Sheldon Brown, Everything You Could Possibly Want to Know About Bicycles

“Everyone I know in bicycling is at least a little bit crazy, present company included.” – Sheldon Brown

Sheldon Brown (1944-2008) was the webmaster and general tech guru at Harris Cyclery in West Newton, MA. He was a contributing writer for Bike World, Bicycling, American Bicyclist, and Adventure Cycling magazines. He built the Harris Cyclery website in 1995, not too many years after the advent of the world wide web. Still the go to site for hard to find information about bicycle maintenance, obscure bike parts and articles on subjects ranging from bike fit to how to use brakes. The site is still being updated and maintained and improved. What’s New at sheldonbrown.com lists new contributions and is a good index.

Some gems I discovered doing this blog post:

“Knee Over Pedal Spindle” or K.O.P.S. has been a rule of thumb when determining saddle position as part of bike fitting for as long as I can remember. Pshaw, say Sheldon and Keith Bontrager in this article.

A Rivendell downhill bike with NanoDrive? I also like the Bianchi with a Monospoke wheelset!

This article about braking. In one interview he described it as the most important article he ever wrote. I still need to work on this, since after 40 plus years of bike riding, in most panic stop situations I always skid my back tire and take a longer time to come to a stop than if I had used more front brake.