipedinally related scenario.
imagine that i own my own bicycle company, sales of which are ticking along just ginger peachy. year on year, those sales have increased by roughly ten percent, allowing for thoughts of expansion and development of new models. suddenly, a worldwide pandemic arises from nowhere, interrupting the manufacturing and delivery schedules from the far east. but, with public and private transport thrown into disarray, and bike shops considered an essential service and thus remaining open, sales to those who would normally have travelled otherwise increase dramatically, greatly assisting the profit margin in the process.
when the pandemic subsides after a couple of years, life returns to normal, but, anticipating continued sales at the pandemic level, both my company and a majority of bike shops have increased their orders and inventory. of course, as we all know, bicycle sales then took a bit of nosedive as public transport resumed and everybody predictably returned to their motor cars. as a result, bike shop sales declined in the face of the increased inventory, meaning few, if any, were placing orders with my company. the resulting diminishing of sales also meant diminished profits, returning to a few percentage points greater than those experienced pre-pandemic.
sound familiar?
of course, when subsequently reporting those diminished profits and comparing them with the previous year, industry analysts had a field day, predicting industry-wide doom and gloom, bicycles being sold off with huge reductions and fears for the future of the bicycle. but just like the hapless sales rep mentioned at the beginning of this monologue, those most recently announced profits are only substantially reduced when compared to the exceptional figures experienced during the pandemic.
to place all this in context, lets assume in 2019, i sold two thousand bicycles. in the two years affected by the pandemic, i sold first 2,500 bicycles, then 3,500 bicycles. but in the year following the pandemic, washingmachinepost cycle sales dropped to 2,200. so despite selling 200 bicycles more than pre-pandemic, i did, in fact, sell 1,300 bicycles less than during the previous, pandemically challenged sales period. comparing year on year over the above period creates the illusion that washingmachinepost bicycles might be in trouble, when, in fact, i'm actually doing better than i was pre-pandemic. substitute shimano, specialized or any other well-known brand for the fictional washingmachinepost bicycles, and you can probably detect the real-world origin of my little fantasy.
financial sleight of hand.
sunday 3 december 2023
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................oh yes it is
earlier this week, as i rambled on about seatposts and the lack of conformity and simplicity in modern times, i may have mentioned that i planned to replace the ritchey carbon post on which i believed the clamp to be the cause of the incessant and irritating creaking noise experienced during recent outings. persistent as i sometimes am, i left the ritchey seatpin in the seat tube of my colnago master, while the ritchey's similarly-sized seat tube became the temporary home for a vintage campagnolo chorus steel item, topped with a slotted brooks cambium saddle.
a busy working week meant that, until friday pm, i did not have the available time to test my theory, but disappointingly, my carefully crafted theory was proved incorrect after only a few hundred metres of riding. that said, the creak seemed a tad more subdued on the outward trip to debbie's, but the bike ride was already spoiled, with the grey matter working overtime to figure out, if it wasn't the seatpost, just what it could possibly be?
think we're all agreed that every untoward noise emanating from a bicycle usually appears to originate in the bottom bracket, and i had, i believed, already discounted that as a source, having dropped the chain off the rings and spun the crankset without evidence of noise, lateral play or undesired friction. therefore my mental investigations were set on either a loose cassette lockring or stiff bearings in the rear hub. the latter, i must admit, seemed unlikely given that the campagnolo hubbed wheels are scarcely one year old. however, on return from my soya latte, a trip during which the irritating noise was considerably more vocal than on the outward ride, once again, i dropped the chain off the chainset and spun the cranks, only to be greeted with the very sound that had been irritating the heck out of me for the past two weeks.
as i'd also previously mentioned, in anticipation, i had a pair of replacement cartridge bearings ready and waiting. for those unfamiliar with campagnolo componentry, vicenza affixes the bearings to the crank arms, rather than encasing them in the bottom bracket cups. in typical italian style, this means that the bearings must be removed with a bearing puller, an example of which i had purchased a couple of years back. unfortunately, during the intervening months, i had completely forgotten quite where i'd put it.
