.citycycling is a monthly online magazine for cycling in the city. They're by line is "no matter what you ride as long as you do"
... as long as it's not a Moulton it seems! In issue 5 they published the 10 commandments of cycling, in which they declare... thou shalt not commit moultonery... this sacrilege aside, the other 9 commandments are hilarious, and the magazine is a great read.
If you use a search engine to find information on Moulton bicycles, you're unlikely to search too far before encounteringDave Moulton's blog
You might be disappointed at first, that Dave's bikes have rather large wheels, compared to the bicycles of Alex Moulton.
However, if you look a little deeper, Dave's bicycles are rather beautiful too.
Dave is a retired frame builder, who hand built steel frame bicycles from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Bikes built by Dave might have his own name on the decals, or Paris Sport, Masi, Fuso or Recherche. Fusos in particular pop up on eBay from time to time, and are still quite affordable.
I don't currently own a big wheeler, but I'd love to get my hands on a Dave Moulton !
He's now a songwriter and author, and his blog is a great read especially for bike geeks.
Went for a nice 50k ride yesterday, and when I was 10k from home, I approached a house with a long driveway. As I approached, I saw a young boy calling after his dog who had started to sprint down the driveway. As I passed the driveway, the dog was in full sprint, barking and agressive. He caught me, came close and made me think he was going to bite me at the ankles. I took some evasive action, upped my speed a bit, while the dog circled and came at me again.
Three times, he outsprinted me, barked like hell and made aggressive movements towards my ankles. I kept thinking "when is this dog going to get tired". I don't know if he got tired, or just bored, but when I finally left him behind my Polar CS200 heart rate monitor was at 101% and I was in the Shimano Capreo's 9 smallest tooth sprocket.
The Capreo freehub with it's 9-10-11-13-15-17-20-23-26 cassette is a godsend for small wheel bikes. With my 53/38 front chainring, it gives me approx 28-118 gear range on 20 inch tyres. The 118 inch top gear allows me to keep pedalling well beyond 50km/h, which is a great boost going downhill. The only other ways to achieve such a high gear on a Moulton is either use monster size chainrings (which I really dislike), or a Schlumpf Speed Drive. This is an expensive, but very nicely engineered internal planetary gear system that replaces your bottom bracket, and takes standard chainrings. I have seen one Pashley Moulton APB modified with a speed drive and double chainring, giving an amazing range of gears.
Some pictures from the Moulton Summit 2007
Every year, Japanese Moulton owners take their lovingly restored and upgraded Moultons on a trip through that beautiful country. Alex Moulton Bicycles takes the event quite seriously too, with Shaun Moulton making the trip most years. I haven't found any reports on the event this year so I don't know if there was any product news or gossip!
This picture of another AM Speed S caught my eye...
... and again...
Not sure I'd buy the double pylon in this colour
