CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure

Fat bike time travelling Iron Age?

(14 posts)
  • Started 7 years ago by gembo
  • Latest reply from Cyclingmollie

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  1. gembo
    Member

    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.

    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?

    Posted 7 years ago #

  2. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    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.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  3. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    @gembo

    was the terrain too arduous for cycling?

    If Homo sapiens 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?

    Of course not, silly. It takes twenty years to build 200m of cycle track. Quicker walking.

    The first journeys by wheeled carriage between Edinburgh and Glasgow and between Fort William and Inverness...when would they have been?

    Posted 7 years ago #

  4. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    Add in a deep set religious resistance towards fun

    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.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  5. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    I was going Mediaeval on the idea's ass.

    Why didn't the Romans come up with the bicycle? They had the technology, the roads, the leisure time.

    LARS Porsena of Clusium
    By the Nine Gods he swore
    That the great house of Tarquin
    Should suffer wrong no more.
    By the Nine Gods he swore it,
    And named a trysting day,
    And bade his messengers ride forth,
    East and west and south and north,
    To summon his array.
    By bike.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  6. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    Why didn't the Romans come up with the bicycle?

    Military mindset. Kill it, enslave it, codify it, copy it, refine it. But don't invent it.

    Now the Vikings....exquisite metal and woodwork and a pantheon of unhinged and non-judgmental Gods.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  7. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    Viking cyclists would have played chicken to extinction.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  8. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    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.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  9. Stickman
    Member

    Ancient Greeks would have come up with Moultons: all those nice triangles and complex geometry.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  10. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    Romans might have become roadies

    Ha! The Tour of Britain was won in 1951 on a Viking bike though.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  11. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    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.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  12. gembo
    Member

    This little thread is shaping up nicely

    Posted 7 years ago #

  13. Stickman
    Member

    Stipendium tributum non itineribus. Quin galeas gerunt?

    Posted 7 years ago #

  14. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    "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!"

    Posted 7 years ago #

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