prior to separating the two halves of the hirth coupling that forms a campagnolo bottom bracket axle, i spent a highly frustrating half hour scrabbling through any number of cardboard boxes before accidentally discovering the very toolset i required. this was fortunate, because i was on the verge of ordering yet another. and, keen not to repeat my previous folly, where i failed to remove the retaining circlip on the drive side crank, i ensured that was laid to one side before pulling both bearings from their cranks. oddly and inexplicably, the non-drive side bearing features no retaining clip whatsoever.
it's also worth remembering to remove the spring clip from the drive-side bottom bracket cup before attempting to remove that particular crank arm.
the bearing tool had arrived with a a secondary part that allows the bearings to be convincingly pressed onto each crank arm, following which it was time to reassemble, being very careful to ensure the cranks sat at ninety degrees to each other, before pressing them together and installing and tightening the awkwardly-sized 10mm bolt that fastens the hirth coupling. that was followed by reinstalling the drive-side spring clip. spinning the cranks confirmed that the offending noise had indeed vanished, replaced by smooth rotation.
however, in a velocipedinal variation of sod's law, while tidying all the various tools left lying on the top of the coal bunker that serves as sturdy worktop, i came upon the wavy washer that i could have sworn had been installed on the left side crank prior to pressing it into the bottom bracket cup.
guess how i spent part of my saturday morning?
saturday 2 december 2023
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................a one-way track
simon warren, he of the 100 climbs series of books, recently tweeted that he had finally been able to write the feature he claimed was one he had long wished to write, apparently published in a recent issue of 'the comic'. it transpired that this long-awaited article concerned the possibilities offered by fixed-wheel gravel riding (assuming i understood him correctly). in response, i was moved to enquire just why he found such a prospect an essential likelihood of velocipedinal delight. every bit as brief, his reply added the word 'not' to my original interlocution of 'why?
i'm not about to pretend that such a discussion is likely to challenge the big question posed in 'the hitchiker's guide to the galaxy', answered by the number 42, but it did fill a few moments of our respective days. my response to his response bluntly suggested that gears and freewheeling were two of the principal joys to be gained from the act of cycling. it's a response, however, that would probably find little favour with the likes of jason kenny, sir hoy (pertinently, a lotus cars ambassador) and victoria pendleton, three of britain's track stars and possibly more familiar with the track meme than many of us.
fixed wheel cycling is not one with which i have much in the way of experience. i do recall once receiving a fixed-wheel review model from the late-lamented mosquito bikes formerly of islington in london. the pre-despatch arrangement had been that mosquito would send the independent fabrication steel bicycle outfitted with a single-speed freewheel, allowing me the luxury of persistently pedalling when in plain sight, but indulging in a sneaky freewheel when no-one was looking. a win-win situation craftily concocted to protect my imaginary street-cred.
unfortunately, the gent with which the tentative arrangement had been made went on a skiiing holiday; his second in command knew nothing of the freewheel scenario and i ended up with a ludicrously over-geared fixie that threatened to separate me from my kneecaps on even the most benign of gradients. and, bereft of the ability to clip in or out while pedalling, i had to rely solely on there being an appropriately sized wall at each end of any journey to allow yours truly to come to a halt without embarrassingly falling over. negotiating stupidities of sheep en-route was not a pretty sight. for all of those reasons, i would never even consider purchasing any type of fixed wheel bicycle.
in order that i might appraise myself of the incessant progress of this technological world, i have a monthly order with my newsagent for a copy of wired magazine. in fact, at one time, so enamoured was i with the publication, i was in the habit of receiving both the american and british editions, until the price of the former became somewhat unpalatable. aside from the long-form features discussing the rise and rise of chatgpt, the trepidation created by a possible myopia epidemic and the annual listing of european start-ups to watch, wired magazine also regularly features items of reputed interest to pursuers of various indoor and outdoor activities.
i will set the scene of what will soon follow, by identifying an advert published in the most recent edition on behalf of kef speakers. akin to hope bicycle components, the speaker manufacturer has partnered with the lotus car company (nope, me neither) to promote a lotus edition of their wireless speakers. though it transpires that one retailer was offering a substantial reduction in its black friday sale, the recommended retail price of a pair of these hi-fi speakers is an eye-watering £6,000.
