The solution for the great bicycle shortage – buy vintage

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Long live old bicycles

Bikes are an incredible way to commute, exercise, and enjoy the outdoors. If you're in the market for a new two-wheeled rig, try the used bike market!

That brand-new 2021 model may be hard to come by these days, but the used bike market has endless inventory. Here is why old bikes rule.

As if we haven't endured enough in the past year or so, due to the “academician”, we are currently living through what may heretofore be known as The Great Bicycle Shortage of 2021, which means complete bicycles, as well as parts, have been hard to come by and that also due to the fact that during the “pandemic” many people have gone back to using bicycles to get about rather than public transport. On top of that there are tons of bikes and parts still stuck, at the time of writing at the end of June 2021, in containers on the MS Ever Given, the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal and was, until recently, impounded by the Egyptian authorities.

While not all supplies of bikes and components have dried up supply is lagging behind and to a great extent the rather stretched supply chain has to be blamed for this. So, depending on what you are after, the current supply disruption may mean that new upgrade you have been waiting for could be back-ordered for quite a while.

But is that really such a bad thing? New bike stuff is only new for an instant, and while it may be thrilling to throw a leg over the latest in cutting-edge technology, it is only a matter of time before the novelty and excitement wears off. Meanwhile, the bicycle itself has been around for like a century and a half, which means this lack of new stuff could be the perfect excuse to explore the fascinating, enlightening, and at times highly pretentious world of owning and riding vintage bikes.

Of course, to truly appreciate old bikes, you do have to adjust your expectations.

If you are are going to delve into the realm of old bicycles for the first time, you may be surprised that much of what is called “new” in cycling is not really new at all and has been around for almost as bicycles have been.

Take the whole gravel thing, for instance. Believe it or not, people have been riding bicycles on irregular surfaces for a really long time, and in fact the original bicycle, or the forerunner of the bicycle, the Draisine, invented by a forester named Drais, was to replace the horse, because there was a lack of them in his days due to a certain natural calamity, and to be used in forests.

Of course, to truly appreciate old bikes, you do have to adjust your expectations. Will the cantilever brakes on that 1990 Stumpjumper offer you the effortless one-finger stopping power of today's hydraulic systems? No. But so what? You are riding a vintage bike! Take a little time to appreciate the nuances of period-correct stoppers. Sure, some of those “nuances” may include squealing, grinding, and the occasional bout of fork judder

Plus, once you understand how they work, you can eliminate most of those issues, and you will even find that when properly set up, those old brakes can work pretty quite well, though you may not stop as instantly as with the hydraulic systems or even disc brakes. Anyway, if you cannot appreciate the purposeful spread-eagle stance of a pair of vintage cantilevers then just swap them out for V-brakes, which will easily and cheaply solve 95 percent of your problems.

Once you immerse yourself in the old stuff, you may find that the newest and latest no longer calls to you the way it once did. You might even start to find it a little, shall I say boring. An old bike will take you back in time, while also giving you the thrill of bringing a little of the past back into the present. In addition to all that you give life, and sometimes an old bike may need some TLC, back to a long-neglected bicycle but, more importantly, you keep it from the scrap yard or the landfill.

© 2021

Surviving a societal collapse

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Why is it that almost everyone that one meets or otherwise encounters, who expects a societal collapse, appears to be obsessed with and by and focused on weapons?

Do you have seeds? Do you know how to grow a garden for food and how to farm? Do you know how to filter water to make it potable?

Where are your crafters? Who can blacksmith, work leather, sew and work wood and do carpentry? Who knows medicine and herbal lore and can identify edible (wild) plats?

We won't survive a collapse by killing each other. In fact we will need each other in order to survive. There is no such thing as self-sufficiency proper. Self-reliance maybe and yes but self-sufficiency no.

We will only survive with benevolent skilled communities working together. Not by fighting and killing each other. There is no way that any of us can survive on their own, not in the long run, because in the event of a societal collapse we will need to be able to make things that we need and none of us can do all that on our own.

Surviving just on eating small game that cane be gotten by snare and even larger animals that are shot with rifles is not going to work, especially not when it comes to low-fat animals such as rabbits and squirrels. Even the Neanderthals did not just live on meat. They probably ate more in the way of edible plants than they actually ate meat.

