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ShelBroCo American Way bicycles
Do you get a discount if you order it by 1 April?
Apparently it’s back-ordered and you will have to wait till April 1, 2013.
I am an ex-patriot ‘American’ living in Canada. (I put ‘American’ in single quotes because, as my Canadian friends and a long ago Columbian acquaintance pointed out to me, people from the US of A are hardly the only Americans. It is, after all, not a country but a continent.) So seeing this literal flag waving I thought, oh, no, here we go again with US flag-waving (figurative). So I was doubly delighted to read this hilarious and timely spoof of US phobia for “socialism” in action.
New to your website, I also was very interested to read about your Raleigh Twenty experience and the link to Sheldon Brown’s Moulton. I have a 1965 Moulton with 4-speed Strumey Archer IGH.
Here is my question: from the picture, it appears that your Raleigh Twenty crash was not so much a result of a stick in the spokes as the dreaded stick in the fender, leading it to crumple and lock the front wheel. Is that correct? I had a similar expereince at safely low speed while riding a be-fendered cycle through a wooded area. Do you know any site that addresses this safety concern with fenders?
You mean expatriate not ex-patriot? — or are you one of those dreaded socialists 😉
As to the Raleigh Twenty crash, yes, the fender’s snagging the tire was the proximate cause of the wheel’s locking, but the stick’s snagging in the spokes was what pulled the fender against the tire. I recommend modern fenders with safety-release stays at the front, though neither the SKS nor Planet Bike safety release is completely problem-free. The SKS clips at the forkend squeak after a while: I fixed this by pumping them full of silicone caulking compound before shoving in the stays. The Planet Bike clips tend to loosen and come apart. I glued them together with a hot-melt glue gun. The stays will still pull out in an emergency.