The bicycle I most often ride is ...
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Second Insult Option (Score:5, Funny)
I ride a unicycle, you insensitive clod!
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Me, too. Actually, it's a mountain unicycle (Kris Holm 24").
Re:Second Insult Option (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a tricycle from when I was a kid but you don't see me complaining.
Re:Second Insult Option (Score:4, Funny)
Alright then, I ride the 7 of clubs.
Re:Second Insult Option (Score:5, Funny)
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Bobby? [blogspot.com]
My bike.. (Score:3)
Re:My bike.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Insensitive Clod! (Score:2, Funny)
I ride a stationary bike!
Re:Insensitive Clod! (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not only that, another big advantage is that the wide weels and offroad tires provide great breaking, whereas with other bikes rain or dust on the road can increase break distance to dangerous levels (or forces you to slow down).
Re:Mountain bike in the city, for my safety's sake (Score:5, Informative)
Knobby, mountain bike style tires are actually terrible on the road. They corner very badly and have awful rolling resistance due to the wiggling of the knobs. Slick tires give better traction under both wet and dry conditions on pavement. I can take sharp corners in wet conditions on my racing bike way faster than cars can. Car tires only have tread in order to prevent hydroplaning, which is completely impossible on a bike (due to the narrow tires with an ellipsoid contact patch), unless you are going about 100 mph. So, if you do have a mountain bike, get slick tires for commuting.
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The rolling resistance/friction difference between a road slick tire and a knobby mountain bike tire is quite large too. Unless you are actually riding offroad, you don't need big knobby tires.
Necron69
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Maxxis Hookworms to the rescue:
http://www.maxxis.com/Bicycle/Urban/Hookworm.aspx [maxxis.com]
There are several choices for fat low-pressure tires that are not knobby and that have good performance on pavement.
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Slicks are illegal for street use in many states. Slicks are pretty much useless in snow.
I only know a little of tire engineering, but I suspect the qualities that would allow bicycle-like tires on family automobiles would force unacceptable tradeoffs in wear and ride quality.
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But I do agree about the mountain bike in the city. You're not going to ride down stairs or jump curbs on a road bike. They do make nice city bikes that are a little lighter but can still handle a lot of the abuse (thus the city bike/hybrid poll option). But not too much abuse. I had one when I was a teenager and destroyed it on BMX tracks.
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I ride a hybrid and have no problems with stairs/curbs/potholes.
Though going up stairs can be tricky ;)
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I really question whether you actually ride on the road. My experience is that the majority of mountain bike riders are bicycle-pedestrians that ride on the sidewalk without the slightest clue that it's often illegal.
Any argument that road bikes have less stopping power or likelihood of falling over due to pot holes is really silly so let me explain...
1. Mountain bikes have knobby tires which are designed to grab rocks and dirt and not provide traction when cornering on asphalt, cement, etc. As such, the li
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the reason is that no-one uses the sidewalks, so there's no need to build them.
I walk/ride everywhere, and the times I've visited the USA I've been appalled at how you actually can't walk places. Staying at a friend's place in San Diego I got told not to walk because it's dangerous, and don't take the bus, because poor, violent, weird people take the bus and it's dangerous. If I wanted to go anywhere I should get a taxi.
That's...insane (to my way of thinking anyway).
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the reason is that no-one uses the sidewalks, so there's no need to build them.
I walk/ride everywhere, and the times I've visited the USA I've been appalled at how you actually can't walk places. Staying at a friend's place in San Diego I got told not to walk because it's dangerous, and don't take the bus, because poor, violent, weird people take the bus and it's dangerous. If I wanted to go anywhere I should get a taxi.
That's...insane (to my way of thinking anyway).
Okay. Well, try a different part of San Diego. Or try a different city.
Come to Austin, Texas, and you can walk your ass off.
