201–210 of 380 posts
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How are you going to get to places in heavy rain or snow?
If it's raining or snowing too hard to be able to ride a bicycle (with appropriate clothing, i.e. the appropriate clothing to be outside in that weather anyway), it's probably also worth reconsidering operating the 3000lb wheelchair.
Bicycles are an amazing transportation tool. Why are they so unpopular everywhere else?
See, we have a national costume that happens to be a 2 ton motorized suit of armor. And if you aren't wearing it, your loyalty is suspect.
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U locks don't deter thieves at all. If they want a bike, they will get it no matter what. Almost everyone commutes on beaters for good reason. https://www.citylab.com/navigator/2014/10/your-u-lock-is-bas...
I always heard that a small U lock[1] is always better than a larger one and I never understood why. Now i know, that modified carjack is something else. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Kryptonite-Evolution-Mini-Bike-U-Lock...
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Anything longer than 30 minutes each way is probably beyond what many people would like to spend commuting. So, that's about 4-7 miles (depending on variety of conditions). Which, I gotta say, is not very far for most Americans. Most of us commute around 15 miles each way.
> Most of us commute around 15 miles each way. The really crappy part is how much of that 15 miles is caused by car infrastructure. Imagine how much closer one might be to work if the distance were compressed, removing about 80% of all street and highway width, the entirety of all road buffer zones (highways often have several times as much of this as they have actual road), front yards (= mostly to keep house back f…
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As a fellow dutchman, duct-tape the shit out of everything on your new bike. If you're really brave even partially paint it in a hideous color (purple or something). You'll still have a bad looking bike, but at least it will be mechanically much nicer than your fifth-hand rusting omafiets. Since I started doing that I never had a bike stolen in 15 years, despite living in Rotterdam and Utrecht (big cities) and buying…
There should be vinyl wrap for bikes that provides a paintable, duct-tapeable substrain for camo tape and radioactive fuchsia and orange also camo ejaculation. Flat (no shine) paint makes a bike even less attractive. PS: I had a old/ugly bike that I had for 16 years in Davis, CA that I still locked and it was stolen from an apt complex the one and only time I forgot to lock it. There are thieves whom ride around in c…
Bicycles are an amazing transportation tool. Why are they so unpopular everywhere else?
There are many factors, but IMO it has a lot to do with urban sprawl. I'd never consider living somewhere where I'd have to own a car to be able to do my groceries and to go work. In the same idea, I'd never take a job that requires me to do more than a 30 minutes commute by public transportation/biking distance. That makes me a perfect candidate for biking, unfortunately I'm more of an outlier. Most people, includin…
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I think it needs to be mild, flat, and dense . And then AFAIK the government made a concerted effort to exploit those traits by building good cycling infrastructure.
We have mild, flat, and dense. Boston and NYC, for example. I think the only missing piece in many cities is funding and prioritization.
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Dunno, I used to ride the bycicle to the school in the city which is 25km away from where I lived. So 50km (31 miles) a day at least. In the village where I grew up that was pretty common.
In my experience, every school kid who lived ~10km or more away bought a moped (scooter) the instant they turned 16, when they were allowed to drive one.
Now when those turned 18.. that's a different story, it did not take them very long before the driver license was there.
When I look at my nieces/nephews now, then it is mostly still the same story. Except that indeed the number of mopeds is higher, but still under 50%.
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As a fellow dutchman, duct-tape the shit out of everything on your new bike. If you're really brave even partially paint it in a hideous color (purple or something). You'll still have a bad looking bike, but at least it will be mechanically much nicer than your fifth-hand rusting omafiets. Since I started doing that I never had a bike stolen in 15 years, despite living in Rotterdam and Utrecht (big cities) and buying…
There should be vinyl wrap for bikes that provides a paintable, duct-tapeable substrain for camo tape and radioactive fuchsia and orange also camo ejaculation. Flat (no shine) paint makes a bike even less attractive. PS: I had a old/ugly bike that I had for 16 years in Davis, CA that I still locked and it was stolen from an apt complex the one and only time I forgot to lock it. There are thieves whom ride around in c…
> If anything, having a tatty, battered old > bike affords more status as it attests to > a long and lasting love. As an Amsterdam resident: What a romantic characterization of our high crime rates! Yes, the reason I still ride a shitty old beater of a bike is definitely my long lasting love for that piece of shit, it's not because I know that if I buy anything fancy I'm going to have to never take my eyes off of it,…
Because it seems like a relatively small policing effort could enable a massive improvement in quality of life.