oroboyz@aol.com wrote:
> The frame geometry web site shown on your e-mail signature interested
> me..
>
> http://home.comcast.net/
>
> Pretty much fun trying to catalog and categorize that information!
>
> My first thoughts were how bikes with almost-the-same geometry
> (assuming "identical" is impossible) often "seem" to ride
> differently... The whole process of "ride" is so subjective and not
> able to be measured. Lordy, many have tried and tried to evaluate
> "ride" but it is still an elusive art...
Dale,
You are very, very right and I should beef up the caveats on the web page to reflect that.
Actually, the elusive description of feel is something that
skiers understand. With skis, the basic shape of a ski
is described by the 3 widths at the tip, waist and tail
of the ski. But, there are zillion different aspects of
ski construction that affect the feel of a ski: camber,
flex, torsional stiffness, dampening, construction method,
core material and on and on.
http://home.comcast.net/
That said, skis and bikes that share similar dimensions are more or less, well, similar. Well, similar enough for my brain to begin to see the landscape a bit better.
You've raised a really good reminder though. The lense by what you look at something shapes what you see. In this case, I've hammered some bike geometries into a spreadsheet. It's not the whole truth, to be sure.
-Dave Mann, Boston, MA
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THE BIKE GEOMETRY PROJECT
A community effort to document and compare bike geometries
http://home.comcast.net/