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Personally, I think that's just silly, but to each his own. I've been riding a hybrid bike for about 18 years for commuting and fun, totaling over 20,000 miles. I have never fallen due to a pothole, nor been hit by a car (or even had a close call) due to avoiding a pothole. And even if you have a mountain bike, there are still lots of obstacles in the road to look out for - sewer grates with long openings parallel to your direction of travel, for example. And you still have to watch out for traffic - they c
Re:Mountain bike in the city, for my safety's sake (Score:2)
I chose to ride a mountain bike, not only for its off-track abilities, but also because it's so much safer on the road.
Potholes, which are a minor distraction for drivers, can translate into a weekend at the hospital for cyclists. You stand a much better chance of not falling due to a large pot hole if you're on a mountain bike than if you're on a city bike or road racing bike. I encourage everyone to ride a mountain bike if you plan on bike on a road with a lot of traffic and potholes!
I disagree. When riding in traffic, speed and acceleration is survival. The closer you can keep to the speed of the rest of traffic the safer you're going to be. On a road bike you can easily cruise at 25MPH and get over 30 on a descent, which in a busy enough city is plenty fast enough to keep up with cars.
And any modern road bike should be able to take the pounding that uneven roads can throw at them. Concerns about potholes are always overstated. I've never been thrown off by one of them, you'd have t
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To be fair, it's easier to cruise at 25 in traffic because of the draft from the cars in the lanes next door. I wouldn't be able to hold that pace for very long on the open road.
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I've been through 5 bicycles in the past 20 years, the one I still ride the most is my old Cannondale Delta V 600 with a frame you just can't break. Bought it before I sank money into 4 different road bikes, some of which I really liked, but they were only suitable for road. The old Cannondale goes everywhere, easy to strip down and put back together and all components are inexpensive to replace. Hard to beat that.
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That's just it, with a road bike you need to pay more attention to the pot holes to skirt them while you should be paying more attention to the traffic. Skirt a pot hole to prevent bike damage and ride right into car you weren't paying attention to.
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I'm in a similar climate, and generally I ride my bike to commute to work. Since I ride the same route countless times I learn where the potholes are and remember to avoid them. Generally speaking though, the uneven pavement where it meets up the with the curb is more dangerous than most of the potholes.
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The Dutch are also a lot better at fixing their potholes than a lot of places. The roads where I live have never been resurfaced or maintained since they were built over 25 years ago and they need it. You can tell the council as much as you like, but it's a not a priority for them to fix them.
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Not if you have hills. I wind up in 50-13 or even 50-11 regularly coming down Seattle hills.
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You pedal down the hills? Do you also code in machine language?
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Mountain bike doesn't imply suspension.
Mine is, more or less, an adult size BMX.
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My bike has very fat (76mm) tyres, pressurised to 3 bar. There is very little rolling resistance, and the lithium grease in the axles helps a lot when it comes to coasting it. I've done a lot of miles on it over the years, and still rolling.
Missing Options (Score:4, Insightful)
A motor Bike ( powered by petrol)
A Tandem
A stationary exercise bike
I borrow Cowboyneal's bike when I need to
Bicycling is impractical in the area I live
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I love folders. Two advantages:
1: The local buses have two spots in the front for a bike. They get taken fast, and people have actually gotten into brawls over them. A folder goes in its case and on the bus -- no trying to compete with another for space or waiting for the next bus.
2: Bike theft. Austin usually hops onto Kryptonite's top 10 list for bike theft incidents. It definitely is in the top 20. With a folder, bike theft is far less of an issue, provided a person can carry their folding bike t
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Heh -- right there with you; if you've seen a green Bike Friday Tikit about town (whose rider is most likely wearing a kilt), that'd be me. Very fortunate to have Easy Street Recumbents locally -- it'd be more of a pain to get 16" tubes/tires/rims in non-BMX widths otherwise.
The into-a-cab bit is useful for more than just rain -- I've stopped carrying a toolkit in favor of a car2go membership card; the Tikit folds tight enough to fit in the trunk of their Smart cars.
