Comments on: Cycling: The First 100 Miles

By: YoungHistorians

YoungHistorians — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 02:46:02 +0000

How’s this coming along Dan? Hope all is well with you and the bike.

By: tom

tom — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 06:47:40 +0000

To continue Harold’s point, if you’re in a city, get a cyclocross bike. Redline has some pretty nice, affordable ones at the moment.

By: Harold Jarche

Harold Jarche — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:55:27 +0000

Good to see that you haven’t given up Dan. Here’s my 2 cents, from someone who has ridden in Europe and most of Canada.
1. Get the largest tires possible for your road bike (I use 28 mm). These will help you with our awful N. American roads.
2. Be aggressive, but paranoid at the same time (this attitude kept me alive in Montreal).
3. North Americans will not be like Europeans for a long time. In Europe, almost everyone’s grandmother rides a bike, so they know that they have to be more respectful. Also, for years after the last war, most people could not afford cars, so everyone rode bikes.
4. As oil keeps going up in price, you’ll appreciate your bike even more.
5. The more you ride, the more your wife should appreciate you ;-)

By: Aron Kansa

Aron Kansa — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:21:08 +0000

or you could just bunny hop it

By: gare

gare — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 03:59:21 +0000

The first time I rode with clip in pedals, I biffed it hard, twice. It sucks, but doens’t keep me off the road.

By: tom

tom — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 04:32:15 +0000

Haha, that is the greatest diagram I’ve ever seen.

By: Scorched

Scorched — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:40:54 +0000

Zephyr, sadly, she is correct. I lived in North Carolina, and when I rode there I was endangered more than once by the locals for “fun”. The saddest was getting hit with a McDonalds milkshake thrown from a car at about 100kmph. I’ve had beer bottles tossed at my wheels, and have been swerved at and yelled at. There are certainly some people that never outgrew their bully stage in highschool and continue to be mean for fun.

By: Harald Scheirich

Harald Scheirich — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 17:23:07 +0000

I recently moved from Austria to DC and I can tell you that the streets around here are just plain bad. Austria has lower average temperatures for much longer than DC and the streets in Vienna do not develop holes that big. Some streets around here remind me more of former eastern block cities than the capital of the United States.

By: Zephyr

Zephyr — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 12:21:30 +0000

I’m from Holland, a country of bike riders. My girlfriend is American. She insists that people in some US states take pleasure in making life hard for bicyclists … Seems to be a matter of (lack of) respect?

By: Scorched

Scorched — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:21:06 +0000

Lenny, that is a common problem if you aren’t willing to merge out into traffic and take the lane. But statistically it’s cars making right hand turn that cause the most biker injuries. The driver passes the rider and then makes a right hand turn, underestimating the speed of the cyclist, and the cyclist impacts the side of the car midturn. At Bicycle Safe it’s marked as type #4. I’ve had it happen to me, and did a tuck and roll over their hood. My scariest road bike accident was being hit with a trucks side view mirror in my shoulder and being spun into some gravel.
The number one way to stay safe is not to assume that you are invisible, but instead to assume that you are wearing flashing neon orange. And then to assume that there is a 10,000 dollar bounty on your head for the first person that can hit you :) (stolen more or less from neil stephenson’s book ‘zodiac’)