Bicycle Computers for Dummies

typical tire size chart

Around the Antisocial Network, the most serious infractions of house rules – such as failing to make a new pot of coffee when you drink the last cup – are punished by being assigned to "dead links" duty. The offender must check a list of a hundred or so past nominees to determine whether the freelance post in question has been deleted. In the case of Leaf Group sites, the post is usually replaced with a "similar" topic¹ or, in some cases, rewritten². Recently, our staffers found two old articles by eHowian Rocco Pendola that had been removed. The Healthfully.com replacement for one, a post titled "How to Set the Wheel Size in a Bike Computer," turned out to be just as bad. It was written by... wait for it... Rocco Pendola.

Both of Rocco's previous awards, believe it or not, were for cycling-related topics. In this latest, he once again travels to the canonical website of the late Sheldon Brown and once more botches the master's instructions. Here's some of what Pendola had to say...

"Generally, you can look to your tire's sidewall to locate its size, match this number--usually something like 700 X 23 or 26 X 2.0--to a code in your bike computer's owner's manual and follow these instructions to enter the code into the computer."

Well, no, Rocco, you can't: that's only true of a few computers sold in discount stores. Real cyclocomputers don't have "codes" for tire sizes, because they're inaccurate. Instead, you enter the wheel rollout. Rocco sort of tried to explain this latter, rewording Brown's instructions for measuring rollout, including this ridiculously stupid step:

"Calculate your result by 2.54 to get centimeters and 25.4 to get millimeters if your tape measure uses inches."

Dear Rocco, and dearest Content Editor³: the word you probably wanted was "multiply." "Calculate" makes no sense!

The reality of Pendola's post, however, is that – as is often the case for eHow contributors – the moron didn't answer the question. The OQ wanted to know how to set the wheel size (which is, in and of itself, wrong: s/he wanted the tire size), not how to measure it. The instructions vary widely depending on the manufacturer and model of cyclocomputer. At the moment, there are four different cyclocomputers in the AN bicycle lockup, and they have four different methods for setting tire size.

The upshot? Rocco blew the cyclocomputer size question yet again, making this the second time he's failed to get it right. Perhaps having a degree in urban studies (whatever that is) and being a "freelance grant writer" don't provide a good educational basis for writing about bicycles. Probably not, though being a Dumbass of the Day certainly seems to work for Pendola. ¹ It's quite common to find that, as Joan Osborne might say, "The cure is worse than the disease": the replacement's just as bad as the original. ² ibid. ³ The person, usually an unemployed English or "communications" graduate, charged with maintaining house style and (occasionally, but usually not) checking the posts for accuracy

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