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You don't ride a bicycle because it is practical (although it often is), you ride because it is fun.
Where do you live that it is impractical? The south pole? The amazon?
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Woooo tandem!
I had to vote for a hybrid though, because that's what I use to commute to work 5 days a week. The tandem is for weekend fun rides (and it is fun - and wicked fast). I did use it to "bikepool" on Bike to Work Day though, mostly to be ridiculous, and because a couple coworkers wanted to see it. Too bad there's no HOB (High Occupancy Bicycle) lanes for it, because we just scream past any other bikers.
Touring bike (Score:2)
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Ah, a beauty. Rides best with panniers all around. I've got over 13,000km on mine.
I use it instead of my fixie even for short rides/commutes now, and I've even built some custom bags for my photo studio gear to do quick location shoots.
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Poll obviously written by an upright rider (Score:5, Insightful)
We recumbent riders call uprights those painful bikes with a saddle you ram on your crotch until it hurts like a bitch.
Obviously, the poll misses the great variety of "oddball" bikes out there. Personally, I ride a Velomobile [velomobiel.nl] year round. Others ride trikes (delta or tadpole), front-wheel drive 'bents, lowracers, highracers, even streamliners. The choice of models is staggering.
The recumbent family of bikes is very diverse, the market is growing steadily as people discover that they don't have to hurt riding a bike, and the single "oddball" option in the poll is a bit dismissive of that particular world I reckon.
Here's the biggest forum about recumbents, if you'd like to know more: BentRider Online aka BROL.
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Sorry I messed up the link to the BentRider Online forum [bentrideronline.com]...
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If your wedgie bike hurts and you don't have a medical condition, you need a fitting and possibly a different saddle.
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Even then, your back will start to hurt after a few hours, and if you want to go fast you have to lean in even more.
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If your back is hurting after a few hours, you have the wrong size frame or seat/handlebar height. I've rode mine for most of a day with breaks only to eat or piss, and was feeling fine at the end. And I'm not some young kid who never gets sore, either.
Proper bike fitting is important... you can't just go to Walmart and pick up whatever bike for $50 if you actually want to enjoy riding it. I recommend testing out a number of different brands, models, sizes, etc of bikes and finding out which feels the mo
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Yea, but for $300 or so, I can get a decent mountain bike (good enough to ride back and forth to work). The recumbants all seem to be in the $2,000 range. Fine if you're riding races I suppose but not for the folks that aren't that serious.
[John]
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My frame only cost me £200. Wheels are the killer though, it cost me £160 just for the back wheel to be respoked and a new 7-speed block on it.
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We recumbent riders call uprights those painful bikes with a saddle you ram on your crotch until it hurts like a bitch.
Whatever. Problem #1 with recumbent bikes (I meet one now and them) is that *you don't see them*. Everything else in traffic is at least 1.5 m above ground, but these guys sneak up on you like a miniature combat helicopter. They make me nervous, which is not what I want to be when commuting.
none of the above (Score:2)
fixed-gear cyclocross bike with rack, fenders, and front disc brake
After all those years (Score:5, Insightful)
For 30 years, I rode a race/touring style road bike. Then, on a whim, I bought a recumbent... I will never go back. No more chaffing on those uncomfortable seats.
On another note... GET OFF MY LAWN!
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Did you have to grow a foot-long beard?
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No, that was just to look like Billy Gibbons.
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Do you ride in traffic? I've always wanted to try a recumbent bike, but I don't think I would be comfortable without the visibility I get on a standard bike when I'm sharing the road with cars and trucks.
Mountain bike (Score:2)
Exercise? (Score:2)
Well, I use a recumbent exercise bike at home. It didn't really fit in with the options, so I had to chose the "I take issue" option.
My e-bike made the /. front page in 2004 (Score:3)
I used it to flatten out the hills 16 miles each way to and from work.
The best thing about it was passing the spandex-clad Harvard bike team while pedaling 20 mph uphill with my flannel shirt flapping in the breeze. Priceless...
