Effective cycling

Overview: Effective Cycling is an essential handbook for cyclists from beginner to expert, whether daily commuters or weekend pleasure trippers. This thoroughly updated seventh edition offers cyclists the information they need for riding a bicycle under all conditions: on congested city streets or winding mountain roads, day or night, rain or shine. It describes the sheer physical joy of cycling and provides the nuts-and-bolts details of how to choose a bicycle, maintain it, and use it in the most efficient manner. Effective Cycling covers the bicycle itself, repairs and maintenance, basic and advanced cycling skills, and how traffic is organized. It describes cycling with friends, bicycle tours, increasing physical endurance, racing, and even finding a cyclist as marriage partner. Throughout, author John Forester emphasizes that cyclists should consider themselves drivers of vehicles in traffic. That means obeying the rules of the road, because when all drivers obey the same rules, they don't have collisions. Forester explains why cyclists should not be afraid to cycle in traffic, and he urges them to resist being shunted off into government-sponsored bike paths as if they were incompetent children. Cyclists fare best, he says, when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles. Effective Cycling will help owners of bicycles dusty from disuse become active cyclists and veteran cyclists improve their techniques and achieve their cycling goals. Each section moves from basic to advanced topics; readers are encouraged get on a bicycle and practice each activity after reading about it.

Includes index.

Prefaces -- Introduction -- Bicycle: -- Mechanical safety and operational inspection -- Bicycles, tools, equipment, and clothing -- Steering and handling -- Brakes -- Gears -- Shapes of bicycles -- Dimensional standards -- Maintenance: -- Wired-on tires and pumps -- Tubular tires -- Cleaning and lubrication -- Bearings -- Installing wheels in a frame -- Matching hubs to fork ends -- Adjusting derailleurs -- Hub gears -- Cranks and chainwheels -- Chains -- Free wheels, freehubs, and clusters -- Rims and spokes -- Building wheels -- Leather -- Cyclist: -- Basic skills: posture, pedaling, and maneuvering -- Emergency maneuvers -- Keeping your body going -- Physiology and technique of hard riding -- Cycling Environment: -- Basic principles of traffic cycling -- Why and wherefore of traffic law -- Accidents -- Where to ride on the roadway -- Avoiding straight-road hazards -- Changing lanes in traffic -- Riding the intersections -- Riding at night -- Riding in the rain -- Riding in cold weather -- Enjoying Cycling: -- Commuting and utility cycling -- Mountain riding -- Club cycling -- Touring -- Racing -- Cycling with love -- Cycling In Society: -- How society pictures cycling -- Bike-s…