{"id":4361,"date":"2018-10-07T12:07:29","date_gmt":"2018-10-07T11:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/?p=4361"},"modified":"2018-10-07T12:07:36","modified_gmt":"2018-10-07T11:07:36","slug":"experimenting-with-a-single-speed-bike-in-a-mountaineous-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/experimenting-with-a-single-speed-bike-in-a-mountaineous-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Experimenting with a single speed bike in a mountaineous landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

My average time riding a bike over the last four weeks was seven and a half hours per week. When I’m not riding the bike I’m usually using the scooter but that’s mainly because I don’t want to leave the bike unattended. It is for this reason that I’ve been looking for cheap alternatives. I’ve looked at folding bikes but they cost as much as a scooter and I’ve been looking at electric bikes but they also cost as much as a scooter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from the issue of price folding bikes weigh from 17 to 23kg or more. For a bike that is meant to be portable it is grossly overweight. Can you imagine riding that around a mountaineous country like switzerland? I did see a cheap folding bike for about 169 CHF. It would be nice to keep in the car. You could park in an area where it’s free and then explore towns and cities without the hindrance of public transport.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday I rode to Geneva on the bike and an e-bike limited to 45km\/h overtook me and I did enjoy sprinting after it and trying to catch up with it. I matched the speed for a little bit and then turned onto another street. E-bikes that go at 45 kilometres per hour are meant to follow the same rules as motorbikes and scooters so they’re less interesting than those limited to 25 kilometres per hour. Those limited to 25 kilometres per hour are no longer interesting because I can cycle at an average speed of 21-24 kilometres per hour on three to five hour rides.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also looked at mountain bikes, trekking bikes and other options. The issue with these is that the affordable ones are heavy and the fun ones are expensive.\u00a0 I finally found an option that would be fine in a flat country like Belgium or Holland but could be regretted in Switzerland. A single speed bike, or a fixie.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My logic in this choice is that it’s apparently easy to maintain, it costs little and it’s probably easy to place in the back of a car without making a mess. The one I was tempted by has a belt rather than a chain. The version with a chain is cheaper but it’s around two kg heavier. The fixie with a belt weighs around 11kg, the same as the road bike I use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>My average time riding a bike over the last four weeks was seven and a half hours per week. When I’m not riding the bike I’m usually using the scooter but that’s mainly because I don’t want to leave the bike unattended. It is for this reason that I’ve been looking for cheap alternatives. I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[736],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}