As a kid I was dragged into a bunch of state-width bike rides; my dad ran a July 4 bike ride and we had to ride around the counties spraypainting the road markers. Hard to count the number of hours I spent looking at his butt on the back of the tandem
With that background, the only real bit of bicycler wisdom I can share that might not be obvious is:
saddle sore is no joke
luckily this should be much safer and more predictable than what your buddy did, as the LA-SD route is pretty well traveled and documented. We’ve been able to read a lot of blog posts where people get into the extreme detail of how their trip went, right down to which intersections they got confused at and which turns were hard to see… unfortunately most of the people doing this are just blazing from town to town and not stopping at ALL to see any tourist shit along the way, so there were no hotel or stop point recommendations in the most detailed ones we found. If anyone knows which bougie seaside california towns we should sleep at on our trip let us know, haha.
Re: ass pain from biking, I got a pair of padded short liners I can wear under my normal shorts to avoid my ass turning into one giant blister. I have no idea what that’ll feel like after three days of fairly strenuous biking though, haha.
We are trying to plan a bikepacking trip somewhere in the LA area as a practice run, but it feels practically impossible… all the campgrounds by the beaches require you to be in an RV, probably due to the campground operators being afraid that a homeless person will show up. Another great example of how the LA housing crisis and its associated middle class terror means we can’t have nice things! (The other nice thing we can’t have is any free/easy to use bathrooms anywhere downtown, RIP) To get some practice in we’ll probably have to take the train north out of the city area and find a campground between here and SF. We’re still looking into that.
re: drop bars
I had a bit of trouble getting used to them just because the grip strength needed for the brakes is something I never really encountered before and also my first time riding around on them I hadn’t bedded the disc brakes so it was taking me ages to slow down everywhere
that said if the only comfortable position is with you resting them on the part where the curve is, that definitely seems like a bike fit issue and I wouldn’t even spend the 3 weeks getting used to it; resting on the hoods shouldn’t mean that you’re putting all your weight on them and I don’t ever recall worrying about my core strength when riding with drop bars. you should be able to shift and brake comfortably from your default position on the hoods without worrying about putting on or lifting weight off of your hands as you’re using them. the weight distribution should be something like 60-40 or 70-30 butt to hands, respectively
My company has lent ebikes to 20 people for one month. I fell in love with mine and ended up buying it despite the pathetic 10% only discount
It’s wonderful in every way but the speed limiter in Europe blows. 25 km/h! It’s pretty easy to remove with magnets but I don’t want to completely void my insurance protection considering how pedestrians tend to fail to notice ebikes and just randomly cross the road without looking here
Similarly I’ve been on the fence about helmets for a while but for now I think I’ve found a good compromise: Helmet in the morning, no helmet in the evening. It just makes sense
yeah I early adopted an eBike like a decade ago and I have adored mine ever since, they are so much more expensive and mainstream now!
the ultimate final version of our bike commuting involves getting my kid to be ok with having a helmet on for a little so we can put him on our e bike and cart him around wherever we go
In the event I move to sweden I am hoping to continue my dirtbag mopeder lifestyle and thus looked up the craiglist equivilant for sweden to find bikes, and I like what I see
Anyway, this bike is ugly as shit, but is the kind of ride I’m looking for. Better yet, there’s visible aftermarket parts, which means they might be kosher on the road. this is a huge deal for me. No pedals though, which is a stupid anachronism that keeps mopeds in America in a certain classification (pedals power the rear wheel = bike, but also with a 50cc engine)
also the ad copy translation apparently means you can take these idiot machines anywhere, including bike paths
a guy ona bike just called me a crackhead for LOOKING BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING A STREET WITH CONSTRUCTION AND CARS COMING what the fuck. fuck you. eat fucking shit
I started using the exercise app “strava” and was awakened to the horrible reality that my husband’s cousin is some kind of bike monster and bikes like 87 miles in a day with her boyfriend for fun. She lives in the same city as me and is all over the dang place on her bike. Meanwhile I am struggling to bike one half mile up and down the big hill I live on. I am never going to defeat her, because I have actual diseases that make me weaker and heavier than her, but I do now have an anime-esque rival now to measure my gains by
The app is telling me that I am getting faster… I am still at the point where I get noticeably faster every week. That’s kind of cool. I cut three seconds off the time it takes me to go up the big hill today.
