I Feel Lonely At The Moment.

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Those are the ones we used to fit. A wheel once collapser when the three of us who worked in the shop tried to put it on the wheel. The instruction video said the tyres simply snap onto the rim... Uhmmm. Every tyre we fit was a battle! Nothing like the video! And they were only really suitable for tiding on soft ground like mud. They probably would be ok on a tricycle at a guess. The tyres felt like the bike was slipping out from underneath you as you rode it on corners on a bicycle. I remember one customer... We kept having to tighten all the spokes on the back wheel that had the Greentyre on and it wore out in two years. It was alf its height and close to being down to the rim.

It is funny that they came and went in Britain... You guys have them now! I wonder who will have them next?

They are a nice idea but the standard pnematic tyres work so well I would rather fix the odd puncture then use a greentyre. No offense to the company who makes them. They do have a place for farmers sons who have thorns everywhere and have softer ground etc... But to most of us I would not bother.

I have had tricycles. Most of us had them as a child. I had two (One after the other) as an adult too. The first was a Broadway, and the second was a Pashley which was the only time that Pashley did a large wheel tricycle. It was called the Pashley Premiere and had all three wheels braked with a Magura hydraulic rim brake which one could lock those two back wheels on a steep 1 in 4 downhill using the brake lever with one finger! Hydraulic rim brakes are so much more effective then using hydraulic disks.

Tricycles do need the rider to balance moreso then a bicycle, but in a totally different way. When one learns to ride a tricycle, and does it well sliding them through corners at 40mph etc, and then one goes back onto a bicycle, the amazing balance one has on the bicycle in slow speed traffic is something else!

Now if you have never rode a bicycle you may be able to learn a tricycle quicker because those who ride bicycles are used to leaning them to get round corners so when they go down the road on their first few rides on a trike, the road camber will make them feel like they have to try to balance the thing to compensate and before they know it they are heading for the curb fast! Someone who is not thinking "
bicycle" as they ride will likely pick up riding a tricycle quicker. It is not that one does not balance. They need quite a bit of balancing where one has to lean ones body out to counter balance them on higher speed corners to prevent one from tipping over. (Higher speed... Means jogging speed or over... The faster one goes the more one needs to lean, so for this reason alone always buy a trike with a wide downtube rather then one with a crossbar as one needs to get ones body low down to take high speed corners. Think of motorbike and sidecar racing how they have to use their bodies to keep the things on the racetrack. It is the same with a tricycle. A recumbent trike needs less leaning as ones body is already low, but even so one needs to lean a bit. It is why motorcycle trikes have wide back wheels and due to their low down weight they don't need the rider to lean so much to compensate... (Not if they are built right to take advantage of being a trike).

But anyway. Tricycles of the pedalling type are fun to ride. My best hint or tip to ride them is to switch off thinking "Handlebars" in ones mind and think "Steering wheel" and one will be ok. It is a bit like riding the back of a tandem where one has to switch off ones mind to trying to take control and one then follows the front person, but the first few rides the front rider has to compensate for the sudden movements the rear rider does. It is why the best stokers (Rear riders) for a tandem are people who have not, or rarely ridden a bicycle before. My tandem may be past it. It is a rusted wreck as not used it for about 25 years. Needs a little welding and a total rebuild if its frame is still ok. Gave up finding a rider for the back! Haha. Last time I used it I had by youngest brother (18 years younger) in a child seat right at the back when he was little. He loved it!I found I was ok on the back of a tandem as the
y have predictable handling and I have been 60mph while on the back as tandems can really take advantage of the hills, but I could never ride the back of a motorbike. I tried with my Dad and had to get him to stop. It felt all wrong and I was all over the place. The movement of the suspension and holding onto my Dad. My Dad would not let me hold onto the motorbike instead as he said it was not a safe way to ride. I just could not do it.
Oh. I tried riding a horse once. A nice tall one a friend of my Mums once rode up. Iwas told off for grabbing hold of its ears but in my panic I needed handlebars... I was told "Let go of his ears. He doesn't like it!" I think somehow the horse could tell I was not used to riding horses!
But even though I have tried and tried and ridden miles and miles over the years, I have never got the hang of riding with no hands on a bicycle, and even though I have tried an unicycle, as my brother has one, I could not ride that either. He can ride it. I tried and tried as I wanted to say I could ride it but nope! It took me sheer determination over about three or years of trying before I could ride a bicycle. Somehow other kids found they were riding in no time. Some before they were three. I was seven after trying and trying! But I was DETERMINED! You can tell I like bicycles! Haha! One of my special interests but mainly on the mechanical side. I know nothing much about the famous riders as to me they were simply competition if I turned up for a race (I did mountainbike racing and time trialling as I did not get on with cycling in tight groups. I would panic having other riders ride close to me as I felt squashed in, so road racing was out. I have had miles of group riding experience but I would either want to be at the front where my leg strength could come into play where the rest could tuck in behind me, or I would be at the back taking a rest. I just could not do the middle foe long. Claustrophobic!)
Anyway. Before I write a long post.. Lets post it!

I have not tried that design but I have tried some designs like I used to have Raleigh Choppers and there were other makes back then that were similar. They had to get them right. I found the Chopper unstable at speed, though the key was to sit right at the front of the seat and lean forward. Sit back and at around 17mph the thing would get a speed wobble and if one did not slow down quick enough to pull out of it, one was off!

