On Wed, 2013-05-08 at 13:12 -0700, Philip Williamson wrote: > This excellent summation of a randonneur bike's mission also describes > a commute bike's mission. You need to get yourself and some gear to a > destination, on time. A commuter (this one, anyway), may get a > randonneur's "five hour" feeling at the 40 minute mark.
Of course, the load will be different -- at least, mine was: I carried work clothes, shoes, etc. in two small panniers, around 13 lb weight (my shoes were heavy!) and lunch in a handle bar bag. With tools and spare tubes that brought the load up to almost 20 lb. That's about twice the load you'd expect to carry on the randonneur, especially when you figure in the weight of the panniers and the rack to carry them. I realize all commutes are not the same. Many people commute wearing the clothes they will wear at work. Also distances vary. The urban commuter's route may be much shorter and may have many frequent stops at traffic lights and stop signs compared to someone riding in to work from the suburbs. The number of stops may influence the choice of drive train. An IGH makes a lot of sense for a short distance urban commute with plenty of stops, some abrupt enough you'll need to shift while stopped; much less sense for a brevet, where you wouldn't expect to stop more often than at 20-30 mile intervals, if even that often. It might also influence riding position. Riding a bicycle with a suit jacket on works fine with an upright bar like the North Road or the Albatross, but it doesn't work at all well with drop bars. If you're trying to optimize the bike for a particular mission, you do have to pick that mission apart and analyze it in detail, and it will drive design choices. If you want maximum versatility, you may have to choose configurations that will sub-optimal for some missions, maybe even marginal to poor for others. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en-US. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
