remix logo

Hacker Remix

Woman, 82, still rides same bike she was given at 13

120 points by tcfhgj 4 days ago | 164 comments

delichon 4 days ago

I'm in my early sixties. My longest owned possession died last week. It was a dinner plate from the set that my mom served us with growing up. I still used it every day. I put a butter dish down on it a bit too hard and it shattered. Bringing it to the trash can felt like a funeral procession.

Somewhere along the line I read advice not to let objects become totems. I heeded that over the years and have let things go when they seemed to acquire power over me. But sometimes I wish I held on to a few more things from sentiment if not practicality.

WillAdams 4 days ago

For every quality, well-made object there is a point in its existence where it should be evaluated for a transition from usable item to heirloom --- if one chooses to structure their life to include the responsibility and obligation of caring for heirlooms.

I have a ceramic milk jug of my great-great-grandfather who was a Civil war veteran (alongside his son) which my daughter will take responsibility for when she gets her first home --- it may be that she will donate it to a library or museum --- her choice.

Similarly, I have thousands of books --- my will directs that any which my children do not wish to keep are to be taken to my memorial/funeral service and each person attending will be asked to take at least one, and to relate how they knew me and why they picked the book which they did. (A project for future me is to get acid-free bookplates w/ archival adhesive and apply them to all my books, or maybe I'll just print bookmarks on acid-free paper and put one in each book)

Unfortunately, none of the bikes which I had when I was younger survived/were kept (in particular, the Huffy Wind 15-speed had its frame bent on a rainy day because I was never taught to put your foot on the front wheel to slow down) --- currently have two, a folding Montague Swissbike and a Twicycle --- we'll see how they hold up and if I get a third (lusting for a Helix folding bike).

Lastly, while I don't have the exact bow (Bear Archery Little Bear) which I got for Christmas when I was 10, I bought one like to it for my son when he expressed an interest in archery, so at least he has that.

toomuchtodo 4 days ago

I love your comment, because you are intentional about where your possessions should go after you are gone, and for sentimental reasons. Others should take note, these discussions and thoughts should take place before death. Otherwise, it'll all end up at Goodwill or similar, without any of the meaning passed down. "This mattered to me, and I hope it matters to you because X."

Also, strongly consider not waiting until death to pass along heirlooms. Give them when you can still enjoy someone else enjoying them, it keeps the memories alive through time. Possessions are fleeting, but we remember how something (or someone) made us feel.

graemep 4 days ago

I love the book idea. I might copy it.

WillAdams 4 days ago

Thanks! I'm flattered.

Might make a nice tradition for bibliophiles. Somewhat evocative of the "I was a friend of <the deceased>." from Frank Herbert's _Dune_ which is where I got the idea from --- that and a friend's funeral where his nieces seemed somewhat taken aback by folks such as myself who were in attendance whom they had could not recall having seen before (the only one I had seen previously was a babe in arms at the time, and that didn't seem meet to bring up).

The kids are also supposed to take all the unopened bottles from my liquor cabinet and offer them to the Honor Guard/Chaplain as a thank you, with a request that they use them to drink a toast in my honor at some later occasion.

xandrius 4 days ago

Not sure how many pieces it broke into but it could have been a quite interesting project of kintsugi.

techjamie 4 days ago

My longest held possession is my wallet. My mom got it for me at the dollar store when I was 5, I still use it at 32.

My mom died when I was 20, so I've had this wallet for a few years longer than I ever had with her.

somat 4 days ago

Man, what is it about these wallets. I am still using one I acquired in fifth grade, it is sort a mess now 30 years later, and people keep giving me wallets to replace it, which I appreciate, but my ratty old wallet still works, and I have sort of grown fond of it after all this time.

CobaltFire 4 days ago

Mine is probably my wallet as well.

My wife gave it to me about 18 years ago (when we were dating). We laugh about me looking for a replacement, but never do.

Freak_NL 4 days ago

A deep and wide orange cast iron casserole pan my grandmother bought after the war back when you needed to get on a waiting list for an item like that because metal just wasn't available in large quantities for homeware yet.

She gave it to me a few years before her death because she couldn't lift it safely any more, and knew I would actually use it and appreciate it. Suffice to say that I still use it frequently, and hope to have it see its centennial jubilee in use.

bitwize 4 days ago

My dad had a leather stuffed dog he got from his mother when he was a kid. He held onto it for his entire life. When he went to his mother's funeral when she died in her 90s, he brought the leather dog with him and placed it in her coffin -- symbolically to act as a sort of guardian/psychopomp in the hereafter.

