Unusual TT Bike
Every bike has a story behind it. I took a photo of this slightly unusual bike at the HQ of the recent 50 mile Time Trial. It is the bike of Mick Fountain who is a stalwart of the local time trialling scene. With his wife, Marion, he regularly acts as time keeper, and when he gets the chance he also races. He was actually organising the race on Sunday and riding off number 2. He said he was at the 15 mile point, when he heard about an accident. As the race organiser, he took a detour from route to check accident was not serious. On hearing things were OK, he rode back to the course and finished a difficult 50 mile time trial before coming back to the HQ to sort out and print the results from the race!
The bike is interesting. As I was taking a photo, Mick came up to chat, he said he once had an accident. The organiser went to pick up his bike lying on the side of the road and spent ages looking for the second tribar. But, Mick only uses 1 to save a bit of weight and aerodynamic drag. There is a also a single 60 sprocket chainring – Ideal for time trialists who like churning out a big gear. In the headwind on Sunday, I saw a few time triallist churning about 40-50rpm as they fought the headwind. The tubing looked like old fashioned Steel Reynolds 531, but, I couldn’t see any sticker. The brakes looked to be from the 1950s, which is probably when bike was built. It looks nothing special compared to the plush carbon fibre monocoques also on display in the HQ, but, it’s probably just as fast and light.
Mick Fountain.co.uk – local TT results page
Do you have a bike with a real story behind it? I’d love to hear.
Hi, and I’d just like to say well done for such a well rounded website. love it.
I’m a road-rage addicted cyclist who commutes right into Manchester city centre monday to friday. I’m enjoying a career at the Co-op near the printworks and I used to do delivery driving and courier work so I have a lot of road knowledge. Also from my dad, a retired driving instructor who has always kept me grounded so I never became a ‘white van man’.
I suffer from over-confidence and I must be quite intimidating on my 23 inch no-brand (bankrupt stock) mountain’ish road bike. I’m 6’4″ and I ride on the balls of my feet, almost on my toes but I’ve found my optimum riding position.
My bike? It’s a beauty (to me.) I get it serviced every 10 months due to the 14 miles a day, which wears the tread off the puncture proof road type Schwalbe tyres. I just had to ge the whole transmission replaced due to wearing down the teeth on the freewheel. I had enough fun chewing handlebar when I was younger.
I use rear panniers for my work clothes so i’m used to a little extra weight, if I need to swap over a hardback book used for reading at work, or i’ve bought something in town that I need to strap onto the top pannier.
I’ll post a picture when I take a snap of it tomorrow. It got serviced (new tyres / transmission) just a week ago so it feels.. well.. how do you empathise how good it feels? I love cycling. Oh and I just ordered some Montane overtrousers and a waterproof peak cap too. Gotta keep the rain off the specs. Although I just can’t get with the polystyrene hat crowd. I own one and a full on skater style helmet, but I just feel stupid.
yeah, yeah, would I rather be walking through the pearly gates or getting home safe in a polystyrene hat? It’s a no-brainer, but my brains switched off then. Maybe it’ll take a near miss to make me strap one on.
I’ve already had two near misses in my cycling history. A good ten years ago my beloved uncle gave me a bike with a broken top tube, and since he was such a do-it-yourself type of guy he’d bracketed the two ends together. I got to one sleeping policeman (road hump) and the tube went skewiff. I chewed pavement.
The second time… Does anyone know the Burger King / Abbey bank area of Manchester Piccadilly Gardens? I took a tumble. After nearly a week without rain (in manchester, uk??) we had a bit of a quick downpour before I left work. That meant the roads and cycle areas had a greasy film of dirt just waiting to bring down any cyclist not paying attention.
I was going between the tram lines past said shops, and one pedestrian changed his direction. I saw it and jigged the handlebars so I’d go over the metro rail. But instead I had the sudden feeling of hitting black ice as the front wheel connected with the metal rail. Before I could say “you goober, where’s the beef!?” I thought someone had hit the bottom of the front wheel witha sledgehammer. I went down so fast I didn’t even have time to let go of the handlebars. My head and shoulder hit the ground like a mortar.
And I saw stars.
Once I was fully conscious after a few seconds where everything tasted purple I got up slowly. Simply because of the embarrassment factor. 4.45pm on a Thursday afternoon in the Manchester Piccadilly area. I couldn’t have had a bigger audience if I was auditioning as a hilarious circus artist at the M.E.N. arena.
The end result was a few chips of bone missing from my right shoulder and my arm held in a trouser belt for a week. With two weeks off from work to recover.
Is that my calling card? Polystyrene hat from the attic, are you mocking me? I think so.
Thanks for reading and I only wanted to say Hi – what a great, informative (to the max) and calming site for cyclists. I think I over shot the mark.
Have a nice day. I’m going to leave my anger at other road users at home tomorrow. See you on the roads. I’ll be the tall mancunian cyclist on a huge black mountain bike cycling around the south manchester area.
Have a nice day!
Rob