http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Topic: Fat bike time travelling Iron Age? en Tue, 19 May 2026 20:27:48 +0000 http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276627 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 14:18:22 +0000 Cyclingmollie 276627@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, curator of a sick fixie. No brakes!" </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276626 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 13:18:14 +0000 Stickman 276626@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>Stipendium tributum non itineribus. Quin galeas gerunt? </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276624 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 12:54:21 +0000 gembo 276624@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>This little thread is shaping up nicely </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276622 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 12:50:40 +0000 I were right about that saddle 276622@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>Back on topic the Sheffield stand was invented to encourage Iron Age hero Beowulf to cycle to his showdown with Grendel but he sailed instead because they put in wheel benders. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276620 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 12:12:45 +0000 Cyclingmollie 276620@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><em>Romans might have become roadies</em></p> <p>Ha! The Tour of Britain was won in 1951 on a Viking bike though. </p> <p><img src="http://www.avocetsports.co.uk/uploads/images/o/fm_2016_03_14_11_05_15_21314_images_1.png"> </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276619 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 12:10:47 +0000 Stickman 276619@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>Ancient Greeks would have come up with Moultons: all those nice triangles and complex geometry. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276618 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 11:52:31 +0000 I were right about that saddle 276618@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>Romans might have become roadies if they'd been given bikes, all that shaved-legs and rules stuff. Vikings would have been bike packers just trundling down out of the hills and taking your head off with a folding carbon and titanium battle axe called Drægønårðtnir. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276617 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 11:32:20 +0000 Cyclingmollie 276617@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>Viking cyclists would have played chicken to extinction. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276615 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 10:58:36 +0000 I were right about that saddle 276615@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><em>Why didn't the Romans come up with the bicycle?</em></p> <p>Military mindset. Kill it, enslave it, codify it, copy it, refine it. But don't invent it.</p> <p>Now the Vikings....exquisite metal and woodwork and a pantheon of unhinged and non-judgmental Gods. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276610 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 10:39:59 +0000 Cyclingmollie 276610@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>I was going Mediaeval on the idea's ass.</p> <p>Why didn't the Romans come up with the bicycle? They had the technology, the roads, the leisure time.</p> <p>LARS Porsena of Clusium<br /> By the Nine Gods he swore<br /> That the great house of Tarquin<br /> Should suffer wrong no more.<br /> By the Nine Gods he swore it,<br /> And named a trysting day,<br /> And bade his messengers ride forth,<br /> East and west and south and north,<br /> To summon his array.<br /> By bike. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276609 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 10:31:59 +0000 I were right about that saddle 276609@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><em>Add in a deep set religious resistance towards fun</em></p> <p>That was invented in response to the bicycle wasn't it? Pretty sure the Bronze Age dudes would have had deities instructing them to brew beer and get into fights. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276608 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 10:29:56 +0000 I were right about that saddle 276608@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>@gembo</p> <p><em>was the terrain too arduous for cycling?</em></p> <p>If <em>Homo sapiens</em> had spread out of Africa by bicycle would it have been so quick that a single human culture would have resulted? No time for divergence?</p> <p>Of course not, silly. It takes twenty years to build 200m of cycle track. Quicker walking.</p> <p>The first journeys by wheeled carriage between Edinburgh and Glasgow and between Fort William and Inverness...when would they have been? </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276607 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 10:16:26 +0000 Cyclingmollie 276607@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>I think you've answered your own question. A blacksmith would start with a known design, a four wheel cart, half it and add a hinge. This could have happened at any time after the invention of the cart itself. Without a drive chain it would have been a grim experience on rutted tracks. Without brakes it would have been too dangerous downhill. Add in a deep set religious resistance towards fun and I think that early inventor probably left the idea on the drawing board. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18627#post-276602 Sat, 03 Mar 2018 09:27:28 +0000 gembo 276602@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>Yesterday my commute in to work was just me and the two fat bikes of Balerno, one is a fat bike and the other is a very fat bike. On way home it was very zen like after Arobcomp left me to my thoughts at the Lanark road bridge. The nearer to Balerno I pedalled the narrower the channel in the ice became. I was concentrating but also imagining a fat bike and rider being transported back to the Iron Age and helping to invent the bicycle at that time rather than the 18th century. </p> <p>Were people too focused on swords, chariots and horses to imagine a bicycle or was the terrain too arduous for cycling or was there a lack of technology? It was blacksmiths who made the earliest bikes. My fat bike time traveller would be the only one with rubber tyres but the others could have wooden wheels. The chain could maybe be a leather belt etc. I think if sir professor Brian Cox invents time travel then this is a possibility? </p>