Capreo versus Dog

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.