Bike Noises

Bikes really do grab people's imagination in a way that takes them beyond a simple means of transport to something much deeper.

For example, people feel they want to devote a large amount of their time to producing a short bit of music, played entirely on bike parts.

To be honest I get the obsession, even if I am decidedly non-musical and unlikely to get far with doing anything similar. For me the noises a bike makes are important in other ways. That swoosh of tyres on wet ground, the sound as a tyre bites into a fast dirt corner and the lovely rattle of a bike skipping over rocks with the whir of fast pedalling and the screaming of hot brakes. Then there are the bad noises, the first indications of something wearing out, for example the slow realisation that I am feeling and hearing the death of yet another freewheel as I ride a bike home from work. Perhaps this time I will take the plunge and try a freehub replacement rather than ditching the wheel altogether.

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