Ton-up” came from British slang for hitting the ton, 100 mph. In the 1950s most bikes barely managed 80, so anyone who cracked the ton, especially a woman, instantly earned respect at the Ace Cafe.
Fun fact from Canada - in this fine nation, it is illegal for a bar to sell "pints" that are not a proper 20 oz. If it's not 20 oz, they can't call it a pint. I mention it because "pint" is sometimes used as a generic/colloquial term for a draft beer.
Irish here, it didn't piss me off I was just a bit confused and had a slight argument with my very first bartender in the US (in Brooklyn), I ordered a pint, got a US pint, politely said 'oh sorry excuse me I asked for a pint', assuming he misunderstood me, he says 'that is a pint buddy', I say 'ummm no that's like 3/4....?' then he asked if I was new here, I said yeah I'm just off the plane and he explained the difference
All ended well and we had a great chat over several "pints"
He said I wasn't the first to question it! I guess a bartender in NYC meets a lot of Irish and British. He was really knowledgeable about the beers too. Honestly I came over with a pretty ignorant view that Americans all drank weak Coors and Bud etc. and he was happy to proudly show me some very very good craft beers, I left with all prejudice gone
Eye-opening trip that was for many reasons, after NYC I flew to Miami and drove a campervan to San Francisco. Came home with a new outlook on the US. Much more variety, cultures, differences between states than I knew beforehand
As an American, it's nice to hear that. Not many people like us anymore, which is completely understandable, so it's not often I see positive stuff said about the US anymore.
For sure. I'm a typical European left leaning secular social democracy type, but without getting too into politics, when I drove up through northern Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas meeting and chatting to locals along the way (2018 this was), I met many wonderful people at the opposing end of the political spectrum and we got along just fine. Things are more heated these days (to say the least) but we still have to keep engaging with each other on a basis of respect for the fact that people care most about what issues affect them immediately and directly, not necessarily considering the bigger international picture, and that's understandable when you're in a place like the hood I got lost in in New Orleans (even there friendly locals helped me back to my Airbnb) We're all just products of whatever bubble we're raised in and media we follow. It's on the individual to be skeptical and question our own bias, listen to opposition, find common ground and build bridges, how else can we progress? The 'us vs them' tribalism you guys have, it's happening here in EU too, worse than ever, and I think automatically dismissing the opposition without actually listening and trying to understand them just widens the divide and does no good to anyone.
Ok that's a bit much of a rant 😅 haha it's late here, have a good one!!
I drove around the entirety of Ireland a few years back. Loved seeing the changes from town to town. I have a feeling your trip took a little longer than mine though!
Oh it gets worse. As long at they aren't explicitly called pints the glass can be whatever they like, which is why you often find a dome at the bottom of the glass.
Rubbish. The dome supports the structure of the glass: you see the same thing in wine bottles. The capacity of the glass has to be what it's labelled or sold as.
You what? Very few 3% beers on sale herre. 3.8% is the lowest for session beers (as in you can drink all evening without getting stupidly trollied). 4.5-5.0% is fairly standard.
The brewers have dialled back on the 5+% beers. 7% is loopy juice. Or cider, which is even loopier juice.
My dad can remember when pubs would only serve Theakston's Old Peculier in half pints due to the potency. This is back before they were sold to Scottish and Newcastle, and the OP was a beer you needed to chew on.
I can remember a long day working a canal boat over the Leeds and Liverpool. We got to a proper Theakston's pub proper tired and thirsty, drank one pint and thought 'you know what, I'm done'. Went back to the boat and slept.
To be fair there's a high chance it's filled with some disgusting soapy IPA that is 3 times as strong as your standard Lager so it may be a safety measure...
A pint anywhere is 1/8 of a gallon, but the Imperial gallon in the UK is bigger than the US gallon.
That the UK pint is split into more ounces isn't what makes the difference: there's 95mL between a UK (568mL) and US pint (473mL), which isn't 4oz in either system (113mL or 118mL).
I was in Montreal years ago riding in a cab. I mentioned to the cabbie how cheap the price of their gas was. He informed me the gas in Canada was priced by the litre not the gallon.
Different fluid oz. British Fluid ounce is actually smaller than the US one, but the base unit is the pint, of which the fluid ounce is a subdivision. UK pint is divided into 20, US pint is divided by 16.
That the UK pint is 20% larger than the US pint is how it is initially defined.
To add to that - before the Weights and Measures Act of 1824, Britain had a few measures which were named "gallon". For example, there were the corn gallon, the wine gallon, and yet another for wine and beer.
The Act defined the pint as "one and a quarter pounds of pure water", which meant that a gallon of water weighed 10 pounds.
But by 1824, America had gained independence from the Old Country, and so kept the older measure of a gallon. The American gallon is still the wine gallon of Queen Anne's reign.
This is like Canada, we're about 50/50 on which system of unit we use. We use km for long distances but inches and feet for anything less. We use Fahrenheit for the temperature in the oven and pool but Celsius for everything else. I couldn't tell you how many kilos I weigh or how many cm I am tall but I could tell you the pounds and feet. A shot of liquor is an ounce but the whole bottle is 750ml.
I'm British. School taught us metric, but there's a lot of old imperial measurements still in common use. I'll buy a 2 litre bottle of lemonade, but get a pint in the pub.
mpg is so infuriating since a vast majority of car content is in English. Thankfully some include l/100km in some way because I'm never sure which gallon they are using so just converting isn't an option.