It was one of the most beautiful partings with a cherished object I'd ever heard of.

jamal-kumar 4 days ago

I got injured a couple of times in the past few years enough to need crutches to walk on broken limbs and a neighbor gave me her old 100+ year old wood ones. Found them to be way better than the new aluminium ones that they make now. They may not have any padding at all, and are somewhat heavier, but I just found they were more comfortable to use somehow. The foam padding on the new ones causes chafing and absorbs stuff like your hand sweat which gets really gross in tropical countries.

I definitely don't need them anymore but keep them around as a cool antique which I might need again someday and as a reminder that contemporary designs aren't necessarily better... Crazy that they've been in service for longer than anyone alive in my family.

UniverseHacker 4 days ago

I think in general “padding” doesn’t work as well for human bodies as its popularity implies. It feels more comfortable for the first few seconds but less so afterwards. Usually it puts pressure on soft tissues in a way that cuts off blood flow and nerve function, whereas our body is already shaped and evolved to interact properly with firm surfaces with our own padding and bones in just the right places.

For example, serious long distance cyclists mostly still use old fashioned hard leather saddles, which case a lot less pain and numbness on a long ride than the modern padded ones.

Gigachad 4 days ago

No racing bike seats are padded. The leather ones are really just an aesthetic choice.

Those fat padded seats only come on those $200 bikes sold to people who don’t ride bikes because it looks more comfortable.

UniverseHacker 3 days ago

This information is not accurate. Tensioned leather saddles are in no way an aesthetic choice, but a radically different design that is more comfortable. I’m a long distance cyclist and only use Brooks saddles. The entire seat is tensioned heavy leather that shapes to your body over time rather than having a hard molded section with padding over it. See here: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/leather.html

Modern race seats are molded material- plastic or carbon fiber, with a small layer of padding and then a covering. There may be race seats without padding, but most have a little. They have a small amount of padding that is then often used with padded shorts.

pandaman 4 days ago

Padding works very well to dampen vibrations, without it a body part in prolonged contact with a vibrating hard surface will accumulate trauma pretty quickly and will be out of use. The leather bicycle saddles have a similar effect as the leather is not nearly as hard as the seat post or steel rails it stretched between and it's flexible enough to not pass high frequency vibrations from the seat post to the soft tissue. This is also why leather had been used forever as padding on tool handles.

wizzwizz4 4 days ago

Padding can have a hard surface on top of it. For most tools, this is unnecessary (you can adjust your grip), but for other things it might matter.

UniverseHacker 2 days ago

Yeah, leather saddles also often have an actual suspension with springs. Suspension systems of almost any kind are great for bodies, especially if you can make them not involve overly soft surfaces directly against your body.

quitit 4 days ago

I see this quite often with gym equipment. If it's designed poorly no amount of padding helps, while better designed equipment may not even have much more than a rubberised pad for grip.

fy20 4 days ago

Mattresses as well. When we moved into our house it came with some furniture, including a bed with a memory foam mattress in the master. After a few days I noticed I was getting back pain and figured it was just from unpacking.

One time I feel asleep in the other bedroom, with our old mattress which was a lot firmer, and I woke up without any pain. Tried a few times on both, and yes, the firmer mattress is better for me.

funkyfourier 4 days ago

This summer I went through a lengthy process of replacing one of the cogwheels in my Bosch e-bike motor from 2012. The cogwheel is known to break in this revision of Bosch motors, and an improved replica is available on ebay. This cost me totally around €250. Right after that the brakes had to be replaced probably because of hydraulic liquid leakage which was another €400.

The miracle is that the battery is still chugging along, my guess is that it must be around 70% capacity compared to new. I do realize this was quite a big gamble since who knows how much longer the battery will last.

I wish e-bikes was designed to be more modular and less proprietary so you could easily swap out for example (parts of) the motor and battery for a reasonable sum. As examplified in TFA the frame can last more or less forever and the rest of the parts are changeable and can also last a pretty long time.

Next time I get an e-bike I will probably convert an mechanical bike using a Bafang kit or something like that, since they seem to have more of those traits.

woleium 4 days ago

Bosch is awful. three different mounting arrangements for the same model motor, seemingly just to confuse.

Ebikes can be repairable, but a lot of the prefab ones are truly awful, intentionally confusing wiring and controllers that are locked down, etc.

