peddling

I recently got a second hand bicycle, I thought that it would be better for getting around than taking the car everywhere. And with the hills of Torbay it would be certain to help my fitness. There is an interesting thing about the bicycle since the invention of the Safety Bicycle destroyed the old Penny Farthing the design of every single component has been improved. The brakes, gears, handlebars, tyres, spokes and hubs, suspension has been added, the materials used have shifted from steel to aluminum to carbon fibre. Even the peddles have been improved. The only thing to remain unchanged is the basic shape of the frame. That is still almost identical to the original Safety Bicycle invented over 100 years ago.

There have been attempts at change, one was the Recumbent. Longer than a normal bike with a very different cycling position it never really took off. The other was the Hotta.

This was the so call superbike ridden by Chris Boardman when he won gold at the Olympics, uniquely catching up to his opponent in the pursuit race. Made completely from Carbon Fibre and designed explicitly to be as areodynamic as possible, rather than taking the standard double diamond shape and grafting areodynamics on to that. No longer made because it was so dramatically faster than anything else that any other rider had that cyclings governing body banned it from racing. There where only a few ever made so they are very hard to get hold of, but one place that you might is from Colin Lewis Cycles in Paignton. That is if you can get him to sell it to you, this is not just because of its rarity. The man that runs the shop designed it.