I want a new bike, but I’m not looking for speed. I’m looking for comfort and utility. I want an upright seating position. A soft, cushy seat. A chain guard to keep my pant leg clean. A rack to hold my stuff. And fenders to prevent the “gutter stripe” up my back. I definitely want fenders.
Yeah, I hear you “serious” bicyclists.1Why is it that those who consider bicycling to be a sport are the “serious” cyclists? That bike isn’t efficient. It’s not aerodynamic. It’s not light. It’s not fast. I’d be sore after riding it 50 miles, maybe even 20.
You’re probably right — and I don’t care. I don’t want to ride 50 miles. I only want to ride 3.3 miles to work, 2.0 miles to the grocery store and Starbucks,2That reminds me: I want a cup holder, too. or 2.1 miles to the Hillsboro Farmers’ Market or the hobby shop.3Yeah, I also want to ride back home… Besides, if I want to go long distances on roads or tackle mountain paths, I have other bikes.
Light weight and lots of gears don’t matter to me. Hillsboro’s pretty flat; I don’t need to climb hills.
I don’t need fast. Even if it takes me three times as long as you, I’m not going to get there much later. And my neck won’t be sore from hunching over drop bars. I’ll have biked upright, able to look around and enjoy the scenery.
The Bullitt cargobike looks like loads of fun.1It’s okay. You can groan… It has enough cargo space for a typical grocery run, even for a family of six. Need lockable (or rainproof) storage? Larry vs Harry has that covered, too. The cargobike would be great for family bike rides. They could become picnic runs, complete with icebox(es), picnic baskets, and folding chairs. And just try to keep the kids from riding in the front.
Cargobikes aren’t intended to be put on a bike rack. That would defeat their purpose of eliminating car trips. If you absolutely had to transport them by car, I suppose you could use a rooftop bike rack designed for tandem bicycles. ‘Course, the cargobike weighs 53 pounds, so watch your back. Using a trailer or a ramp to put it in a pickup bed would be better.
Bullitt cargobikes are made in Denmark but availability shouldn’t be a problem (at least, not for me) — Portland’s Bike Gallery carries them. A bigger problem is the price: the Bluebird ’71 cargobike (pictured above) lists for 2,101 euros. That’s about $3,000!2As of the time of writing this post.
Looks like I need to investigate Eric Goodman’s grocery-getter. It’s cheap (watch Craigslist for a used frame), works with my existing bike, and is removable for when I need to transport my bike. Still … the Bullitt looks awesome!
How do you transport cargo with your bike?
Update: Turns out there are local options for cargo bikes — Tom LaBonty and Metrofiets build cargo bikes right here in Portland. Read more about cargo bikes (is it Freudian that I keep typing that as “carbo bikes”?) at BikePortland.org.
The second bike I ever rode was a red Schwinn cruiser, very much like the bike pictured above. What a great bike! I remember how I would get that bike moving. I’d push the bike and turn its left pedal with my hand until the right pedal was just forward of top dead center. Standing on my left tippie toe, I’d swing my right leg over the top tube, put my right foot on the pedal and stand up. If I did everything right, pushing the handlebars forward as I transferred my weight to the pedal, the bike would start to move and I would alternate standing on the right pedal, then the left pedal, back and forth, straddling the top bar as I rode along. My legs weren’t long enough for me to sit on the seat and push the pedals all the way down so I had to ride standing up. The handlebars felt so wide.
When I rode that red cruiser, I had mobility and freedom.
My next bike was my bike — a blue Schwinn Sting Ray. Single-speed, white banana seat, slick rear tire, no sissy bar. Definitely no sissy bar. In addition to its non-masculine name, a sissy bar had another serious disadvantage: it couldn’t go under low obstructions. My neighbor had a red Sting Ray with a glossy, glittery banana seat and a sissy bar. He’d get hung up when he tried to ride under the large fig tree in our back yard. Not me, no siree. I could ride under that tree with impunity.
