"Long Bike Trip
A man decided that he was going to ride a 10-speed bike from Phoenix to Flagstaff, Arizona (about 140 miles). He got as far as Black Canyon City (about 40 miles) before the mountains just became too much and he could go no farther.
He stuck his thumb out, but after 3 hours hadn't gotten a single person to stop. Finally, a guy in a Corvette pulled over and offered him a ride. Of course, the bike wouldn't fit in the car. The owner of the Corvette found a piece of rope lying by the highway and tied it to his bumper. He tied the other end to the bike and told the man that if he was going too fast, to honk the horn on his bike and that he would slow down.
Everything went fine for the first 30 miles. Suddenly,
another Corvette blew past them. Not to be out done, the Corvette pulling the bike took off after the other. A short distance down the road, the Corvettes, both going well over 120 MPH, blew through a speed trap.
The police officer noted the speeds from his radar gun and radioed to the other officer that he had two Corvettes headed his way at over 120 MPH.
He then relayed, ""...and you're not going to believe this,
but there's guy on a 10 speed bike honking to pass.""
"
pedal power
Good joke. Here's the way I thought it would end.
The cop let the drivers go...but gave the cyclist a ticket for speeding.
Not nearly as clever or funny, but them's my politics getting in the way of my laugh reflex.
"One of my university office-mate Jim was a pretty serious cyclist. But nonetheless not a racer. He got a ticket one day on campus drive. The cop wrote him for speeding at 40 mph on a 25 mph zone.
So he went to traffic court with a few of his buddies along just for laughes. The judge threw the ticket out ""no way can a bike traveling that fast"". Jim is tall and strong and CAN ride fast sometimes. He thought he might be going at most 30 mph but didn't think he was anywhere close to 40. We thought he should have just paid the fine and mount the ticket in a frame and hang it on the wall. What would his children think of their dad?"
"A cyclist rides from Point A to Point B at an average speed of 10 MPH. How fast would he have to ride from Point B back to Point A (same route) so that his average speed for the entire round trip would be 20 MPH?
""Chainwheel"""
"Chainwheel, I'm still a little groggy this morning, but... if the cyclist in your problem rode a ""Litespeed"" at the speed of light on the way back from 'B' to 'A' he'd be close enough to a 20mph average speed that the normal cycling computer could not pick up the difference. And that's pretty fast.
George"
"You got it. And the mass of the Litespeed at the speed of light would be HUGE according to Mr. Einstein (not to mention the mass of the rider).
""Chainwheel"""
It depends. My first answer is 30mph. But if it's a club ride then one needs to factor in a lunch stop which would bump the average speed of the return leg up quite a bit. Either way, unless you are Lance and are totally stoked, it better be a return trip down a gentle mountain pass if yer gonna achieve 20mph.
Peter, let's check the math:
Let's assume the distance from 'A' to 'B' is 10 miles, that takes an hour to ride at 10mph. The ride home at 30mph would take 20 minutes. Total time for a 20 mile ride would be 1 hour and 20 minutes, the average speed would be a good deal less than 20mph for the whole trip. Even if we bumped the return to 60mph, the total time traveled would be 1 hour and 10 minutes. To average 20 mph for the trip you would need to finish the 20 mile trip in one hour, the time used on the way out! I'd have to eat SOME incredible lunch to do that!!!
George
"It's a matter of semantics. If you do not reset your cyclecomputer, then you are absolutely correct; otherwise 30 is correct. (I just muddled things a bit with the lunch comment while writing this before eating breakfast-so strike that).
The trick is how average speed is defined; ""Chainwheel"" was not perfectly clear on this. One is a cumulative average and the other is an average of two discrete samples. Given the context of this thread, he probably implied the former - the same thought as yours. I'm sure the majority of others think the same way.
Anyway, as you illustrated, that is why I do not pay much bother to the average speed of my bike's computer. Just a few stops at traffic lights will really weigh down the average speed. This is so even if the computer only calc avg speed while your bike is moving. The (de)acclerating from stops alone is enough of an avg speed anchor.
The Cunning CyclistTM will reset his computer before heading back."
"If this was a question on grammatical syntax would that make you a Cunning Linguist TM?"
