Cycling is an activity I’d stumbled into because a couple friends were talking about it regularly and it seemed like an excellent way to get outside. When I first started I was living in Royal Oak and on my own didn’t feel comfortable building/executing routes that were safe. I’d pack up my bike and drive to the nearest Metropark to unload and ride for a while. Sometimes the drive to the park would take a greater amount of time than the duration I spent biking. It wasn’t until moving to Grand Rapids and meeting some others that I realized the joy of moving around via bicycle in groups or alone.
TODO
- Write on “The Great Nearby”
- Write on automotive centric city designs
Resources #
- Not Just Bikes: Stories of great urban planning and urban experiences from Amsterdam and the Netherlands. It’s not just bikes.
- CyclingAbout: Informative videos from a touring bikepacker, also has extremely informative books released annually.
- Climate Town: Covers lots of local/national/global history and policies related to automotive centric systems.
- ride: a short film about cycling.
- The Amazing Way Bicycles Change You: talk on how bicycling changes you and the community around you.
- Bicycling for Life: presentation on bicycling generating positive change in society.
Tools #
- OpenStreetMap: often times has seasonal roads that can be factored into routes when other route planning systems won’t consider them.
- Strava: provides a way to plan and record trips, makes the process social, and has “challenges” that roughly line up to sporting events occurring globally.
- ridewithgps
- Gaia
Bike(s) #
The best bike is a bike you can safely operate that gateways you into the activity
It’s likely that if you’re getting into biking as an adult you may have a significant gap in time since the last time you were riding. For my first bike since childhood I’d wanted to get something in the gravel domain to provide for maximum flexibility of exploring the hobby. Some friends lent me a conventional mountain bike for a couple long rides and from that experience some requirements were elicited:
- Local brick and mortar support: so there is someone to talk to about maintenance
- “Research” manufacture: an organization doing materials or mechanical research in bike manufacturing
- 1x drivetrain: simplifying the controls by reducing the front derailleur
- hydraulic disc brakes: didn’t want to experience cable stretch or non-equal brake pad alignment
- in frame routing: non-exposed cable paths
- standard handlebar: initially afraid of using drop
From this I’d selected a Trek Dual Sport 4. After 1k miles and seeing a lot of other bikes my opinions have changed quite a bit to prioritizing:
- self maintainability: making materials and component choices to allow for maximum maintainability in the home
- avoiding suspension: no need when {tires, frame, seatpost, headset, stem} can handle damping for the rider
- mountpoints everywhere: attaching packs and lights, you want options
- belts and internal drivetrain: hub systems like Alfine or speedhub, or pinion have significantly less maintainability and in some cases offer a wide shift range for a small efficiency impact.
- dynamo lighting: generating power from the front wheel so that charing lights isn’t required.
If/when purchasing a bike again there are a couple that I’d be on the hunt for:
- priority seems to focus on low maintenance and value engineered platforms:
- Tout Terrain
- Koga
- WorldTraveller can be fit with Rohloff Speedhub
TODO
- Bakfiets and other cargo platforms
- Electronic systems
- “maintainability” as a focus
- Customization of things like frames
Accessories #
TODO
Interesting Links #
TODO
- Open source data fitness connector, company/person behind the project
- Self made hardtail frame with pinion
- Bikecad added pinion modeling
- Moonlight Ramble: “World’s Original Nighttime Bike Ride”