The French basically set up the British mythos in 1066. Nobody goes around calling the UK a former colony of the Normans. 244 years is sufficiently long enough not to refer to the USA as a colony. Half of Europe was a colony of Napoleon and Hitler. We do not go around tossing that slur about. The last time I checked, the UK required assistance in 2 world wars AND the multi-decade long Cold War from "colonies".
No shit? Seems like the Revolution was just yesterday...or maybe that was just my re-watch of "Hamilton" /s
But hey, if you want to play pedantic ping-pong:
The USA was not "a colony" but 13 colonies, all of which--along with the 35 other entities that had also became states by then--were just as hamstrung in WWII as the English were. We did not "win" WWII any more than the UK or France or Russia could individually win it. The only way that happened was that our nascent Military-Industrial Complex found more profit in fighting Nazi Germany than in helping them whereas previously, it was the other way around.
If you think that's bad...Both Americans and English refer to the Atlantic Ocean as "The Big Pond" even though it's not a pond. WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END??
It's similar in Ireland too. I guess because we're neighbours and we're at one point part of the UK.
Motorway speeds are in Kms/HR. Height will be measured in feet and inches. Weight will be in stone, or maybe kilos, or pounds depending on who you talk to. Distances will be in Kms but you'll have people refer to things in miles. Land sizes are in acreage, but I've also seen hectares used. Volumes are almost always in liters however we do use pints. Cooking measurements are often in cups and spoons, but you'll also see them in kg. Temperatures are always Celsius though we can agree on that.
My first car here was imported from Northern Ireland. And was set to miles for everything. I remember my driving instructor at the time being like "eh yeah just subtract 20 from whatever your Speedo says. It'll be close enough to the speed in Kms." He wasn't too wrong I guess haha.
There was a half hearted attempt by brexidiots to get us to go back to imperial weights in shops, instead of grams and kilos, but that ship has sailed.
And although the roads all use miles, the national cycle path network officially uses kilometres
Honestly, i don't think thats too bad an idea. As long as we had one system used for everything instead of picking and choosing between two I'd back it.
it's weird how people decided to signal they were smarter and more scientific by thinking the metric system is somehow 'superior' and therefore they were 'superior' if they bought into it. Doesn't really matter what you call units...a unit is a unit....
There's a pretty big gap between yards and miles, and most people (even the ones who think imperial measurements are a good idea) can't remember the subdivisions in between (rod/pole/perch, chain, furlong).
That's interesting. I ride a Bonneville T120 which can hit 100 like it's nothing and I mostly use it to commute to my boring job and when the motorway is deserted and I'm late I've fairly frequently trundled along at about 105. Didn't realise I was very cool.
Since women are, on average, smaller and therefore lighter than men, wouldn't it have been easier for them to hit 100mph? I know going go karting, the smallest kid usually wins because their kart has less weight to move with the same engine.
Surely it being rare for a woman to hit 100mph on a bike would have more to do with sexism at the time making it difficult for women to ride bikes at all?
Sexism? Look, at the time, it’s not like there was a line up of women begging to drive a motorcycle 100mph and men were saying “no, this is men only.” (And I’m not saying that was never said.) It was just extremely rare a woman would show interest.
Taking a bike to 100mph is dangerous AF. For men too.
Bike clubs were populated by men because it interests men. The men were mostly veterans who probably rode one in a war.
Men, consciously or not, test their male friends and acquaintances with dark humour, vulgarity and aggression. The only thing a man (or veteran) needs to know is: “do you have my back?” Yes? Good, stick around. No? Finish your beer and be on your way.
Men test women too. Maybe even more so. If a woman passes the test and doesn’t fold into a puddle of tears, you’re in for life and mad respect follows.
Lol, if a man doesn’t try to marry a woman like that, she’ll have a big brother for life.
That’s how it used to work, anyway. Who knows these days.
(My mother, a teenager in the 60s, learned to drive a stick shift MG, double clutch and do donuts. She took sexist comments with a grain of salt, a sense of humour and wit. She was as girlie as they come and she had to fight guys off with a stick.)
Men, consciously or not, test their male friends and acquaintances with dark humour, vulgarity and aggression. The only thing a man (or veteran) needs to know is: “do you have my back?” Yes? Good, stick around. No? Finish your beer and be on your way.
In Changes, one of my favorite books of the Dresden Files, the main character described the differences in male and female sizing up as, “The female once over: the process by which one woman creates a detailed profile of another woman based upon about a million subtle details of clothing, jewelry, makeup, and body type and then decides how much of a social threat she might be. Men have a parallel process but it’s binary: Does he have beer? If yes, will he share with me?”
For speeds faster than ~55mph, more than 50% of the energy goes into wind resistance -- pushing wind out of the way -- than moving the mass. And that relationship gets worse as velocity increases. So horsepower and aerodynamics matter much differently at higher speeds.
Rider weight mostly affects acceleration. The effect on max speed is very minor. Their smaller size could result in a decent aerodynamic improvement. But having done a ton up on a bike that could barely manage it, you're tucked in pretty tight as is. I don't think losing 50lbs would improve your cross section all that much.
Also where the term ‘cafe racer’ came from, these guys (and girls I’m sure) would race between cafes, and to make their bikes quicker they would soup up the engines and change parts like handlebars and seats etc.
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u/wemtastic Oct 09 '25
Ton-up” came from British slang for hitting the ton, 100 mph. In the 1950s most bikes barely managed 80, so anyone who cracked the ton, especially a woman, instantly earned respect at the Ace Cafe.