The NiMH pack lasted until 2011. The bike is now offline until I can scrounge the money for a LiFePO4 pack.
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Neat. I bet I could totally drop Lance Armstrong up L'Alpe d'Huez in my Corolla.
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>Neat. I bet I could totally drop Lance Armstrong up L'Alpe d'Huez in my Corolla.
Because and e-bike and a Corolla are *so similar*.
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In that they have a motor, yes.
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** In that they are *both* over 2.5 horsepower...
** In that they *both* have an internal combustion engine
** In that they both have aerodynamic flaring
Shall we go on?
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> The NiMH pack lasted until 2011. The bike is now offline until I can scrounge the money for a LiFePO4 pack.
Uh, forgetting lead acid, you should be able to source and build something for under $200...
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You underestimate my next battery pack. It will be in the neighborhood of $800 when you add in the battery management board and quick charger. I have some lead acid on it now for testing the controller at 48 volts but that is impractical for real use.
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No, I guessed what you're doing :P more or less :)
Just pointing out that you could probably get it working for much less in the meantime, though it sounds like that's not your goal.
I personally am using pure Li-ion polymer cells ATM, which gets me down to ~4.5lbs for enough power for 100km or so (as long as I'm pedal assisting, "medium terrain" etc) at a cost around $600. Outputting at 12V/24V, all of it housed in the center beam of a Bike-E style design...
That's good enough for me-- I'm more interest
stationary bike (Score:2)
Very, Very Other (Score:2)
Needless to say, it goes well with the straw fedora and meerschaum pipe.
Looking Cool (Score:3)
Mountain Bikes? (Score:2)
The number of people replying with mountain bikes seems way high. Unless you're riding over serious off-road dirt paths in the middle of the forest somewhere, it's really not the best fit for you. Hybrid bikes are fine for anything else with a more comfortable, efficient and faster ride.
I ride a road bike regularly, and even there I'm amazed with the variety of terrain those skinny tires can handle.
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Most Americans don't ride bikes on the road. It's simply too dangerous. I would imagine that most Americans who actively ride bicycles of any kind ride mountain bikes in the woods.
If ever there was a statement that needed a citation, this was it.
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Many Americans don't ride bikes on the road. They think it is too dangerous. Most Americans who actively ride bicycles of any kind ride have gotten over their paranoia. The rest only ride mountain bikes in the woods.
FTFY
Commuting bikes (Score:5, Informative)
The best option for commuting is actually a touring bike. Wide slick tires, steel frame, strong 36 spoke wheels. They are made to carry tons of stuff and have mounts for full fenders. All of that and they are 90% as fast as a road bike. Another option is a cyclocross bike, if you get slicks. Mountain bikes are a pretty poor choice for road riding. Knobby tires sap tons of energy, and corner very badly. Slick tires provide much better traction on pavement. If you have sensible wheels (28-36 spoke, not 20 spoke gimmicky racing wheels) with 32mm+ tires, potholes are no big deal. That said, I ride about 250 miles a week on often awful roads, with an aluminum frame and 23mm tires, and I do just fine.
Most bikes marketed as commuting bikes, like "hybrids," suck. They offer the same limited hand positions as a mountain bike, and usually have heavy drainpipe aluminum frames (but it must be light because it's aluminum, right?). Drop bars on a road or touring bike look scary, but they give you so many more hand positions, and more ergonomic ones. You have the flat bartops, just like on a mountain bike, as well as hoods and drops.
Unless you are racing, get a quality steel frame. Touring steel frames can weigh under 2kg. Lighter steel frames are made under 1500 grams, which isn't that much different than a 1 kg fragile and ugly carbon frame (Quality aluminum frames aren't made anymore). Get that, a decent groupset, and quality HANDBUILT (important!!!) high spoke-count wheels, and you will have a durable bike that will last forever.
