Headsets Explained and No-Handed Wheelies

Yesterday at my new shop a guy came in with a well-worn Jamis whose headset was beyond repair. By that I mean that when I tried to turn the handlebars it would stick in notches and not spin smoothly and freely. In the Biz we call that indexing.

A headset overhaul is a pricey undertaking and a replacement would have been absurd on that particular bike, given its age, so I got to talking to the guy and asked what he likes to do on his bike. Eventually the subject of riding no-handed came up and he told me he can't ride no-handed; it was beyond his skill level, so he said. Ah-ha! I thought. A lesson, I felt coming on. 

When it comes to riding in a straight line, your bike doesn't really need you. In fact, your fidgety body is really only good for propulsion and direction changes, as far as your bike is concerned. This is because of the self-correcting power of the twin gyroscopes that come standard on every bicycle: wheels. Your wheels are always oscillating left and right along a plane, but they do it at such high frequency and to such a small range that a rider almost never notices, the gyroscopic power of the wheels overcomes the minute left/right oscillations of the wheel to keep the bike going in a straight line. (This is a super condensed and somewhat inaccurate explanation of what's really happening. If you want to know the gory details – with references to scientific literature – then click here) The two wheels of a bicycle usually oscillate at different frequencies, but that's ok because they communicate and regulate each other through the bicycle frame and fork by means of the headset. 

You can test this in real life by over-tightening the adjuster bolt and locking down the headset of a bike and rolling it down a hill at the same time as an otherwise identical bike with a proper headset. The locked bike will always fall over, eventually, in one of three scenarios: it will get going fast enough that the separate oscillation frequencies of each wheel will overcome the forward inertia of the bike and gyroscopic power of the wheels and knock it over, or at the bottom of the hill it will just fall over, as it has no means to correct it's path at low speeds, or at any other speed if it gets pushed on one side by the wind or a road irregularity it will lean and then fall over because, again, it has no ability to correct itself. The normal bicycle, however, will always ride just fine so long as it's going fast enough to maintain a gyroscope (2-3 mph usually) but not so fast as upset it aerodynamically (70+mph). I should note here that a free-standing wheel without anything attached to it would probably out-perform the bicycle at high and low speeds because it doesn't have to transmit it's moves to another wheel with it's own prerogative. Therefore, unicycles are better than bikes. 

So what I told the customer was that it isn't him that can't ride no-handed, it's his bike. After all, all he has to do is sit there, the bike will do the balancing, so long as the headset is smooth. Here is a video from the local Chicago PBS of what a machine and human can accomplish when working in perfect concord: (you might have to skip the first video)

But on to the real lesson of the day: the no-handed wheelie.
First, learn to ride no-handed. Again, if you can't do it check that your headset is smooth.
Second, learn to ride standing up, no-handed. This is easier than you think because you can sandwich the seat with your knees for support.
Once you've mastered gripping the saddle with your knees, you can practice balancing on just the pedals for short periods. Once you can stand without the saddle for a couple seconds, practice shifting your weight backwards. To stop yourself from falling back, grab the saddle with your knees. As you get braver you can fall backwards with greater inertia and as you catch the saddle you'll eventually unload enough weight off the front that it will lift off the ground. The gyroscope of the front wheel will keep it pointed forward so that it doesn't launch you when you come back down. Sometimes I like to lift the handlebars to my hands and come down with the front end. A real pro could throw a bunny-hop in the mix too.
Counter-intuitively, speed is your friend here. It will keep you going in a straight line.

Good luck and have fun!