if you'd care to take a brief moment to catch your breath, i will move onto the velocipedinal section, one which features a number of cycle-related accoutrements for the well-heeled cyclist. this includes an item also being given space in the current edition of cyclist magazine; the oddly-named posedla joyseat 3d which justifies its almost £500 price tag (interestingly, cyclist magazine lists the price at £100 less than does wired magazine) by commencing with receipt of a squishy box on which the purchaser sits, before returning the resultant bum-print for a wholly unique 3d printed saddle. no doubt there are those who feel they might benefit from such posterior cossetting, but i seriously question just how many of us would find it necessary to acquire a carbon track bike.
no doubt there will be many eager to point out the fallacy of my supposition, but bear with me. the text accompanying the bicycle in question is keen to point out that the 8.24kg track bike has been two years in the making, including "...442 supercomputer runs, 312 wind tunnel tests, and 155 hours of track testing." i realise as i type all this, that the impetus behind this particular machine could well be a strategy to prove the saleability of such advanced technology, thus preventing the bicycle falling foul of any uci regulations regarding possible restrictions on its commercial availability.
and while this may fulfil any potential technicalities, it would surely be a particularly wealthy wannabe track star with £18,999 (six instalments of £3,166.50 per month if you'd prefer) to spend on canyon's speedmax one-trick pony. if we not unnaturally suppose that wired's readership differs substantially from that of cyclist magazine or, indeed, thewashingmachinepost, i'm not altogether sure that items or bicycles such as this would convince regular members of society that cycling is an economically approachable sport or activity.
friday 1 december 2023
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................build it and they might come
i'd prefer that you thought of me as just a plain old cyclist, or at worst, a cycling obsessive. i have strenuously attempted to evade categorisation as some sort of cycling activist. fanaticism is not a good look, no matter to which strain of life it is attached; blindingly believing only the purportedly positive aspects of political or philosophical belief makes the true adherent little better than sheep. and that's an animal the mentality we have previously dealt with at length.
therefore to portend that life choices we have voluntarily made for ourselves, are every bit as pertinent for others, is a naive and possibly dangerous stance to take. in much the same way that sounding your horn at another's motoring infraction simply appears to validate their annoying error, impressing upon others that their own life choices are definably wrong, is the very way not only to fail to win new friends, but possiby lose the ones you already have.
therefore, i have artlessly concluded that simply riding my bicycle in all weathers across islay's entire road network, will point out to the great unwashed, the vacuousness of their empty lives. if only they too were to adopt the way of the saddle, surely it's obvious that the world would become an infinitely better place? vocally pointing this out rarely leads to a similar conclusion, even if folks truthfully think i'm only joking.
however, it is possible that the relentlessness of the self-righteous does actually result in a change of heart within those who were previously convinced otherwise. and what's more, i have tangible evidence of my contention.
in the guardian newspaper of tuesday 28 november, columnist, yvette caster, penned an article in which she freely admitted that her once archaic views had morphed perilously close to enlightenment. in her opening paragraph, she admitted to writing a somewhat contoversial article in 2015, with the appended headline, 'cyclists are a menace and should be banned from the roads'. it's not hard to see from whence arose the controversy, particularly when said article (published online) was aimed squarely and unfairly at mamils (middle-aged men in lycra), attacking them for being stupid enough to ride a bike on roads plainly meant purely for large 4x4 suvs.
she admits that the backlash was 'caustic', accusing her of 'stirring up hate' and making the roads potentially even more dangerous for inner-city and urban cyclists. ms. caster confessed that, with the benefit of hindsight, she more clearly understood the rage heading in her direction, citing statistics from the department of transport showing that over 100 cyclists are killed on the roads annually, with 4,056 seriously injured last year, and 11,546 slightly injured.
leaving aside yvette's reputed surprise to find herself on the receiving end of pro-cycling vitriol, it appears that she has now become a convert, not necessarily resulting in a future career as a female cyclocross star, but one who can see why so many appreciate any reduction in motor vehicles on britain's streets. during lockdown, "...instead of traffic outside my window, I heard birdsong. A strange kind of peace descended. Nature grew louder."
as a result, she is no longer the owner of a car and, "I went from disliking cycists, to wishing there were more on the roads." admittedly, ms caster is more in favour of travelling by public transport, rather than investigating a life on two wheels, but as pointed out in my opening gambit, just because it works for you and i, doesn't mean its a shoe-in for everyone else. but i'd like to think that because there are you and i, riding here there and everywhere on our bicycles, the stage has been set. cycling by osmosis?