Gamifying my biking in this manner has also got me turbo addicted to coffee because I started using coffee as an excuse to go out and bike in the morning before work. When I was on vacation I kept having to get up super early to get coffee because I had conditioned myself into a coffee monster. I suppose if I am now biking all the time, I deserve this vice
now you just need to get onto zwift and you will be a full on SPANDEX WARRIOR
we live literally across the street from the velodrome and look, i wouldn’t rule out track racing ok
I just looked up Zwift and I had no idea this existed but I’m not surprised it does. Biking and Gaming at once! The website suggests that using this app would allow someone to become a digital biker and bike past a koi fish or a tron landscape.
Jet to the desert. Climb a volcano. Escape to a futuristic New York City. So many routes are yours to explore—all on your own time.
Damn, volcano biking… these warriors are tested by digital flames
Unfortunately I think it may not be for me… I had to do a spin PE class in college in order to qualify to graduate and it was like my personal journey into a volcano. It was my senior spring and I experienced additional angst from the knowledge that if I did not repot to the massive, barn-like gym and pedal in a room where the air was like 60% sweat humidity, I would not graduate at all. I imagine that biking on an imaginary road would be much more fun than just pedaling really fast in a dark room while staring at a wall, but I think I’m spoiled with the beach path here in LA, haha. I wish the volcano bikers the best though
honestly I don’t blame you! the whole thing is far too intense and honestly I should just be riding outside way more often but I like having the ability to actually do some kind of training if I want to? I only ever end up doing the same ~15 mile routes for an hour and seeing how fast I get which is good enough for me
I don’t know how to reconcile how I feel weird about going out on my bike by myself without my wife and kid but feel totally fine riding in zwift without my wife and kid!
I actually feel some of the same tension. Commuting on my ebike alone feels very normal. But ever since I’ve bought the “acoustic” gravel bike specifically for exercise, I haven’t done one “exercise” bike excursion without my husband, and feel a little wierd about the idea of leaving him alone in our tiny apartment to go biking solo. It’s probably because I know he enjoys biking too…
I still use the ebike for commuting. I tried to use my gravel bike for commuting and errands one day but I had three hypoglycemia episodes across 16 miles (I have type 1 diabetes). This just confirmed that my initial assessment that I’d need the ebike to commute safely/not get stranded was correct, and that I still need to do a lot of training and diabetes experimentation to figure out some insulin pump basal schedules that allow me to do that without just being on an active exercise schedule all day. So taking the ebike out now feels very perfunctory and chorelike, and the acoustic bike feels like a ritual treat that I should share, haha.
A friend of mine (who also runs marathons and stuff) did a Zwift charity stream on Twitch it was pretty cool I thought
This guy regularly rides his bike from Astoria, Queens to White Plains
Which like, I guess I’ve done that much distance in a day round-trip, never just one-way.
literally crossed paths with the guy who built the electric moped today, so I got to see it in the daylight. I asked where he got the hub motor and just said “Aliexpress” and I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me. He got grips to match the olive drab paint job he did. it’s incredible, wish I had gotten a photo.
I’m really happy that this thread was resurrected as practical advocacy for a car-free lifestyle. I’m still living in Bangkok, so living car free is quite easy. But there’s a non-zero chance I’ll move to LA in the future (have something of a network there; there’s work there). When I think about that, the first thing I think about is the cost of getting around. I haven’t driven in, like, 15 years and have never had a license. Money would be tight if I moved back to the states. It would feel insane to spend the money that a car costs. (Cars are one of those things that–if you haven’t normalized them–seem completely nonsensical.)
When I did a little research into e-bikes it was something of a relief. I also haven’t biked basically since I was a kid, and I’m not crazy about the safety aspect. But it was good to know that there seems to be a viable way to get from A to B without going into debt and burning dead dinosaurs (directly anyway).
Anyway, while I’m still in a city with viable public transit options, I’ll never shell out for an e-bike. But it’s good to know the option exists.
When I was seriously into distance running, I used to dream about jogging everywhere. Living in NYC, it’s like, “Fuck, I could jog literally, like, everywhere.” We just need to advance as a society towards having plentiful public showers and I’d be set.
Gorgeous!! Sunsets and great bike infrastructure are the perfect pair… And your bike looks sick. I still haven’t tried a mid-drive ebike but I hear they feel a lot nicer and more responsive than hub drives
