I have been collecting images of bikes and ebikes on Reddit for the last few months and here are the weirdest ones I have seen, and also some bikes that just looked nice to me aesthetically.
The good stuff (bikes that look like they are about to explode)
Everything else
You may be interested in my friend’s bespoke bicycle lighting solution, if only as a curiosity:
Damn this is elegant! The wire to the helmet is funny but hey if it works it works. Better to not have a rechargeable battery strapped to your skull anyway right
I posted my bike photo collection three days too soon because a new great bike photo just appeared on reddit:
All Ass, No Gas
If you are curious, the best subreddit I’ve found for trawling vast quantities of strange bike photos is xbiking, which is focused on, like, weird frankenbikes that people make for themselves, stuff that doesn’t fit into any accepted mainstream bike category, etc. The photos people put there are usually very charming and sometimes a little strange. I haven’t really dug into the stuff in the sidebar, but the first time I saw this subreddit I was delighted that whoever is moderating it put a straight up blogroll in there. This is the first new blogroll I have seen on any website in like 8 years.
The weird busted ebike photos come from the ebikes subreddit which is mostly normal but sometimes becomes kind of uncomfortable and tense… because ebikes are so unregulated globally, there is no agreement among ebike owners, even, what counts as an “ebike.” So you have folks with electric commuter bikes sharing the space with people who are obsessed with (often street-illegal) electric mopeds, as well as people who are basically making straight up motorcycles. My favorite posts are the ones from people who are riding shit that’s likely to kill them, like the one above with the front wheel motor made out of a discarded treadmill someone found at the dump.
Update on my ebike, by the way:
The summer school I’m working at is much closer than my base school, which means I’ve been able to cycle to work. Luckily, the route in is downhill and I leave early enough to beat the heat. It’s so invigorating to listen to tunes while taking in all the smells of neighborhood streets. I wish I had the option all year.
Downside is my butt is sore from all this cycling and I still use a backpack instead of saddlebags.
i rode my bike THREE TIMES this week, once to the grocery store, once to the post office and one to the cvs to pick up a package
the grocery store trip was handled by my ebike because we had a lot to get, and i’ve been riding it a bunch lately, but i forgot how much fun my gravel bike is, it just feels like i can go really fast and it’s nice and connected to the road
that said i finally put the bike seat on the ebike and ash finally seems to be able to tolerate wearing a helmet so…
I have encountered a new enemy on my cycling adventures: sensor-activated traffic signals. Today, I had to treat them like stop signs because no cars would pull up and I refuse to use the sidewalk buttons. I read something about turning your wheel in such a way to trip them, so maybe I’ll try that next time.
weird when i’m riding on a road i have to take pains if i don’t wanna trip them
It could be a difference in sensors. The ones in my town are camera activated but I think others detect metal.
sometimes I find that standing over the the bike and then just tilting the bike all the way down so that it’s almost laying on the ground trips the sensor
pretty shitty that it has to be like that! but it works sometimes
There are several inductive loop sensors specifically tuned for bikes on my commute and I love them to death. Most of them are a painted line pointed straight ahead with a bike image on it that will trip the sensor if you position yourself directly over them.
In most places though I’m usually forced to follow the near-superstitious recommendation found in this video and try to balance my bike on the right edge of the circle. It feels like this works less than half the time—I have no idea what I’m doing wrong but it seems too fiddly to be easily reproducable in my part of LA at least.
Does anyone use alternatives to Google Maps when they cycle? Maps keeps directing me to the busiest, multi-lane stroads and I’d rather take a longer path through neighborhood streets if I can.
I tried Komoot today and it was nice! It took me on a route Google Maps never would, on bike trails through woods and onto side paths. I’ve been having a pretty great time just looking up historical markers near me and going out each morning. It’s pretty wild how many battlefield and civil war cemetaries are just in some suburban backyard.
it’s not as real-time but I like to use ridewithGPS to plan routes, gives nice info about elevation and stuff and you can compare with other people riding similar routes to see if it’s something people actually do or if the line only theoretically exists
Was not able to take a photo of it, but someone who was moped adjacent but rides eBikes exclusivly rolled up to our meet spot on an electric Puch Maxi. The build was really really well done, to the point where this guy is either a master craftstman or paid someone $5000 to do the job.
