Triathlon bar came today from China, 18 euros delivered.
3 speed grandmother bicycle is in service (actually rear wheel only), Renault bicycle lost pedal which efficiently destroyed crank too, so I had only two single speed grandmother bicycles left + 1 that is in pieces as I'm not sure if I start restauration on that one (it is heavily rusted from 50's or early 60's).
Today it was very windy, staying on one place felt like riding normal speed at calm day as I visited shop with grandmother bike (that one is from somewhere from 60's) gust tend to cut speed right immediately to half.
So I put triathlon bar to newer single speed grandmother bicycle, it is from somewhere mid 80's I guess.
With triathlon bars equipped 1980's grandmother bike I managed to ride same route bit faster than earlier with less wind with Renault bicycle, that is 21 gears vs one gear, also it is upright vs triathlon position.
Gearing was way too short most of the time, I could coast half of trip both ways, climbing that hill was of course harder than coming back, but still wind has virtually no impact to my riding, surely strong gusts I could feel and those took speed down a bit, but I could coast down to headwind too, which resulted bicycle stopping in seconds when trying same at upright position.
That much wind has effect even at those relatively low speeds, such single gear bicycle is not the fastest because of gearing, those are made for elderly people for easy slow bicycling.
Should of taken GPS with me to take some speed readings down.
Soon I can bicycle with t-shirt or long sleeves instead of huge overcoat as temperatures rise a bit, then I should get better performance because I don't need to wear that parachute.
I think that aerodynamic panniers are way to go next, I need panniers for shopping so might do some metal wire bending and cover thing with old cloth or two, then spray paint over it, that should be better than my current panniers that are not form keeping type and those have nothing aero about them.
I did research some of that and most of what I find are made so that there is taper at front and straight edge at rear, thing is, legs are front of those panniers so why to even bother making any taper to front? Making template matching shape to rear should provide much more drag reduction than those over 300 costing commercial items, one or two old sheets and some enough thick metal wire are rather cheap, need just weld frame from metal wire and those should be easy to take off too, when not needed.
Silly thing happened at the morning while bicycling on upright position, big truck came against me, while it passed it send so strong gust of air towards me that I had to pedal at full power to prevent bicycle from literally stopping, now I'll say that at any speed aero is important when you account such events to equation, those kind of events are just routine on road, same goes for other wind gusts etc. That is why I'm strongly against generalization of aero being not meaningful unless travelling fast enough, more proper would be to say that aero is not meaningful until above certain air speed, which is completely different from ground speed.
You can gain from aero even if moving backwards, that is if you don't want to go any faster backwards and try to keep speed in check by pedalling forward, that is purely silly and perhaps very difficult to achieve, but still with aero only thing that matters is airspeed, something sadly so often forgotten in discussions of aero, with cars and other things.