On the subject of wheels, stock wheels on bikes always suck. They are machine built, and the spokes normally have widely varying tension. Some will be undertensioned, which mean they are prone to going slack when you hit bumps, which causes metal fatigue and eventual spoke breakage. Wheels are prestressed structures. The weight is supported by the bottom spokes as rigid columns. The hub does not hang from the top spokes. A better option is to get handbuilt wheels. A good set of handbuilts with Shimano Tiagra hubs (quality, but not expensive) and Open Pro or Velocity rims will cost around $250, which is at least as cheap as your average factor wheel. Or, you can build it yourself if you have some patience and access to a truing stand (it's fun). Another added bonus is that when the rim wears out from braking, you just have to replace the rim, not the whole wheel.
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When you break one spoke, that means all of the others aren't far off, because they are going to be fatigued similarly.
Factory built wheels usually cost more than that. Even a pair of shitty Aksiums is like $300. $250 is very cheap for a pair of wheels, especially one that will last. If you are buying a whole bike, the stock wheels (invariably heavy and low spoke count) are probably worth using if you already have them. You definitely want to have the spokes trued/tensioned properly to make them more durab
This one: (Score:3)
Yes, that's actually me [blogspot.com]. That pic has appeared on SO MANY SITES it's unreal.
Basic city bike for my commute and shopping need (Score:2)
I have a cheap Micmo city bike that is perfect for city commuting and light shopping. Basic aluminum frame, 7 hub gears, backpedal and front rim brakes, fenders, luggage rack, no bells nor whistles. It was cheap, has lasted for over 5 years with new brake pads 2 years ago and a bit of oil on the chain once in a while.
The rear wheel was replaced 2 years ago as well due to a busted spoke. It probably needs a new front wheel soon since the rim brakes have scored the rim. Might as well put a new tire on the fro
conflicted (Score:2)
Re:conflicted FTW! cheap & solid (Score:2)
Exercise Bike (Score:3)
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Doesn't it drive you crazy? You pedal and you pedal and you never get anywhere!
On the bright side, once you reach your destination, you don't have to pedal back.
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Or the GP could get the best of both worlds, and just put the bike on a fluid trainer or rollers when he/she doesn't want to go outside. Much cheaper than a stationary (at least if you already own a bike), and you get to use a real bike. Stationary bikes always have bad saddles and really wacky geometry. Obviously made for people who don't ride bikes.
I ride... (Score:4, Funny)
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Vehicular homocide sure is funny!
inbetween states (Score:2)
I have an old no-suspension mountain bike frame with bull steer bar ends and totally slick high pressure 1.25" tires.
It it a road bike? No. Is it a mountain bike. No?
Is it a street bike ?
Recently got a new touring bike. Road bike like handlebars, fenders and racks. Would not be called a road bike by any serious cyclist. Is definitly not a mountain bike.
Unicycle, baby! (Score:2)
Bike? Gimme half that -- I ride a unicycle.
And Cowboy Neal rides the other wheel!
None (Score:2)
As I only have 1 foot and can't pedal anymore..Life sucks and then you die
A mountain bike (Score:2)
Missing Option: Cyclocross Bike (Score:2)
I Hear (Score:2)
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In other news, I also ride The Loud Bike [cathodecorner.com].
What, no dynamo???
Seriously, though, that bike is aptly named, even without the stereo system...
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They have these in London. Fugly blue things with Barclay's logos all over them. Oh, and illegal lights, too (head and tail lights that have two modes: off and flashing).
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The problem is that half of the US objects to bike sharing operations solely on the ground that they too closely resemble communism.
Taxis are communist?
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recumbrants may be faster on straight road, but they are too clumsy to for city traffic.
That depends on the type of recumbent bike. Most you see are the cruising type, but there are city models and even mountain bike varieties - generally with shorter wheel bases, and other changes to improve agility at the cost of speed.
But even your average recumbent will be more manoeuvrable than a chopper, and they still get around in cities. And so do buses, come to think of it.
Missing Option (Score:3)
The Village Bicycle?