“so what” I hear you say. Well in London it’s snowed god know how many times in the past few weeks and it’s not settled once.
At last this morning there was a light covering with more coming down. I knew it was now or never. Gliding across frozen puddles, waiting for that delicious crack of the ice, or coming across ice unexpectedly was great, and not worrying in the slightest due to the wheel size. the route is a gentle loop, and on the 3rd quarter into the biting wind with low visibility. luckily people are a greater hazard on this route than UPDs.
The most noteworthy part of the ride was visiting the brother of the friend who faceplanted on my first Coker ride. he’s much taller than me and badly hurt his back while trying out the Coker! they’ve another 4 brothers and sisters, maybe I can see what damage they can do to themselves!
Otherwise it was a lovely tranquil ride of just 3.60 miles at a maximum 11.7 mph (slower than my Muni top speed) and average 7.5. Interestingly slow, but easy to improve on in safer conditions!
and the rollout stats for Klaas Bill are: 276cm, tyre pressure 10psi, my weight 175 pounds, with the new standard Coker rim & of course zero tread wear. (anything else you wanted?)
Snow cokering is great innit. Do you really mean 10psi? I’ve got 60 in mine and it worked okay in the snow. I love the way the coker goes through icy puddles and things, you’re always wondering if it’ll lose it, but it very rarely does.
Once it melts it’s odd, it’s melted here and I had a couple of sketchy moments this morning, one point where I go down a great big bank and it was really muddy, found myself sliding down sideways at 15mph which was somewhat difficult to ride out of, the other one where I have a hard 90 degree turn, which slid out a bit unexpectedly.
yes Joe, 10psi - the gauge isn’t too accurate at that low pressure, so it could be as high as 15. There’s a good bit of the sidewall in contact with the ground too (2cm total max) but as they’re so chunky there’s little chance of pinching. I probably will up the pressure a wee bit though when I start veering towards rougher terrain (as I was mad enough to volunteer for Red Bull). I’ll experiment with the pressure & remeasure when I’m happy. at worst I’ll be understating speed & distances which is better.
I’m glad that we didn’t get a few days of slush here “sliding down sideways at 15mph which was somewhat difficult to ride out of” sounds like an understatement!
As for the new rim, it’s a matt silver & looks like there is a decent braking surface. The previous one was shiny & terrible for brakes (so I’m told). This is one of the first of the new sort to reach the UK. If it’s any good there may be no need to upgrade to an Airfoil rim in the future… (see - I’m not always pessimistic!)
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 04:16:24 -0600, “mikepenton” wrote:
>and the rollout stats for Klaas Bill are: 276cm, tyre pressure 10psi, my
>weight 175 pounds, with the new standard Coker rim & of course zero
>tread wear. (anything else you wanted?)
I don’t plan an update for the Coker rollout page. What kind of
rollout is that, unloaded straight rollout, loaded straight rollout
(with rider), or dynamic road rollout (incl wobble)? If it’s one of
the latter two, the predicted value is within a few mm’s of your 276
cm.
(I don’t know if the new rim has any effect.)
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
people who unicycle are shyly exhibitionistic - GILD
it’s a loaded straight-ish rollout. I did it quickly over 1 rev (due to space) to vaguely mimic real conditions. With that tyre pressure there would’ve been quite a difference unloaded.
And thanks for getting technical, Unicus I remember being told that at Kidderminster now!
