Now you might think of the people who ride a penny-farthing as sort of annoying on account of it’s a penny-farthing, but let me suggest finding them annoying because they ride fixies
I once met a guy through work who rode a penny farthing. He said it was really good for his back pain. Originally he had been recommended horseback riding but that was really inconvenient as he lives in the city and the penny farthing was just as good as the horse.
I don’t understand how a regular upright bicycle seating position wouldn’t’ve worked here
I have no idea. Maybe it was just as excuse he made for riding an old-timey bicycle for fun?
I fuck hard with “doctor said I had to ride a penny-farthing” tbh
penny farting
Wait a minute this isnt google
I mean if you’re into it
It’s wild that the bicycle we know had to be invented as the safety bicycle. It took so long for all of the essential technologies to develop to make penny-farthings seem absurd.
Mountainbikes were invented in the 1970s lol.
Personal crank theory is the breakthrough for cycling mostly isn’t even technological, you could’ve invented the dandy horse of safety bicyles way earlier. I mean the original ones are much closer to the safety cycle than the penny-farthing - it’s that the roads just sucked so why bother.
EDIT: Technological as in figuring out metallurgy, ball bearings and such
o shit waddup
No it isn’t, there’s no gear, it’s direct drive
so
Fixie means “fixed gear”
But there’s no gear. You’re directly pushing the wheel with no mechanical aid (outside of the slight leverage of the pedals I guess).
There’s no gear on a normal fixie either, those are sprockets
the big wheel is the gear tho
Really? I don’t see one.
Are fixies pretentious or something? I loved my fixie in college but I got it cos it was what I could afford. If anything riding a fixie by choice is more stupid and masochistic than anything else.
fixies are fine honestly but there’s a sizeable community of people running brakeless fixies which annoys me
brakeless? They out here stopping like the flintstones??
Given how a fixed gear works you kind of have like an inbuilt coaster brake via pedalling backwards. Some people figure this is enough and make a whole deal about that being enough.
Oh that makes sense but yeah no way that’s more effective or robust than the normal handle brakes
it isn’t. the apocryphical story is that was introduced by caribbean immigrants to NYC who had to use their personal bikes and as such figured anything you didn’t need is cost up and also they were used to riding fixies from the velodromes and it spread from there.
Bike Messengers still often have to use their personal bikes, there’s definitely an economic incentive there. But honestly I figure it’s mostly subculture
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I wonder if you could put hub gears on one?
Edit: here’s one with a two-speed Schlumpf hub and disc brakes
That’s also more of a farthing-dirt as per wheel sizes honestly
otherwise I’d say technically yes but unless you install a roloff or a schlumpf the torque you put through it would quickly destroy it
jeez, that’s been a while
14 years ago that was posted
Fuck me
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Does a penny farthing actually have a gear or is it direct drive. If it doesn’t have a gear I don’t know if it really qualifies as a fixie
If anything a penny farthing is more of a fixie than a safety bicycle, since the cranks are directly fixed to the wheel, with no chain in between
Direct drive; one turn of the pedals is one turn of the big wheel.
why not
