{"id":210,"date":"2012-09-16T03:13:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-16T03:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgc.co\/2012\/09\/on-relationship-changes\/"},"modified":"2012-09-16T03:13:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-16T03:13:00","slug":"on-relationship-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/singlespeedgoldcoast.com\/2012\/09\/16\/on-relationship-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"On Relationship Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"
The first and most obvious point is the magic of the freehub. Unless you’re totally hard core fixed you probably have a freehub on the other side of your wheel. You should give it a go one day. It’s like free energy. Honestly, if you’re used to pedaling down <\/i>every hill you have no idea how enjoyable it can be to coast down one. It’s akin to magic this experience of traveling without earning it. You just stop pedaling and…here’s the magic bit…the bike keeps gliding along. Compared to the experience of pedaling up and down every hill it’s on par with how birds must feel when the soar. (Except in my dreams where I soar with the birds before I always realize I’m not a bird and the magic of flying promptly deserts me. Queue Wile E Coyote style flailing of arms.) There’s no other form of transport that offers such freedom. Stop walking and the traveling stop. Skateboards can coast but they’re slow and bumpy compared with a bike. Your car has a petrol engine still bubbling away even when coasting down hill. The magic of a bicycle lies in its coasting, the ability to glide along as effortlessly as an eagle on a thermal.<\/p>\n
If that’s all too poetic for you (and I sympathize, it was a bit saccharine) then think of a bicycle as an efficient battery. You charge it up by climbing a hill and it discharges when you roll down the other side. Returns can be as good as 100%. That is, if you ride back down the hill you just climbed you’ll get all the way to the bottom.<\/p>\n
Maybe I’ve confused my battery theory. It’s probably the other way round. If you ride down a hill you charge the battery and it discharges and propels you up the other side. Returns on that can be as much as 80%, which I’m sure is pretty good for a battery also. The main problem with this bike as battery theory in is the bike reaches full charge pretty quickly. A 30second climb will likely get you most of the way up a similar sized hill. Whereas a 10 min hill climb will still only get you up a very small hill.<\/p>\n
Okay, so it’s a bike and not a battery and it’s not a frigging bird. But there is still considerable magic getting about without the requirement for the constant flailing of legs.<\/p>\n