"I wish my town, and Britain, could repay cyclists' and pedestrians' efforts with an infrastructure to help them go everywhere, safely."
thursday 30 november 2023
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................the seat of power
right at the back of thewashingmachinepost bike shed, lies a rather forlorn, taurus corinto, an italian steel sit-up-and-beg bicycle featuring a sturmey-archer three-speed hub gear and old-school rod operated rim brakes. sadly, it appears that its italian builders may have been a tad free and easy with the chrome, slathering it over the spokes with wild abandon. as many will be aware, chrome is a porous material, and the rust that usually punctuates its surface, particularly in the prevalent climate of western scotland, is actually a sign of the steel, to which it has been applied, rusting.
it should, therefore, have come as little surprise to have been regaled with a concentrated pinging sound several years ago, as the majority of spokes snapped in the middle when setting out on a journey i had hoped would have lasted a bit longer. though i have harboured plans for many a year to strip the wheels down to hubs and rims before shipping them off to wheelsmith's derek mclay to have them rebuilt with proper spokes, disappointingly, thinking about doing so is as far as i've made it so far.
however, more pertinent to the discussion we're about to have, the seatpost installed on the taurus is what i'd most likely refer to as a dumb seatpost. this is no reflection on its purported intelligence, but more a comment on the fact that it bears no integrated clamp. the heavily sprung brooks leather saddle that sits imposingly atop said seatpost, attaches by means of a 'u'-shaped clamp adjusted via a nut and bolt arrangement. remove the seatpost from the seat tube, and its easy to see not only the maximum height mark, but the numbers 27.2, the number of millimetres describing the diameter of the frame tube.
at one time, in the dim, distant past, all seatposts were fabricated to this, or a 27mm diameter, the former having been deliberately reamed beyond their natural size. however, so far as i'm aware, the more common size was 27.2. and just as a perhaps relevant aside, why is the diameter stamped on the section of the seatpost concealed from sight? would it not be more practical to display this information somewhere it could be seen without the faff of having to remove the seatpost from the bicycle frame? just saying.
campagnolo is arguably the originator of the single bolt micro-adjust seatpost clamp, an invention that made fitting and removing a saddle simplicity itself, yet one continually undermined by virtually every other seatpost on the market. whether this is as a result of vicenza demanding royalties for the licensing of this technology, i know not, but it has resulted in several inordinately complex and fussy means of saddle fitment. and, as most of us are aware, anything on a bicycle that is more complex than it needs to be, is almost certain to cause problems at some point in its life, whether mechanical or simply a source of impossible to trace noises, all of which appear to originate from the bottom bracket.
just such an extremely irritating creak persisted for several weeks this past summer, on my ritchey logic, which, after hours of faffing with almost every component on the bicycle, was effectively narrowed down to the carbon post seatclamp. i tried darned near everything i could, from greasing every part of the clamp, to cleaning every square millimetre, even changing saddles, but without any deterioration in the irritation of the unsourced noise. then, without any forewarning, it disappeared.
dispiritingly, that noise appears to have garnered a second wind; last weekend it appeared to have returned with a vengeance.
now, to hark back to my original, if somewhat obscure point, the ritchey's steel seat tube is reamed to the once common 27.2mm, presenting the opportunity to remove the ritchey carbon post and replace it with a steel campagnolo chorus seatpin of identical diameter. come this weekend, i'll be able to figure out if the ritchey post is indeed the source of irritation, or if i need to look elsewhere. meanwhile, i once again bemoan the industry's endless need for change, often for no appreciable reason. seat tube diameters only increased at the behest of a change to aluminium tubing, a material that demanded an increase in diameter to live on a par with the tensile strength of steel. why the aforementioned industry could not have made do with retaining the diameter of probably the only tube that had little need of an increase, or simply resorted to using shims, i'm unqualified to say.
so now we have a wide variety of seatpin diameters which can only be ascertained by removing them from the frame, along with adjustable brackets that seem to revel in their unnecessary complexity. i can fully attest to the inherent annoyance of this state of affairs.
