There are some things you experience every time you ride a bicycle, aren't there?

Sometimes, clear your mind and enjoy the "bicycle common occurrences" that you'll understand completely when you're just riding your bike.

Pedal scrapes when turning a curve

A bicycle won't move unless you pedal, but when you turn, you naturally lean the bicycle due to centrifugal force.

Especially on left curves, you tend to lean the bike more than on right curves.

If you're going too fast, and you lean the bike sharply in the middle of a turn, the bottom of your pedaling pedal will scrape against the ground.

By the way, there's no way to avoid this.

It's about keeping the pedal on the inside of the curve up (i.e., the pedal opposite to the direction of the turn down) to avoid scraping.

You can't pedal when you're leaning the bike in a curve.

Also, if you don't lean it, the bike will fall outwards due to centrifugal force.

Bicycles cannot go around curves beyond a certain point.

If you accelerate before entering a curve, you can turn at a faster speed, so please try it on a safe road.

On a downhill, you can maintain speed without pedaling, but this phenomenon also occurs uphill, so if you want to beat others in speed, this might be an area for improvement.

Forgetting to inflate tires

Once you start riding a bicycle, you don't want to stop.

Especially when you're commuting to work or school in the morning, you don't want to stop.

That's when you remember.

Oh, right, yesterday the tire pressure was low.

Naturally, you're not carrying a pump, and bike shops don't open until 10 AM, so there's nowhere to inflate your tires.

When you get home, you rush inside, and once again forget to inflate the tires.

And then, the next morning, you remember again, and the cycle repeats.

You want to overtake someone in front of you

When you're riding on the road, it's stressful to have a slow bicycle in front of you.

Haven't you ever found yourself wanting to overtake them?

It's fine to overtake, but it's somewhat embarrassing to get caught at the next traffic light and have them catch up to you.

Am I the only one who thinks about trying to absolutely blast past them once the light turns green?

Try your best, but only to the extent that it doesn't cause an accident.

Bikes riding against traffic are incredibly irritating

When you're cycling on the road, you sometimes see people riding towards you.

Even though you're properly riding on the left, there's a cyclist coming from the opposite direction.

You might think, "Don't they have a license!?", but then you realize they might be high school students and don't even have a driver's license in the first place.

They may not have had the opportunity to properly learn traffic laws, and for them, "riding against traffic" might not even be a concept for bicycles (light vehicles).

No one is likely teaching them.

In the past, older children in the neighborhood used to teach these things when playing, but that might not be the case anymore.

There's a psychological analysis that suggests that when people dislike someone, they see their own undesirable or inferior qualities in that person and feel aversion towards them.

If you get angry at people riding against traffic, you might have some guilt or complex about your own lack of knowledge or not following some rules.

I, for one, put aside my own shortcomings and get furiously angry at those riding against traffic.

It's hard to inflate tires with small diameters

Have you ever ridden a bicycle with small diameter tires?

It might not be a very common term in Japan yet, but it's a "mini velo."

Specifically, bicycles with tire diameters of 20 inches or less are called mini velos.

By the way, "mini velo" is a colloquial term and not a name defined by JIS or other standards.

When the tire diameter is very small, the part where you inflate the tire is called the valve, and this valve is bent 90 degrees and points outwards.

If it weren't bent, you wouldn't be able to chuck a regular pump onto it and couldn't inflate it at all.

So it's bent 90 degrees, but a small tire diameter means the spokes are also short, narrow, and crowded.

Since the valve is in that narrow space, it's just really hard to inflate the tire.

It's even harder if there's a reflector on those short spokes.

Being able to repair it yourself feels like leveling up

When riding a bicycle, breakdowns are unavoidable.

You might take it to a shop for repairs, but gradually, as you get used to it, you start repairing it yourself.

When you can repair a breakdown yourself, you feel like you've leveled up from your previous self.

And you start to feel like you can repair any kind of breakdown or malfunction.

It usually starts with something simple like inflating tires.

With fully inflated tires, the pedals feel light, and you can ride smoothly.

Next, maybe a flat tire repair?

You buy tools from a 100-yen shop or home center and repair it yourself.

It might take about 2 hours initially, but with practice, you'll be able to repair it in about 30 minutes.

When you ride on tires you've repaired yourself, there's a bit of anxiety wondering if you did it correctly, but when the test ride goes well, it builds confidence.

Eventually, you start tackling more challenging repairs like replacing brake cables or tires.

The basic steps are: accurately understanding "what the problem is," "predicting the cause," confirming that the prediction is correct, "performing the repair," and then "checking if the problem has been resolved" and "making a judgment."

The word "repair" itself is quite profound.

That's why the satisfaction of successfully repairing something is unlike anything else.

Related article:Road Bike Common Occurrences