Or is the weather just warming up and I'm seeing the typical spring uptick? Are you new new to bike commuting because of higher gas?
I bike and metro most places, but most of my friends drive, so I'm working on a tool to find places to hang out in person, even if several people are using different transportation modes.
You can enter the location of two people, their respective transportation modes, and what you're looking for. It will try to find the best places so that both have similar travel times.
It's still a work in progress, and the Google Maps API costs are higher than I expected (because it has to basically calculate directions for each friend, to each possible destination), so it's a bit limited for now while I figure stuff out, but I'd love to hear if it's something useful and any suggestions.
Thanks!
Let me preface this by saying, I know now not to inflate close to the limit, especially when parked in the sun for several hours. My first blowout was most likely due to overinflation. with new gravelkings installed on Sunday though and ridden to and from work I've had three deflations that I'm thinking are probably from being in the sun from 7a-330p. Today I ran 10psi under the max, tomorrow I'll go a full 15 under. Any other tips for keeping the tires inflated? If we are flat again tomorrow I'll probably just start over, re-tape, re-install, maybe even switch to non-black tires.
Cold, rainy 12.5mi commute each way from Magnolia to Bellevue for 8 months out of the year, but for a few weeks in spring this is a wildly stunning stretch of the Burke-Gilman between UW and Gas Works.
I have the option to do a years study one day a week, I have wanted to get myself a place there for years and now I finally have.
Obviously 51 miles each way is a problem, The distance is doable for me and I refuse to purchase a car. I guess I’m asking if I’m crazy for wanting to do this?
I just picked up this 1986 Bianchi Formula 2 to both commute and for fun. Chromoly steel frame, whole thing was refurbished by a local bike shop.
I live in a humid, *humid* city and, in the summer, commuting with a backpack is going to *suck*. i’ve been interested in front basket use for a backpack and light runs to the corner store, but have read conflicting advice across biking subreddits about whether i should even try to install a rack…
Any advice on backpack solutions (not super keen on panniers…), rack recommendations for a bike without eyelets, etc. would be welcome.
Been commuting to work and daycare pick ups using my cargo ebike for about a month now. Today I realized that it's the number one reason why I feel so motivated lately to wake up at 6 in morning to get ready and ride to work. It's a short commute probably 6-7miles round trip, but today on our way home my daughter had her beloved bunny stuffed animal named Bob and a blanket. Told her not to drop Bob this time (she's dropped him a couple times the past few days) because we won't be able to backtrack knowing that the street we usually travel on turns into a one-way street after 3pm. She did ended up losing Bob, she didn't let me know until we were 2 blocks away from the house. So I had to backtrack, because I had the brilliant idea of just riding on the sidewalk. So now I had to call my husband to let him know that we were probably not gonna be home for another 30mins because we had to find Bob somewhere down the road. This made me realize I actually really love riding the bike instead of driving mostly absent-minded behind the wheel of my car. I could now make side trips with my kiddo to the park if I wanted to way faster than driving a freaking car. So far I have only put 122 miles on my ebike and plan to put a lot more into it.
Bike barely fits me, my neighbor is like 7 feet tall. Bonus pic of my ebike I'm waiting on.
On my morning commute last week, I was coming up to a red light. I was passing a long line of cars stopped at a red light during the morning rush when a (shotgun) passenger opened his door in front of me. I hit the door and went down, but my bike and I escaped with just scrapes and bruises.
To their credit, the passenger and driver stuck around, even though other drivers kept honking at them to move. Welcome to Chicago! The passenger was clearly shaken up, to the point of tears. I felt badly for him.
Fortunately, a good friend was riding behind me. He spoke with the driver and passenger and took pictures of their driver's licenses, while I laid on the sidewalk collecting my thoughts. Other nice strangers checked to see if I was okay. Welcome to Chicago! We finished our commute and I patched myself up at work.
Coincidentally, on my commute home the night before, I was trying to estimate how many parked cars I've passed without getting doored. I didn't come up with an answer better than "a bunch." I never thought about getting doored from a car in the driving lane, but I do now. Not in a fearful way; it's just one more thing to notice. Watch out for doors on the left.
My old bike I'm working on fixing up. Just learned to replace the tires/tubes and the youtubers make it look way easier than it felt lmao. Still saving/learning/looking for a good hydraulic cleaning/refill/bleed kit. The fluid in it currently is 6 years old but still works well so I'm not in a huge rush, going to be primarily using the green bike anyway.
I spent most of my time on the easiest 4 gears of the 24 combos available. 😰 They really nailed the gear ratios on the ozark trail hybrid for people getting back into it.
Hello fellow pedal powered folks!
I currently have a fairly nice Ridley Kanzo bike and will soon be adding a Cube Attain C:62 to that. I’m looking at insurance options and can see a few well know insurers but I’m curious about people’s interactions with them.
I know British Cycling I think it was - has membership that includes a discount for Bikmo who are well reviewed so that’s currently my likely route.
