10-Speed Bikes for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLVI

Click this backward, Nicole???

When it comes to "instructions" for a task, it's pretty obvious that writers are "talking through their hats" when you see them spending more page space on peripherally-related topics than on the actual instructions. For example, if you ask someone how to change a spark plug and they spend half of their "answer" telling you about how Henry Ford's Model T line changed manufacturing... Well, that's what caught our collective eye with today's nominee, one Nicole Vulcan and her azCentral.com post, "How to Ride a 10 Speed Bicycle."

Vulcan, in her Demand Media-required introduction¹, wasted her first 70 words explaining that no one makes 10-speeds any more before (incorrectly) gushing that,

"If you have a classic 10 speed and want to learn to ride it, you should find it as simple as riding other bikes."

Based on our staffers' observations, riding a multispeed bicycle is apparently not particularly simple, mostly because people don't know how to shift one. Vulcan is, sadly, among the ignorant. We base that on her "instructions" for shifting... but more on that in a minute.

Nicole's post clocked in at almost 700 words, of which at least half were padding. Most of her excess verbiage was about how to fit a bike and notes on where everything is, including such drivel as,

• "The chain moves onto the front chainwheels and the back sprockets to move into the various gears on the bike..." – Sort of correct, but rather clumsy.
• "Locate the gear shifters on the bike; these may be levers in the middle of the handlebars..." – Say what?

While Vulcan's attempt at padding is fairly inept, it's when she gets to describing shifting the multispeed bicycle that her post gets ridiculous. First, though, here's a brief primer on how the gears of bicycle are supposed to be used:

A larger gear in front (the chainwheels) makes the bike harder to pedal but yields a higher speed. A larger gear in the rear (the sprockets) makes the bike easier to pedal but results in a lower speed. The idea is to find a comfortable range of cadence (pedal rotation speed) and adjust the gears to maintain that cadence. If you find your cadence getting too low, downshift (smaller chainwheel or larger sprocket). If you find it too easy to pedal, upshift (larger chainwheel, smaller sprocket). 

According to Nicole, however, here is how you shift:

"Start pedaling... Continue pedaling as you shift the bike down one gear by clicking your right-hand shifter backward until you hear one click. This motion moves the rear derailleur -- which moves the chain onto the back sprockets."

According to this incompetent, you start in a high gear and "shift the bike down"? That is completely wrong. The business about "clicking... backward until you hear one click"? WTF does that even mean? And then there's this rubbish:

"Reverse the direction of the right shifter to make it harder to pedal again."

Sorry, dumbass, that only works with twist-grip shifters. Other configurations are vastly different. And finally, there's this bit of dumbassery:

"Continue pedaling as you shift the bike up by clicking your left-hand shifter backward until you hear one click. This moves the front derailleur and moves the chain onto another front chainwheel."

That reads as though you shift all the way though the gears on the back before you switch chainwheels. No, Nicole! We give up: it is intuitively obvious that our Dumbass of the Day, a "lifelong athlete... pursuing certification as a personal trainer," hasn't ridden a bicycle since she got her first driver's license... but then we already knew that. Apparently she's one of the people we see on local trails who need remedial shifting instruction!

¹ Demand Media, the former name of the company that gave us eHow and a host of oddly-named niche sites (Techwalla, ItStillWorks, Cuteness...) supplied content for azcentral.com. You can tell by the quality of their work.

SE - BICYCLES