wednesday 29 november 2023
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................drop-in meeting
during one of my admittedly successful attempts at rapha's festive 500, i opted to ride a ridley cyclocross bicycle, both for a review opportunity and as an admittedly tautologically obvious experiment to investigate whether there may have been the possibility of improved comfort to be gained from a change to more relaxed geometry and comfortably 33mm tyres. this so-called experiment was as a result of disappointing discomfort during the previous year's festive outing.
due to weather-related difficulties, i was in the habit of shelving at least one day, calculating my daily distance across seven days, rather than the prescribed eight. if you take into account a minimal distance on christmas day, in order that mrs washingmachinepost would refrain from locking me out the house, then you're looking at a daily average of close on 80km. leaving the house at 9am and returning around 1 or 2pm, depending on the weather, it wasn't quite the christmas holiday i may have had in mind, effectively turning her indoors into a cycling widow, and engendering a cumulative tiredness that somewhat belied the description holiday.
however, the discomfort arose not entirely from age-related over-exertion and a possible lack of sleep, christmas pudding and home-made christmas cake. as we've previously discussed, any islay related parcours is almost certain to include a good few kilometres riding across the single-track road network that lies behind the two-lane main roads. since many of those single-track roads are frequented by agricultural traffic, the bulk of which is predisposed to not only dropping considerable quantities of hebridean toothpaste on the surface, but concomitatntly playing havoc with that surface. in common parlance, potholes.
this is not to discount the fact that there are a myriad of potholes peppering the main roads, but it cannot be denied that it's simpler to avoid those, than on single-track roads if faced with following or oncoming traffic. riding roads such as those for seven or eight days had an unfailing habit of affecting one's upper body, particularly the neck and shoulders, entirely due to the constant buffeting. thus, went my reasoning, if i swapped the narrow-tyred road bike for a genre of bicycle ridden across far less amenable surfaces in the heat of cyclocross battle, my neck and shoulders may benefit from a festive change.
as it transpired, the result was a case of swings and roundabouts; the comfort factor most definitely improved, while the average speed declined, as you perhaps might have expected. was it worth it? i'd tend to say yes, unless i found myself in the company of others on bona-fide road bikes, in which case i either fell behind, or knackered myself attempting to keep up. i still ride my cyclocross bicycle every saturday; i am generally flying solo and i do appreciate the comfort factor. if i could only dissuade myself from attempting to equal the velocities experienced on the ritchey logic. one of these days.
however, on the whole, the majority of us in the velo club tend to ride road bikes, on a mixture of 28mm and 25mm rubber, despite recognising the seasonal likelihood of a mud/fertiliser mixture on the surface, and the inevitable onset of winter potholes. i have frequently been queried by island motorists as to how i fare riding such narrow tyres across lunar-like surfaces, to which i have usually pointed out that it's probably easier for cyclists than it is for the driving majority. on single-track roads, avoiding potholes on four wheels is always going to be harder than on two.
however, this is only possible due to islay's relatively sparse traffic. rarely are we surrounded by so many motor vehicles that it becomes impossible to make a quick lateral avoidance movement. cast your eyes towards urban and inner-city areas, and i figure so doing is all but impossible. thus, while it would still be ideal if the council were able to find sufficient funding to create a network of billiard flat roads, i tend to think the need is greater away from civilisation. and since we're on the subject, while much of this might seem like mere inconvenience, cycling uk calculates that over the past seven years, at least 255 cyclists have been killed or seriously injured due to poorly maintained roads. and this as westminster announced £8.3 billion to repair roads south of the border.
(road maintenance in scotland is devolved to holyrood, which, we hope, might find it within their edinburgh coffers to set aside a comparable amount.)
and while £8.3 billion might sound like a substantial amount of money, divided amongst 48 english counties, it equates to almost £173 million per county. overall, england features 254,000 miles of road; divide that into the £8.3 billion and we have about £32,600 per mile. at an average cost of £48 to fix a pothole, each county can soon afford to repair around 700 potholes per mile. that is still welcome alleviation from pothole hell, but probably not quite for which the english cyclist (or motorist) was hoping.
repairing the little (or large) blighters is akin to painting the forth rail bridge - as soon as you complete the job, it's time to start over. perhaps goverments north and south of the border need to invest a similar amount of money on an annual basis to encourage the motoring population to seriously reduce the number of driven kilometres. after all, it sure as heck isn't the nation's cyclists that are causing so many potholes.
tuesday 28 november 2023
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