Bicycles and cycling in general.

We don't seem to have a topic about cycling. Time to remedy that. Who owns a bike, goes cycling on any sort of basis, whether just for fun or as something more serious? How do you cope with other road users, whether they be fellow cyclists, or folks in motorized vehicles?

What kind of bike do you ride (mountain bike, bmx, road bike, tourer or other)

And most of all, do you enjoy cycling or hate it with the fury of a thousand suns?

Dive in if you like.

I can't drive despite my age,I didn't learn at 16 because this town is so packed and so hostile to learning how to drive,it's just easier to bike everywhere,...use the subway for longer distances.

Anyway I ride a 1989 Trek Crossover that is actually way too small for me.

I used to ride just for fun,but then high school started and it made more sense to commute with it.

Obviously I love it.

edited 3rd Jun '13 2:09:55 PM by terlwyth

Fury of a thousand suns.

Trek's a good make.

I got my first complete bike in nearly ten years last week. It's a Medium-frame sized Giant Boulder, in Carbon Black paintwork. It was second-hand, and it showed - the last owner is a person I would love to kick repeatedly in the crotch because of what he did to the poor thing, but it came with front and rear mudguards, a set of lights, a bottle cage and a luggage rack. And it is all paid for.

Well, until I decide to buy a couple of CREE led lights...

I have been out on it four times now, and I did my first twenty miler in over ten years and damn was it harder than I thought it would be. Going out tomorrow if my legs stop screaming.

I like cycling when I can get around to it. The only problem in my area is there's no such thing as flat ground so I'm going uphill (sometimes steep uphill at that) in almost every direction. Even both ways!*

I can do pretty good distance and speed cross country on dirt roads.

edited 3rd Jun '13 9:51:08 PM by MajorTom

Bike riding is a lot of fun. :) I like to ride in the woods myself.

Hell yeah!

I cycle every day. Class, groceries, parents, friends - my trusted iron horse takes me anywhere I need to be.

In summer, I like to go for longer rides. I cover 90-100 km a day, easily. That may not sound like a lot, but bear in mind that I ride a 3-speed utility bicycle, not one of those flimsy racing things.

Wow. That is a lot, Rambler. Huge distances compared to what fat old me has done recently.

Last year, I cycled around the Netherlands (about 1200 km all in all, in 16 days). I don't have any big tours planned for this summer, but there are several I'm considering for next year and beyond:

• The Rhine, mouth to source. ("Source" in this case being the place where the Vorderrhein and the Hinterrhein join up)
• The Meuse, mouth to source.
• The Scheldt, mouth to source.
• A grand west-east tour from Strasbourg to Kaliningrad, i.e. more or less the entire extent of old Imperial Germany, via Frankfurt, Weimar, Berlin, Stettin and Danzig.
• The North Sea coast, from the western tip of Brittany to the northern tip of Jutland. (I've estimated that the French part alone would take at least two weeks. France is huge).

Before I embark on any of these, though, I'm going to buy a proper touring bicycle - I'm not going into Switzerland on my 3-speed, that's for sure

edited 6th Jun '13 2:12:48 AM by MidnightRambler

Get kevlar reinforced tyres, shit loads of lights and travel insurance. I don't think, though I could be wrong, that Germany is as bike friendly as the Netherlands. When I hear Germany I think of unrestricted autobahns. Not bikes. Though I seem to recall them winning some Tour De Frances titles.

I like cycling, but there's nowhere to safely cycle around here. The last time I tried, I got run off the road by a truck and wound up with a split lip and some really nasty gravel burn.

Heh. I have been run off the road twice. Once by a JCB digger (big, yellow, evil fucking clone of the Caterpillar digger), not far from home, and once by a prick driving a Lada estate car. Morbidly, this was not far from a cemetery. I nearly ended up going through the gates. Which would have been a problem as they were closed at the time.

I think that in the UK, they would say I was run off the road by an articulated lorry.

Ouch. That would have been really bad if the thing had hit you. I was lucky that my main RTC was with a Vauxhall Cavalier. Head on.

Yeah, I was travelling with traffic, and it came up behind me. They don't have shoulders on the road where I am, so I was riding in the road, close to the edge of the road so people could safely pass me if they wanted.

I was going close to road speed, and he was going over road speed, and there was oncoming traffic in the next lane. So instead of waiting for that to clear so he could pass me safely, he just tried to pass me in the same lane, and if I hadn't swerved, he WOULD have hit me.

I haven't been on a bike since.

edited 5th Jun '13 3:52:24 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

I've got a bike, but I usually use public transportation for anything outside the small city I live in; For instance, I used it today to get to the city library. I'm a little wary of taking it on the road, though it is possible. I've sort of considered the idea of getting more exercise by biking to and from the train station I use to get to work - there's a bike rack there and I often get out of work early enough that I wouldn't be biking back in the dark... but I'm a little worried about the idea of leaving it there for hours, as I think I don't have that secure of a lock.

True. No place is (except possibly Denmark). But they're improving fast. I've cut some corners through Germany on my trip around the Netherlands, and I didn't have any trouble. It's Belgium where it really gets annoying.

As for your stories: Ouch. I've never been run off the road by anything as far as I recall.

edited 6th Jun '13 2:13:39 AM by MidnightRambler

Has anybody here ever used Minneapolis Nice Ride or any other automated bike rental? I'm thinking of getting a pass for school next year because I have a feeling getting a cruising bike would otherwise be really expensive.

You don't want to get a cruising bike.

Get a mountain bike with low rolling resistance road tyres if all you are doing is going on road. Road bikes I don't like, mainly because I nearly died on one. And the brakes are usually caliper, which suck compared to v-brakes or discs. And the riding position on drop bars means you can't really see anything to your side or to your rear and you really don't want to give car drivers an excuse to kill you.

Just looked on Giant's website for this years version of the bike I have. And it sucks, to be honest. Steel frame instead of aluminium alloy, generic v-brakes and only one pair of bottle cage mounts. I wonder why they changed it so much?

edited 6th Jun '13 5:44:22 PM by TamH70

Well, you're a woman, and you're in the Netherlands... I'd get something like this◊.

Obligatory:

Also, I can't ride a bike, not without training wheels.

I hate it that so many cyclists seem to have a wish to die hit by cars. Seriously, they get into traffic, have no warning lights or anything, and insist on crossings streets whenever they feel like it.

I bicycle as my main form of transport these days.

People here seem to have no clue what cycling hand signals mean. The plebs in cars usually just look at me like I'm retarded. I'll extend my hand to signal a turn, and the dumbasses must think I'm signaling for them to go past me, beause no one stops to let me thru.

edited 6th Jun '13 11:44:38 PM by SmytheOrdo

Rambler, cruising bikes are all bikes in the netherlands. My other choices are racing bikes and mountain bikes. Mountain bikes leave me in a lot of pain.