Happy to hear who you use, positives, negatives etc.
I should also add: I mainly road cycle with a few days a week commute to work and back. Both bikes are worth around 1800ish if that has any effect on recommendations.
This thrift store puts out all their new stuff out front on the sidewalk. I can shop from my bike on my daily commute. Never shopped from my bike before🙂.
Almost through my 2nd year of commuting, and it happened. Minding my business, on my usual route, and someone chucked a water bottle at me.
I was riding just slow enough that the bottle whizzed over my arms instead of hitting me. I only realized what happened after hearing a loud thud and feeling water droplets on my hands. The driver sped away before I could get a look at the license plate, and I just had to... keep going to work.
I wasn't physically hurt, but that was clearly the intention. I will say, I've had essentially zero negative interactions while riding. Sometimes drivers will be reckless to get around me, but I generally get a wide berth and indifference. I've definitely faced more harassment as a pedestrian.
Overall, just extremely disappointing. A plastic water bottle isn't the worst thing to get chucked at you, but I wonder if it had been a rock or something else instead. I won't be scared off, especially with these gas prices, but I think I'll get a bike or body cam.
EDIT: Went ahead and filed a police report. Probably won't go anywhere, but maybe someone else will be helped if this happens to them.
Car almost on E, still super windy from the storms moving through the midwest but not too bad. Working on building enough stamina to maintain a steady RPM uphill/against headwinds.
RIP to the wheel in the background though
This might be a dumb idea, but has anybody tried one of those cheap Ebay LED projectors mounted on a stick behind the rider and turned downward? I'm thinking this would be useful at night where the projection would map out a safe area around the cycle.
I mean, obviously aside from replacing it with a bolt and nut, what are some tips to at least not make it that easy to steal? Someone just had their seat stolen while their bike was parked, so I was trying to think of a way to prevent it from happening again.
I was thinking buying a steel cable from the hardware store and clamping each end after wrapping one end around the seat rails and the other around the seat stays.
A bit like this:
Or alternatively instead of using clamps, I was thinking of finding a nut or bolt I can clamp each end of the cable to. Either way the point is not to make something super safe, just that someone couldn't steal the seat without tools while still keeping the quick release function.
Hey everyone, I was wondering if there is a specific type of bike that is best suited for commuting with some cargo, i.e., road, gravel, hybrid, etc. In my case I carry a (very) heavy backpack that I take to work, and I would like to avoid getting my back too sweaty, which is why I would like to attack something like a back rack where I can put it. Most of my commute is road/sidewalk and jut a bit of dirt.
Thank you in advance. I really appreciate it
Or: how I turned a simple 5 minute bike ride home after work into a 2 hour exodus of life and loss
I have been bike commuting for about a year and a half now, but WOW I still have a lot to learn. My plan for after work today was simple: clean and lube up my chains using the nice bike stand outside my building on campus that has tools and a pump, and then bike home.
With some tips from my brother, I was pretty certain about what I needed to do in order to clean my chain, so it got done pretty quick. The trouble starts when I take a wider look at my bike and say, "well, while I'm here..."
Look at those two screws on my front derailleur! They're not screwed in! I can fix that, so I do. No problem! Nothing bad will happen later at all.
Oh! My tires could use a little extra air- let's just use the bike pump here. Oh, that's weird, the tip of the nozzle is gone and the locking mechanism is just flopping around. It'll be fine!
There is a problem, and it's not fine!! I spend so long realizing that the bike pump nozzle can no longer properly seal that I nearly completely empty my front tire.
I've used this station for so long that I don't actually own my own bike pump, and even if I did, it'd be a long, long walk while standing my bike up on its rear wheel so I don't pinch the tire-- so I start walking up the hill to the rest of campus to see if I can't find another outdoor bike pump to fill up my tire.
Specifically, I'm heading to the campus bike shop a mile away- surely they have an outdoor pump! They don't. They have the tool section of the stand I used in front of my building, but not the pump. I'm devastated. My shoulders hurt from wheeling my bike vertically for so long. I tripped on my own saddlebag straps once or twice on the way over.
In the end, I was saved by a kind cyclist who had stored a bike pump in his office and was happy to lend me it if I could wheel my bike over. That wasn't the end of it though!! I leave on my bike and go to shift up, but I can't?? Did the lube do something?? That's not what lube does??
Thankfully, I realized pretty quick what must have happened, and bike back to the tool stand that previously disappointed me to fix the problem. Do I at one point accidentally send both screws and a plastic part of the front derailleur flying while testing the shifting? Sure do. I managed to find them eventually.
I have since learned that those are limit screws, and that I really don't know what I'm doing. I've also looked into a map of all bike stations on the campus I work on. I hope you enjoyed my hopefully informative clown show.
TLDR: If you think you know enough about your bike to just start screwing with random stuff, no you don't. Put that screwdriver down and make sure your bike pumps actually work before using them.
Would love this as a pop-up during bike week/ month events!
