Bicycle
| Links on left | Lead us to |
|---|---|
| Moulton "Mongrel" | About the Moulton APB I created out of two damaged APBs |
| Moulton R18 | My Moulton R18 is a very fine touring bicycle |
| Moulton AM7 | Cool Bradford on Avon built Moulton |
| Scottoiler | Radically different chain lubrication |
| Trailer | My experiences with the Der Roland general purpose bicycle trailer |
| Bicycle Books | My favourite books about bicycles |
The amazing things about the bicycle for me are that it works at all and that it was invented/discovered so recently.
If someone from any time before the invention of the bicycle were brought into the present day by means of an ingenious time machine then it is the bicycle which would I think cause them the greatest wonder.
With the car it's true, there are no horses, but there is a loud sound coming from inside, so maybe the driving force comes from some animal in there, which is quite a fierce beast and needs to be kept enclosed for the safety of others?
The bicycle, however, is surely magic plain and simple. Why doesn't it fall over? It is so slight it can't contain anything to keep it upright. The human being just sits on top of it and rolls along.
Today we take bicycles so much for granted they seem to us to be so natural, we think for example that perhaps the Buddha would have toured Northern India on a bicycle or that maybe Adam and Eve had a tandem.
Of course the bicycle appeared at the end of the 19th Century. It took a while for the different aspects to come together. First someone realised that a human being could balance a single tracked vehicle using the steering. Then came the propulsion.
It is marvellous that it is here now. Of all the things that human invention has devised it is for me the best.
I have a great love of Moulton bicycles. I first got into them when someone lent me a rather battered up old APB for a few weeks. When I first rode it I found it to be initially strange. Then a few days later I rode it again and found it to be still strange but I realised I rather liked it. Then I kept riding it and the strangeness of it wore off and then I began to "see it". What a wonderful thing it was, so lively and fast yet tremendously stable. It was quite unlike any other small wheeled bicycle I'd ever ridden. It was better than any large wheeled bicycle I'd ridden.