Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 06, 2014

Ah, another one going after Pastis. The more the merrier.

Yup. A cycle accident. Why do people who bike like Frazz use such fragile bikes? A pot hole wouldn’t phase a mountain bike….But then I have no idea why somebody would take a lovely, leisurely endeavor such as riding a bike and turn it into a race? “Peoples is the craziest monkeys!”…Cid Caesar…

Nabuquduriuzhur – Did you buy that $100 wonder when bread was 50 cents a loaf?

re: varnes

Frazz might be an athlete, but he’s a utlity cyclist too.

Road bike wheels aren’t fragile, though the tyres don’t cope well with large potholes. And they shouldn’t need to.

No sympathy for his bashed up gear, body & clothing; or that he might have gotten hit by a car when he was on the ground?

@VarnesPotholes can phase a mountain bike. I was going along one day, saw a pothole at the last moment, missed it with my front wheel, but caught it with the rear wheel, which bent the rim enough that the rest of my trip was by bus.

damn potholes….some of the potholes are really trenches that go on for miles. and, the road crew can’t fix, because lack of funding.

A few points. I’ve owned $100 bikes, but I never got thousands of miles out of them, usually they need to be replaced after a year or two. Wal Mart disposables are an OK solution to commuter biking if you lack money, but not really an option for long distance riding.

Frazz is almost certainly not riding a $750 bike, decent touring bikes start at $2000 or more, he’s got money, it’s probably in the $6000-8000 neighborhood, where serious cyclists live.

The kind of wreckage seen here is fairly rare, it takes a pretty epic pothole that you can’t actually avoid (usually meaning traffic) to destroy a wheel. And then you replace the wheel. The bike itself is fine unless it gets run over (in which case you probably have other things to worry about).

The biggest pothole problem was the move to “strip paving”. It seemed like a great idea – pave one lane for miles so that the other lanes can stay open, then do the next lane, and so forth. But the seams between lanes never sealed, because they were done days or weeks apart. Now we have 4-inch or 8-inch trenches between lanes (one or two layers of paving) that become wide enough to trap a tire, and each lane is like its own little ridge-top.

We have to go back to closing an entire road, paving the full width for whatever distance can be managed in a day or night, and having fewer seams on the road – and they should be across the road rather than within it.

Just try scheduling repairs for a burst water main. You can’t. I agree, it would be intelligent to coordinate maintenance of utilities with road maintenance where practical. In general, they are two different companies or departments and so do not think to share information. Also, roads and pipes do not have similar repair needs, so they might not be able to coordinate as closely as you would think.

Regarding the cost of bikes: Just about anyone would think it reasonable to pay an extra $1000 to upgrade the upholstery or audio system or sunroof on a car. But they think $500 is a lot for a whole vehicle? I don’t get it. But then, I’ve got a lot more $ and miles invested in bikes than cars.

My apologies to Sid……Yeah, I know, some potholes can swallow a bike, whole..

After over 10,000 commuter and recreational miles (I’m not a “spandexed” bicycle nut) on my $350 Raleigh hybrid, it finally succumbed in my last accident. I replaced it with a $250 Gravity Dutch hybrid, and eventually cobbled together one bike with parts from the two. I now have about 2,000 miles on this one, and it rides better than either one did alone.

You don’t have to spend a fortune for a good ride.

Oh, as for the amount of damage to Frazz’s wheel…….. it’s cartoon hyperbole, for the sake of getting the idea across.

I live in New England and pot hole season has just begun. I used to ride a bicycle of both types. My touring bike had 90 lbs of pressure in the tire and my mountain had 50 lbs. I could cruise faster on my touring but would use the mountain because it was better than bending my rims. Also I could jump curbs or off with impunity on my mountain bike.

In Michigan we’re calling them Snyder-holes — for our dear guv who hasn’t managed to convince his cronies in the ledge that they need to allocate some money. Must have been on Middlebelt.