My blue Sting Ray was a happening machine. I would go back and forth on the sidewalk, accelerating to speed and then skidding to a stop. How long a skid mark I could leave on the sidewalk? I’m sure my neighbors were “pleased.” But no problem. In my mind, that’s what slicks were for. I was so cool!
One day, that bike and a car proved conclusively that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. A car started to leave the school just as I was crossing the parking lot exit from the right. Yeah, I was in the wrong: (1) riding my bike on the sidewalk, (2) riding in the wrong direction, and (3) assuming that the driver would see me. Fortunately, I wasn’t dead wrong. I wasn’t even hurt wrong. But the bike was. The wheels were tacos and the frame bent. Even though my dad had the bike fixed, it never shifted the same again.
Many years later, I replaced that 10 speed with a real road bike. Spandex bike shorts and biking top, yellow Oakley Factory Pilot sunglasses, an aerodynamic Bell helmet, bike shoes, and clipless pedals. I was a bike weenie. I rode a lot, but always on the road. I had to avoid the bits of glass, the twigs — any roadside debris lurking in the fine gravel could flat my tires. Despite my care, I got flats. Bicycling quit being so fun.
So, I got a mountain bike. A Specialized Rockhopper. Although I did a little off-road riding, I rode mostly on the road. Or in the gutters. Jumping off curbs. Across lawns. Down gravel roads. I could go anywhere and I never got a flat. Did I say I could go anywhere? I felt like a kid riding a Sting Ray or a cruiser with newfound freedom.
After a while, I replaced the knobbies with smoother and faster tires. I bought a bell so pedestrians could hear me coming. Recently, I bought bar end grips so my wrists wouldn’t hurt after a longer ride.
That is the bike I ride now. At least, until the freewheel seized yesterday evening. Would I ever replace it? Maybe. There are a couple of things I might change. I’d love to have an internally-geared rear hub and a single chainring. No more chain flopping against the chainstay when I jump a curb. No more clunk when I change gears. Hydraulic disk brakes look like fun. Maybe even 700C tires so I could go a little faster as long as they didn’t flat too easy. Something like Giant’s Seek 1, pictured below.
Or maybe I could get just the Schwinn cruiser for a quarter of the cost. My commute is less than a mile. Hillsboro is flat. A single gear is all I need. I can reach the pedals now.
Or maybe just a repaired freewheel. A cleaned chain. A washed frame. An adjusted derailleur. And a new bell I can ring with my thumb.
Freedom is mine! :-)
Update. I went to the bike store and found out it’s cheaper to buy a new assembled wheel with a good freehub than to buy just the new freehub and have it laced on to the existing wheel. It’s a lot quicker, too. They were able to transfer over my gear cassette in five minutes and sent me on my way. After work, I transferred the rim strip, tube, and tire to the new wheel. I cleaned the chain, the derailleur, the gears, and then decided to wash the whole bike. My last step was to adjust the brakes as the wheel diameter seems to be just a hair smaller.
No new bell, but my Incredibell is just that. Just not as nostalgic.
[T]he year after the Idaho Stop became law, bicycle injuries in the state actually declined by 14.5 percent. (Source.)
Enacting the “Idaho stop” might not only postpone the habitual flouting of traffic laws until after getting a driver’s license, it might also prevent some injuries.
When the weather is nice in October, we go outside. Thanks to Art and his invitation to ride bikes with his family, we invaded Champoeg Park this afternoon. We biked from the western end of the park to the store beyond the eastern end and back. According to Google Maps, the one-way distance is 3.71 miles.
Brother-in-law Rob and I took the boys and Ashley for a bike ride on the Bayocean spit. We went up the east side, relatively protected from the wind, and returned on the beach, with the wind at our backs. We’d like to think we planned it that well, but it was just dumb luck.
Not counting the walking we did around the jetty and the pipe, we rode about 10.5 miles.
I wanted to do a longer bike ride today (I failed last week) so I mapped this one out before I left. According to Google, this ride is a hair over 26 miles.
