Jun 06 2008
Gear crunchers: Don’t strip your gears!
When I was nine years old, my brother used to tell me that when he saw me shifting my bike without moving. I never knew what it meant but I imagined little cogs flying off the bike if I pushed on the shift lever too hard. A lot has changed in the last thirty years but that saying still remains.
Today bikes have up to 30 gears. Chains got stronger and thinner and all bikes got a whole lot lighter. But we still have shifters connected to derailleurs via little cables and derailleurs trying to push the chain from one gear to the next. And in most cases, they still wont shift unless your pedaling. So can you still strip your gears? Sort of.