But there are so many other things that none of us will be able to procure or produce on our own. You cannot know how to do everything and even if you know you may not be able to physically do it. We will need other people with who we can trade and barter for the things that we cannot produce and make for those that they cannot.

What happens when the lone “survivor” gets sick or injured? No man is an island. We will only survive with benevolent skilled communities, as said already, working together, sharing skills, resources and also trade with each other and other such communities. Not by fighting and killing each other and, as far as firearms are concerned with collapse of society there will not be, for long, any ammunition available. Well, OK, we then simply kill each other with wooden clubs (sarcasm out).

Once the ammo runs out hunting will also become somewhat difficult for the survivalist, unless they have muzzle loading muskets, flints and are able to make their own powder because with such muskets it is possible, as they are smooth bore, to also shoot pebbles instead of lead balls.

Growing food, livestock keeping, and other cannot be done on the move and will require a settled communities.

© 2021

Let's kick carbon

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Well, this is the latest slogan of the renewable energy companies and the advocates of wind and solar and, don't get me wrong, I am all for this but, and now comes the but, we have a problem with both the turbines and the panels and that is the “end of life” solutions, for which there seem to be none.

The blades of the huge turbines cannot be recycled are are actually classed as hazardous waste, much like nuclear minus the radiation and there are issues with dealing with the “end of life” disposal of PV panels as well, it would appear.

That aside, let us start at the beginning. Those turbines and panels don't just grow naturally. They are manufactured from components that are also manufactured and the raw materials which are mined or whatever. All those processes create carbon emissions and I seriously have to ask whether those are being negated over the short lifespan that those turbines and panels actually have. The same goes for batteries for EVs, though that is a separate issue.

The lifespan of one of those big wind turbines is no more than 20 years after which it has to be dismantled, at a huge financial as well as environmental cost, and they still talk about “kicking carbon”. Small turbines that power a property, as long as we could consider changing the voltage and current kind that we are working with, are cheap to make – they can even be home-constructed (from trash components no less) – and can be maintained cheaply and have a much greater lifespan.

In order to really and truly kick carbon emissions and using “green” electricity we need to change the voltage, first and foremost, that we are using. We need to use that kind that can be produced by PVs on roofs and small wind turbines and that is nominal 13.5V DC and not 220/240V AC (or 110V AC as may be the case in the USA) and put 12 Volt DC circuits into our homes, offices and small workshops. Lighting can be easily and efficiently today with LEDs (yes, the also have a carbon cost attached to manufacture) and low voltage and even most of our electronics today need less than 12 Volt DC even. Even refrigerators and freezers are available in 12 V DC – generally for RV and yacht use.

And we have to change our energy, as in electricity, use. But the aim, by governments, is to go almost all electric, be that in the home, in transportation, everywhere. It would appear, however, that no one has actually worked out how that is supposed to work with the grid often already overstretched with just the few electric electric vehicles being plugged in to charge of an evening.

They know far well that with renewables, as in sun and wind, and maybe, just maybe, water, they cannot provide for the need and demand and hence they are advocating nuclear as a “green” option. Methinks they have forgotten something and that is the aftercare of nuclear, whether in the disposal of the waste or in the decommissioning of the plants. And then there are the possibilities of accidents or even, the gods forbid, an attack on such facilities.

Nuclear fusion is still very much in its infancy, despite the fact that good results have been achieved in some tests some years ago. However, so far no one really wants to go the fusion route, and that not only as regards to the problem of cooling. The main “problem”, so to speak, is that there will be no material falling on that can be weaponized.

We have to change the way we do things in order to truly “kick carbon” but neither governments, nor industry, as well as most individuals, are not prepared to do that.

We need to look more towards small wind and small solar – on every building – so that every building becomes a small power plant, rather than looking at ever bigger solar and wind farms and ever bigger turbines.

The main stumbling block for small wind and small solar on every home are the vested interests of the energy companies. Couldn't have households and small businesses being – more or less – independent from the energy producers, couldn't we now. And where would the income be for government from this as well? It can all be done but the will is simply not there. Lots of talk and lots of complicated solutions being suggested rather than finding easy solutions which often stare us in the face.

© 2021