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This is kind of a an incomplete post, I'd like it to have a more detailed conclusion, but it would require some investment and I'm cheap. But it's an interesting bike topic and I wanted to share. I work at a bike shop, we have a customer who recently did 10k miles on a stock 50cc scooter, one of the more impressive feats of bike riding I've ever heard of, so this sort of thing felt very relevant to me. Some time ago I came across an old post on reddit about a woman on a moped trip around the world with her husband: https://www.reddit.com/r/moped/comments/2mefku/gerda_waigand_and_puch_ms50_take_a_brief_break_at/  The story was impressive. I work on mopeds a bit and own several. Most of them, unless they're particularly nice ones, struggle to do 30mph. And I did the Cannonball coast to coast on a 1923 bike which topped out at about 31, so I know what it's like to go a long way at those speeds. It's actually a really nice experience, if you can get a good route off the main roads, I recommend it.  Somewhere online you can find references to this woman in a google books copy of a magazine from 1999 or so reprinting a magazine from 1959. I found a copy of the 1959 magazine on ebay and bought it.    Apologies for the crappy photos, I really should scan the thing properly. I got the hard copy because there are some really fascinating points in this article: - 50cc bike from the mid 50s, which has a theoretical top speed of 35mph. I know from experience on old rear end small bikes that if the manufacturer or wikipedia said it would do 35, it will probably only do it downhill. - Riding 2 up on a bike that was only designed for 1, which means it would be moving much slower than its top speed. - Riding with lots of luggage too, so even slower than that. - Claimed average 30mph speed. Given the above points, this is almost totally implausible. Even wide open speed would likely not be this high, much less the average speed. - Claimed average of 250 miles per day. On the Cannonball the longest day I did was less than that, starting at about 7am, and only stopping for gas and a relatively brief lunch. - Claimed 150 mpg. I don't think any modern bike claims this level of efficiency, even with normal loading. This bike was heavily overloaded, claiming 150lb of gear. - Claimed 33,000 miles with only one top end replacement. I have never seen any 50cc bike with mileage like this on a single top end. The highest I'm aware of would be a modern scooter with around 10k, and those are usually needing engine work. - Claimed 24 tires over 33,000 miles, a tire replaced every 1400 or so, which actually is kinda plausible. - Alex met Gerda on the other side of the world already on the trip, and she married him only 3 weeks later and hopped on the bike for the rest of the trip. - Alex actually did a lot of this kind of riding before he met Gerda, on multiple bikes. Some of these points are charming, some are surprising, some are plausible but extreme, and some sound like total bullshit to me. I did a lot of googling on the couple, and discovered that the guy's name is actually Stefan. He was known to Puch Mopeds corporate because they did a promotional ad with him in it.  He is also known to vintage central European small bike authors, because he's mentioned in a couple modern books and at least one magazine from the era.  The Motorcyclist article describes Stefan ("Alex") as an author, but I think the only writing he ever did was related to his bike trip while he was on the bike trip for magazines, because I can find no evidence of anything he ever wrote on the internet. I can find no further info on the lives of Stefan or Gerda, whether they're alive or dead, but the photo evidence in the articles I have seen so far seems to confirm that he/they really did do the mileage advertised. They really did circle the globe and then some. This strikes me as something that might be record breaking in some manner and I'm surprised it's not more well known. I have to think, though, based on my riding and mechanical experience, that some of the details presented are fabrications. I would like to know more, and found a few sources that could be explored, but they're all rare out-of-print non-English publications, and I don't quite wanna spend that time and money to delve further.  Anyway that's all I got, thanks for reading. P.S. I chose the Small Pastry tag because Stefan was from Vienna and good pastries come from Vienna.
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Aug 14, 2021 02:38
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 09:36 |
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Their Puch was a multi speed shifter, if I'm not mistaken, so it would do better than the 70s Puchs we normally think of in TYOOL 2021 I suppose. No idea what mods might have been available back in the day but all of the texts I found about the Waigands specifically said 50cc. I've seen other Puchs that were >50cc from the era of course, but none of them looked anything like the one in the photos. I suppose it's possible they had a big bore on it and were not telling anyone about it. Even a 70/80cc would struggle to do the speeds they're claiming with their loading though, I think...
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Aug 14, 2021 03:44
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ADINSX posted:I wanna hear more about this, do you have more pictures? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3nBn-wYpJA
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Aug 14, 2021 18:22
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Shelvocke posted:This is a great read too, although a little grim at times with her bad luck
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Aug 21, 2021 03:34
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