[Yak] Slowing a bike by means other than the brakes

[charles voigtsberger]

I find that if I stand straight up on the bike with the pedals even with each other and have a jacket open but fastened at the bottom I can slow the bike by two to three mph without applying the brakes at all. I think it was on the tandem website that someone was talking about developing a jacket that would operate much like a drogue chute on the space shuttle. At last report they were still working on a successful prototype. Once when my wife and I were experimenting with rain capes we found that the drag effect created by the rain capes increased the faster we tried to peddle. I haven't done any experiments with the rain cape since that one episode to see if that effect was present on a long hill and if so, how much difference it made. 
Chuck Voigtsberger
Ventura CA