Better to build your own, check the endless sphere forums for some good guides.

this thread covers why prebuilt ones are unfixable https://endless-sphere.com/sphere/threads/tons-of-dead-1-2-y...

lb1lf 4 days ago

Bosch is a huge company, and attitudes vary across divisions. I've been spending more time than I care about talking with their hydraulics division - Bosch/Rexroth, earlier known as Mannesmann/Rexroth.

Their manic attention to detail is only surpassed by an almost fanatical devotion to documentation and standardization.

They still make replacement parts for 30+ year old designs, and sounded almost apologetic when explaining to me (very patiently) that a critical component for an embedded device manufactured in Western Germany was no longer available, so I had to upgrade the control to the next generation (introduced way back in 2012 or so...).

No sweat - the replacement device could be configured as a drop-in replacement.

I wish more companies were like that.

Gud 4 days ago

Are we in need of a Framework-like company for e-bikes? Or any other industry?

Devices built from the ground up to be modular, not because of regulations, but because of market forces?

Moto7451 4 days ago

The original way you built an e-bike was with a motor hub, wires, some sort of speed controller, and a battery pack. You had to figure out what that all meant in practice for your frame of choice but there were several forums for bikes that could help. I’m sure all that is on Reddit now as well.

Framework is solving the “I’d like something modular but slicker than a Clevo and with a support line that is willing to go a bit further than selling an ODM unit to a middle man like Sager.”

If you don’t know who Clevo is but you know who Framework is, that means Framework’s plan is winning.

For E Bikes there are a couple big brands with good support and some boutiques that will take care of you. The big box store stuff using Bosch parts are more of a Wild West.

Gud 4 days ago

What I really want are open standards.

Standard battery inter connectors, software APIs, etc.

wizzwizz4 4 days ago

We have most of those, but they're high-level abstractions (voltage levels, Vulkan), so you need bulky translation layers (shims, drivers) to interoperate with the hardware.

What I really want is detailed schematics, ideally machine-readable, so I can attach things together at the lowest level that my use-case requires, while still able to use high-level interfaces if I need to.

When two devices that naturally speak the same, simple wire protocol have to interoperate via USB-C because of regulations, I cry a little. This isn't how things were meant to be, and isn't what the regulations were meant to achieve.

Gigachad 4 days ago

There already are ebike conversion kits like that. The problem is they generally aren’t legal since they aren’t capped at a certain speed. And the battery packs have a history of exploding in flames

woleium 4 days ago

most controllers can set a max limit for speed, alternately you could just be a responsible user, like with a motor vehicle.

petre 4 days ago

Actually there is a small bike company named Framework that was featured on Gravel Cyclist YT channel two weeks ago.

https://youtu.be/UlXSB5Inr-A

ywvcbk 4 days ago

DIY is mostly hub motors (which are just meh..) though? Or is building a mid-drive one actually feasible?

93po 4 days ago

I had a mid-drive ebike and while it definitely shined on the extreme hills found in Seattle, i think my next ebike is gonna be a wheel hub motor type and just be really over-powered. Trying to change gears while under power or applying power too early after a shift was super annoying and constantly caused the chain to slip off and made terrible clunky noises.

I think front hub motor + internal geared hub on back + belt drive is the ideal bike for me. Only downside is not getting to do power wheelies :)

ywvcbk 4 days ago

Never had a similar experience with a mid-drive. I’ve found every bike with a hub motor I’ve tried disappointing on hilly terrain or with a lot of start/stop and if you only cycle on flat what’s even the point of having an ebike? (Assuming it’s one that’s legal in Europe).

whamlastxmas 3 days ago

A Europe legal hub drive is gonna be super weak. My hub drive isnt technically legal but cops literally can’t be bothered to do their basic jobs these days in the US so it’s not like I’m ever gonna get caught

tcfhgj 4 days ago

what about something like pinion e-drive system?

93po 3 days ago

that's super cool, i hadn't seen that before. hopefully it becomes more common and the price comes down.

dn3500 4 days ago

I am 70 and still have the bike my father bought me when I was 14. I ride it every day. The only original parts are the frame, the rear brake post, and the head bearing nut.

drzaiusx11 4 days ago

I'm in my 40s and still ride the bike given to me by a friend in childhood as my primary bike. Everything besides the (slightly modified) steel frame has been swapped out numerous times.

I enjoy working on my bikes as they're fairly standard as far as parts go. Swapped the original 26" tires for 640Bs, removed front derailleur for more rear gears, changed hand bars, etc. The bike has grown and changed along with me through the years.

zikduruqe 4 days ago

I still have my BMX bike that I purchased in 1985 with my hard earned money from working on the tobacco farms as my youth.