Mostly Harmless

The "Off-bike"

Yesterday I was half-way up Whitchurch Hill (Reading, RG8) in a bit of a dream and accidentally changed up instead of down. As my small store of momentum dribbled away I rather savagely changed down again and knocked the chain off. This presented my cerebellum with a set of circumstances it had hitherto not encountered and I promptly fell over.

I always come up laughing from toe-clip-related accidents because they are such good slapstick - but my right knee is not laughing with me. These things are all over-and-done-with before the conscious mind can intervene sensibly (at least, at my age...) but low-level management (the cerebellum) seems to have to learn about them on a case-by-case basis.

I think my legs assumed I had discovered some new and most excellently low gear and they pedaled heartily while I was, in fact, moving gently backwards.

Hence this modest proposal:

The Off-bike

Related to the bolt-on skid pan favoured by advanced driving schools I propose a training bike with built-in radio controlled sabotage:

1. A device which disengages the cranks - simulating a chain outage
2. A spring-bolt which suddenly liberates the handlebars
3. An "unstabilizer" which can be silently primed to actuate next time the rider brakes hard and which causes the bike to tilt in the rider's non-preferred direction. This tilt could be generated by a third wheel which juts out to order.
4. ...other suggestions...

The trainee rides around a traffic-free circuit (with hills) while the operator remotely triggers random disasters giving the rider ample opportunity to train his or her reflexes in a safe environment (with kneepads). I'd be particularly impressed with someone who learns to stop gracefully when the handlebar option is triggered without warning. I guess you could build a bike simulator for this but it wouldn't be half as much fun - and "no pain, no gain" is not an empty mantra for these particular feedback loops. I remember the first time I successfully, unconsciously, yanked my right foot out in time when I was tipping the wrong way. There was, immediately to my right, a large and chilly-looking puddle...

Posted at 10:27AM Jul 09, 2007 by John Alderson in Get on yer Bike  |  Comments[1]