RustyKipper
100 W
Hey all, I've made it to the 25,000 miles club!!!
These are not your Sunday morning pleasure miles, oh no, these are hard fought white knuckle rush hour day in day out commuting miles, the UK is a bit of an insane place to do a daily extreme commute as it is hellishly busy at the best of times and for 6 months of the year its both battered by Atlantic storms and in perpetual darkness, oh, and a lot of the roads I use have flowers tied to every second lamp post just to focus the mind!
Extreme commute? 25 – 30 miles per day, often with a brutal 40mph headwind on way to work and a savage 700 foot climb on the return, terrain is dual carriageways, B roads, river banks, cobbled streets, farm tracks, forest tracks a swamp, a hay meadow and a quarry.
Usually about half of the commute is off road however the UK has been in pretty poor shape for the last few months as its been mostly underwater, some of the storms and flooded rivers have washed a lot of the tracks away and many farmers fields have been under water for several months, in fact we had to abandon work late last year when the river burst its banks, the city was grid locked so several people at work had to abandon their cars and wade waist deep through the water, but on my ebike I could react quickly and make it to high ground. Even so it was pretty hairy as I had to ride through water that was lapping around the hub motor, the chain and pedals were completely submerged, a lot of the car drivers would let me ride through the water first so they could gauge the depth.
It was pretty scary to hear the distant sound of flood sirens then find out on the news that night that one of the local dams had started to fail. One of the roads is still blocked from a landslide several moths later.
I had probably my worst fall late last year when I underestimated the lubricating quality of cow poo on a sharp corner. I ended up having 9 Xrays and spent 2 weeks with both hands bandaged as I lost almost all of my knuckles and a good portion of my left knee, in fact the only limb to survive intact was my right leg which I then damaged walking home from the hospital when I tripped over a drain cover....Doh, then I got to my front door I couldn't get the key out of my pocket as both hands were bandaged..... It looks like my left wrist was broken, the doctor could feel the break but the Xray was inconclusive, after a few weeks the swelling finally went down then I could see the big lump on the bone, I spent a good few weeks doing this commute one handed due to the pain, I tried driving to work in the car but after 2 days remembered why I rode a bike to work as I had to negotiate some 40 sets of traffic lights each way and spend 90% of the time stationary. My face took a good pounding also as in the same incident I went sliding along the road on it, I didn't realize at the time that I broke my cheekbone so may face is a bit unsymmetrical now. When my left hand started to turn completely black I really got worried. The only damage to the bike was the rear reflector came loose, I built this bike to take some serious abuse. I'm going to write a book on my ebiking adventures one day!
The bikes running well, I've just rebuilt the CST hub motor after the clutch failed and fitted new bearings so now there is zero sideways play in the wheel. The only ongoing problems are the seals on the front forks get constantly chewed up from the abrasive grit that gets thrown up from the road in heavy rain, horrible front fork flex even though I'm using 32mm stanchions and 90% of the time I've got pretty much no brakes. This last one is a bit of a mystery, whatever brand of pads I buy will only ever last a couple of days before they lose all friction, I find if I keep them wet I can still get useable performance out of them for a while, I just buy the cheapest ebay pads I can find now and change them once a week, they are obviously getting contaminated with something but I've no idea what, I can only put it down to unburnt biodiesel in the air.
Crikey this post is longer than War and peace!
These are not your Sunday morning pleasure miles, oh no, these are hard fought white knuckle rush hour day in day out commuting miles, the UK is a bit of an insane place to do a daily extreme commute as it is hellishly busy at the best of times and for 6 months of the year its both battered by Atlantic storms and in perpetual darkness, oh, and a lot of the roads I use have flowers tied to every second lamp post just to focus the mind!
Extreme commute? 25 – 30 miles per day, often with a brutal 40mph headwind on way to work and a savage 700 foot climb on the return, terrain is dual carriageways, B roads, river banks, cobbled streets, farm tracks, forest tracks a swamp, a hay meadow and a quarry.
Usually about half of the commute is off road however the UK has been in pretty poor shape for the last few months as its been mostly underwater, some of the storms and flooded rivers have washed a lot of the tracks away and many farmers fields have been under water for several months, in fact we had to abandon work late last year when the river burst its banks, the city was grid locked so several people at work had to abandon their cars and wade waist deep through the water, but on my ebike I could react quickly and make it to high ground. Even so it was pretty hairy as I had to ride through water that was lapping around the hub motor, the chain and pedals were completely submerged, a lot of the car drivers would let me ride through the water first so they could gauge the depth.
It was pretty scary to hear the distant sound of flood sirens then find out on the news that night that one of the local dams had started to fail. One of the roads is still blocked from a landslide several moths later.
I had probably my worst fall late last year when I underestimated the lubricating quality of cow poo on a sharp corner. I ended up having 9 Xrays and spent 2 weeks with both hands bandaged as I lost almost all of my knuckles and a good portion of my left knee, in fact the only limb to survive intact was my right leg which I then damaged walking home from the hospital when I tripped over a drain cover....Doh, then I got to my front door I couldn't get the key out of my pocket as both hands were bandaged..... It looks like my left wrist was broken, the doctor could feel the break but the Xray was inconclusive, after a few weeks the swelling finally went down then I could see the big lump on the bone, I spent a good few weeks doing this commute one handed due to the pain, I tried driving to work in the car but after 2 days remembered why I rode a bike to work as I had to negotiate some 40 sets of traffic lights each way and spend 90% of the time stationary. My face took a good pounding also as in the same incident I went sliding along the road on it, I didn't realize at the time that I broke my cheekbone so may face is a bit unsymmetrical now. When my left hand started to turn completely black I really got worried. The only damage to the bike was the rear reflector came loose, I built this bike to take some serious abuse. I'm going to write a book on my ebiking adventures one day!
The bikes running well, I've just rebuilt the CST hub motor after the clutch failed and fitted new bearings so now there is zero sideways play in the wheel. The only ongoing problems are the seals on the front forks get constantly chewed up from the abrasive grit that gets thrown up from the road in heavy rain, horrible front fork flex even though I'm using 32mm stanchions and 90% of the time I've got pretty much no brakes. This last one is a bit of a mystery, whatever brand of pads I buy will only ever last a couple of days before they lose all friction, I find if I keep them wet I can still get useable performance out of them for a while, I just buy the cheapest ebay pads I can find now and change them once a week, they are obviously getting contaminated with something but I've no idea what, I can only put it down to unburnt biodiesel in the air.
Crikey this post is longer than War and peace!
its pretty terrifying!
