Fifty Plus (50+) - Superman on a bicycle

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Digital Gee
01-13-08, 10:17 AM
Read this...fascinating story about riding fast over 100 years ago:

http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs610a,0,6371261.story

Retro Grouch
01-13-08, 10:26 AM
A friend and I were discussing that incident just last Friday. He said Murphy had to pedal his fixed gear at 200 rpm to get to 60 MPH. That's a lot! If that's the case, I'm thinking that 60 MPH was probably his limit.
byte_speed
01-13-08, 05:57 PM
I was looking for more pictures of Murphy and found these more recent pictures of speed record bicycles:

http://www.teammccallusa.com/history.html

Check the chainring used by the '73 record holder at the bottom. The more recent bikes appear to use an intermediate chainring to get the needed gearing.

Has anyone heard if the owners of this web page did a record attempt? The 'Press Release' page says the attempt was scheduled for late last year.

swan652
01-14-08, 04:26 PM
Set the bar pretty high for the rest of us wheel suckers didn't he?
ken cummings
01-14-08, 06:06 PM
My best wishes to McCall. I've met John Howard, handled his record bike and still have a little bag of salt scraped off of his record bike by its builder. John helped the guy who broke his record. Give him a call McCall.
Artkansas
01-14-08, 06:24 PM
Read this...fascinating story about riding fast over 100 years ago:

http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs610a,0,6371261.story

There's another bike to add to my collection, right after I get the Wright Van Cleve. ;)