What I have been thinking about is how even the conventional diamond frame bike design and the various designs that roughly follow it in the riding position, how different each bike rides, and to this day two stood out as being a cut above the rest in their acceleration. I used to have to test every bike before it went out to the customer, be it a repair or a new bike where I first worked. (Today only repairs are tested and then if the repair requires it so it is likely to be one out of every 25 bikes or even less as some of the large bicycle chain stores do not like cycle mechanics to ride the bikes... Which is a shame because a bike mechanic does not get the chance to learn how to tweek up the bikes components to get the best from them as they do not ride them to find out).
But anyway. I had a back lane I would test them on. There was a shorter length of about 5 to 8 houses and then I had to stop to cross a road and then there was a long straight backlane which probably had about 70 to 100 house length to it.
Two bikes took me by surprize on this first shorter bit of lane as they accelerated so quick, they caught me by surprize where I had to slam on the brakes to avoid heading across the main bit of road. (It was all tarmac, even the backlane). One was an early level top tube Dawes Street bike (They did about three models using the same frame angles and the same frame material) with Reynolds 501 tubing, and the other was the old geometry version of the Dawes Horizon which had in those days a Sports Tourer geometry set up using Reynolds 500 frame tubes. This version was the 1989 version. From around 1990 onwards they changed the geometry to touring geometry and they became the "Poor mans tourer" instead of the unique sports tourers they once were. A sports tourer had geometry with angles inbetween a racing bike and a touring bike if that makes sense? I have a Sports Tourer which is an Orbit Gold Medal. They are listed as a tourer but they are actually closer to a sports tourer and will only take up to 25mm tyres as 28mm is too wide for the frame on rhis Orbit, and it is nice and zippy to ride!
But anyway. What I am saying is how even very similar looking bikes can ride very differently when one comes to try them.
Before I bought my Dawes Galaxy I had been looking for a new bike as I was growing out of my Falcon Prestige which had lasted me a few years. It was orange. Pearl orange!
Someone happened to have a bicycle for sale. An American bike. It was a Huffy. Never heard of them before. It was a budget tourer from the looks of it. So I went to give it a try. Now my Falcon was ordinary mild steel, so it was not the quickest machine but I could keep up with those on much better bikes which some of the other riders were surprized about, but this Huffy! First I went to pick it up. Never come across a bike so heavy! What was it made from? Lead? Then I went to ride it. Uhmm. Well I handed it back and said "No!" I am sure its frame was made out of lead! Haha!
The only other bike I came across that rode that bad was an early Emmelle mountain bike. Someone from the village below brought it up to me to repair it for him when I was in my late 20's. Can't remember what was wrong with it. It was the guy who ran the shop and somehow I had been talked into repairing it for him.. I got it all working and the gears shifted fine... The brakes worked... It was all ready to go. All I had to do was ride it down the hill and walk the 2 miles back up the hill to get home.
On the way down the hill I wanted to test the gears. Do you know that even though I was going downhill which was in that area where I had a clear area without braking to let it go, with around a 1 in 6 gradient, the thing would not go fast enough to get it into its top gear on the chainset. The bike went up to around 14 to 18 mph (And that was with heavy pedalling) and it would not go any faster no matter what I did. Such an inefficient frame and heavy too. Yet when I later sold Emmelles when I worked as head of a bicycle department in a large sports store, they were exceptional machines. Those Emmelles were not made in Britain but in Bangladesh (Shh. Moore and Large who owned Emmelles did not want people to know that as they said they were British!). But oh what a difference. Those bangladesh Emmelles... I remember having a day when all the manufacturers and us staff met up in one part of the country where we could all test their bikes (I think it was their new models) and do you know when I rode these £120 to £140 Bangladesh built Emmelle mountain bikes, I had to ride a top of the range Saracen hybrid on 700c tyres which was £600 and made from Aluminium where the Emmelles were steel to come anywhere near the sprightly performance of the Emmelles! And those Emmelles were considered cheap bikes. They felt like I could take them into a mountain bike race as they were and win! But that early British built Emmelle. No chance! It was like trying to ride ones old metal bed. Soo heavy and it got to about 12 to 14mph and anything else took standing on the pedals with a concentrated force and one may get around 18mph if one was lucky!

Thank you will research greentyre if they are still in business .

A nice pair of Scwalbe Marathons will do the job. I would not bother with Greentyre myself.

Are. Swab marithons. A inner tube or a tire .

Tyre. The manufacturer used to be called Swollow here in the UK because cyclists back then were traditionalists who would not have bought the tyres if they knew that they were German as it was within living memory of those who were in WW2.
Swollow took their companies proper name of Schwalbe around 1990 and their early versions of the hard wearing tyre known as the "Marathon" of which I bought a pair in 1991 (Or thereabouts and they lasted right up to about 2010 on my Dawes Galaxy where I once was changing six rear and two front Michelin World Tour tyres a year prior to that)... And it was the Marathon model of tyre which was the first tyre in the UK to use the companies Schwalbe brandname. In Germany they had always used the Schwalbe brand name as far as I am aware.
Swollow made tyres and tubes. The tubes used to come in lovely little red and white boxes. We also used to sell other brands like Michelin with had yellow and navy blue boxes.

i'm a firm believer in separate bike paths with physical barriers or different locations for powered/non-powered vehicles.

Preach, brother!!

preaching in my own small way

Same!

Feeling nostalgic

Anyone find me a picture of my first bike back in the mid 1970s

boys chopper push bike bright blue
banana seat
metal back support
tassles
1970s model

Sounds like the one I had, but it was green.
If I'm not dreaming, I believe it even had a green glitter vinyl seat, with white sides.
It was the disco model, I guess

OMG! YES!! I also had a glitter banana seat, I distinctly remember feeling how soft and squishy it was and licking the seat because it looked like a lolly, did yours have tassles?

Yeah, white plastic tassels. They didn't last too long in the QLD sun.

Can’t ride a bike.
Never learned.
Would love to be an adult tricycle.
Been looking at Craigslist for one.
Hoping...