In any case, the engine (which sits below the frame) is where the battery pack lives. Which is where I would have put it because the Maxi frame is a step through design and there really isn’t a good place to put the weight of the battery unless it’s up high. This also keeps the silhouette of what a moped looks like. He had a massive hub motor too, which is probably the way to go. I wanted to do chain driven mid drive because it adds a bit of sketchiness to things, but for power delivery hub is probably the way to go.
this is probably the ultimate moped electric build setup, and I wished I had talked to the guy more about it. ah well
That sounds awesome. Tell him to post a pic on the ebikes subreddit, they like custom builds a lot and there’s some overlap there between commuter bikes and more of the electric moped stuff
I’ve seen a lot of extremely heavily customized ebikes out on the road since I started biking in LA, but I haven’t yet seen a converted moped. Just the moped style ebikes a lot of web companies sell here now. Converting a bike like that definitely sounds like a lot more work and craftsmanship than most people are willing to put into ebikes! I bet it looks incredible
My friend who owns a Tesla and whose wife owns a Tesla is in a situation where one car is completely immobile due to a failed module of some sort and the other needs some new module installed ASAP. The closest place that can deal with either car is like 70 miles away.
RIP my dude.
Said friend has a loner P100D with ludicrous plus mode for one day. He offered to let me do a launch in it tonight.
As much as I’d like to see what it’s like to go from 0-60 in 2.3 seconds in a street car, I don’t really want that experience. I don’t want to WANT that feeling again. I don’t want Musk’s product to give me that kind of experience. Most of all, I’m feeling lazy and tired tonight!
Both cars I drive are phenomenally slow by modern standards. I want to remain in my innocent bubble for just a little longer.
I have become an even bigger biking freak since I last posted here.
I’ve been commuting and grocery shopping with the electric bike for six months. In this time my husband shifted over almost entire to biking too, and then we started biking for longer and longer, and convincing people to come with us, and trying (with poor success, due to being too slow) to attend night rides around LA. Then we got the idea in our head that we would train to bike from LA to San Diego.
So now we are planning to train up and do that next year. But we are not strong enough to do the trip in one day, like a lot of road bikers do, so we’re going to do it in three days and stop in hotels. The trip is around 140 miles, so even with breaks 50 miles a day is doable, particularly if we continue practicing. I can do 20+ in an afternoon without any practice at all but it leaves me pretty beat.
But since I would be out in the middle of nowhere for miles and miles (the trip involves biking through Camp Pendleton, and along the coast) there’s a risk that I would run out of charge on the ebike and be stuck pedaling a 65 pound bike up hills. 50 miles is the stated max range of the battery, but the marketing materials don’t say what pedal assist level that’s calculated at, so I suspect it’s the lowest level, with little or no throttle use. I can’t guarantee that I would safely ration my battery like that over a 50 mile ride every day… because I ride around with my hand on the throttle, not ever using the throttle is very hard, even when I commute in the city. So I thought about this and then also about the fact that I am now biking for exercise as well as commuting… and decided to buy a regular ass bike for this.
Because I have another opportunity to do a relatively entry-level long trail ride with a group next year, I bought a Kona Rove gravel touring bike. It’s extremely fun, I feel faster than shit, and the gearing is so much nicer than the ebike that I kind of lost my mind. I live on top of a giant hill and can now zoom up it like a freak. I have been biking around my neighborhood going up and down these big hills and trying to get used to the drop bars.
Which brings me to the point of this post… has anyone here had a rough time getting used to drop bars?? What was that like for you? I find them terrifying, though less so every day, and I also have a hard time merely holding the bars rather than putting my entire upper body weight on them.
I’m beginning to think that I not only lack the core strength necessary to hold myself bent over without putting my weight on them… but also my stem may be too long, as the most comfortable position for me is 1.5-2 inches backward on the hoods with the center of my palm on the spot where the hood meets the bars. Unfortunately in this position I am unable to reach the brakes. I’m going to try adapting to this for another 3 weeks or so and if I’m still uncomfortable I’ll head back to the shop and ask for recommendations on a shorter stem length.
While trying to get used to the drop bars I looked up The Origin of Drop Bars… where did they come from… which asshole came up with this shit… and they really are just a thing from racing. Wild. apparently people were putting early forms of drop bars on penny farthings back in the day due to the high wind resistance involved in being so tall.
I did get this bike for exercise but I’m so uninterested in going fast and having fancy aerodynamics… I just want to perform a feat of strength with it and go super far and have an excuse to take the Amtrak Surfliner back to LA, lmao. If I can’t ever get truly comfortable with the drop bars I think it might be interesting (though expensive, as I’d need new brakes and shifters) to try replacing them with flat bars myself.
my best friend biked from NYC to seattle a few years ago if you need someone as a sounding board for extremely ill-advised shit
