Others have mentioned it, but it's worth saying again: please don't wear headphones while biking in a busy city. It only takes the one time when you need swerve around that parked car's open door and but can't quite hear the car that is about to pass you...
Be happy Bike to work.
61–70 of 141 posts
Re: Be happy Bike to work.
#62Please anyone reading this don't wear headphones, you've removed one of the most useful senses for knowing where there's a potential problem. I'd love to cycle to work, the only problem is it's a 160 mile round trip, so it's not too sustainable. I've thought about cycling the journey from my house to the train station but then I've got the additional problem of dealing with a bike on a busy train (two trains really),…
Whether you wear headphones or not is a matter of how much risk you want to take. Just like riding a motorcycle is more risk than driving a car. Wearing headphones is more risky, but like anything in life, you have to decide if the benefits outweigh the downsides.
Re: Be happy Bike to work.
#63My ride to work is over an hour each way. Been doing it every day for years here in the northeast U.S. A mostly residential route. Funny thing is if I take the bus, it takes the same amount of time.
I started doing this out of a distaste for cars and statistics show that driving is actually much more dangerous then biking.
Weather-wise, I far prefer snow to rain. The hardest part is cold feet in the winter - never found a great solution. My advice is, if questionable weather is a deterrent, dont bike those days. But dont let it stop you from biking at least when it is nice out.
I do a single ear headphone with audiobooks (note I am not in a city). Gotta have something to listen to or I would be bored to death. Music can drown out important road dangers. Spoken audio has enough space and quiet that emergencies easily get my attention.
Re: Be happy Bike to work.
#64As someone who will be commuting by bike soon, I have to ask: what do you do when it rains/snows?
Fenders, and don't skimp on gear. I rode every day for two years straight in Chicago, back a few years ago before the really mild winters. I rode into the negative teen temperatures whether it was snowing or not.
I switched to clipless and picked up some cheap but good Northwave boots from Wiggle in the UK. I got some wind & weather resistant knickers from Swerve. Picked up a bunch of of merino wool base layers and a thicker wool zip up, under a goretex shell zip up. Many pairs of wool socks as well. Pearl Izumi lobster gloves were great. Pick up a balaclava or some other head/face covering, a cheap pair of anti-fog goggles, and you're good.
It sounds like a lot to buy, and maybe it sounds expensive, but considering the use I got out of all of it, I didn't blink. Plus it was more fun, and in my case it's roughly the same time to ride as it is on a perfect day timing the bus/train combo I needed.
Re: Be happy Bike to work.
#65As someone who will be commuting by bike soon, I have to ask: what do you do when it rains/snows?
Warm rain doesn't matter, except that it affects your stopping distance so you need to brake earlier. Rain gear is mostly pointless in warm weather because it reduces ventilation and leads to getting wet from sweat rather than from rain.
For colder rain, I use a Showers Pass jacket, and I ride a bike with fenders.
For snow and ice, I ride my mountain bike with studded tires. (The studs aren't really needed for snow but they help a lot with ice.) And I switch from clipless pedals to flat pedals so I can get a foot out faster to catch falls. (I fall about once per year in the dry, versus several times per ride in bad snow.)
Re: Be happy Bike to work.
#66As someone who will be commuting by bike soon, I have to ask: what do you do when it rains/snows?
Snow is not really a problem, but ice is. Sometimes the road has invisible slipperiness. So watch out for ice, especially with turning.
Yup, having your bike slide off the road is no fun. A studded front tire helps a lot.
Re: Be happy Bike to work.
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wear headphones and listen to music all the time when biking. There is absolutely no problem doing so. I watch where I am going and I can easily hear any meaningful sounds through the music. Or do you mean headphones that completely shut off the environment? That would be pure stupidity and neglect. But also something far different from just listening to music on a bike.
The problem is that the headphones are extremely close to your ear drum. Depending on the volume, you are more or less tuning out the environment completely when playing any kind of music through headphones. Sometimes people will yell at you when they see a possible accident happening but you wouldn't be paying attention through your music. You need to hear cars accelerating quickly in case you need to get out of the…
You seem to have missed that I wrote "I can easily hear any meaningful sounds through the music".
Re: Be happy Bike to work.
#68What about walking? Why the focus on biking?
Walking is a fantastic commute. It would be nice if people would structure their lives to walk. My ideal commute would be a five to ten minute walk to a nice office down a street with apartments and shops(it's currently ten feet, which has good parts and bad). But for many people, including the author, bike commuting is the most practical for the distance covered. And for some, talking about bikes and bike gear is mu…
5-10m is too short. You need a good half hour to do some productive thinking. My current walk is about 45m which is fine too. The bus saves maybe 15m so I usually walk.
Re: Be happy Bike to work.
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wear headphones and listen to music all the time when biking. There is absolutely no problem doing so. I watch where I am going and I can easily hear any meaningful sounds through the music. Or do you mean headphones that completely shut off the environment? That would be pure stupidity and neglect. But also something far different from just listening to music on a bike.
I ride to work every day. Most of my commute is on a popular bike path. I always warn people before I pass them. Every few months, someone decides to do a U-turn or a left turn, without looking, right into my path, while I'm passing them, leading to a near-collision. So far, 100% of the adults who've done this have been wearing headphones. (I've had one kid without headphones do it; I said "on your left" and she got…
Correlation is not causation. I would much rather think that those people were distracted or something. Not giving attention to their environments.
I CAN hear fine with my volume setting. Believe me.
Listening so loud or with headphones that cut out other sounds is dangerous, of course. I was not talking about that and I thought I had made that clear.
Just don't tell me that I cannot listen to music while biking. Unless you want to argue about the possible distracting itself, then we could go on about car radios.
Re: Be happy Bike to work.
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could get a folding bike. There are quite a variety of folding bikes these days in a wide range of sizes and price, and they are actually pretty nice bikes. For a lot of choice (cheap to expensive, big wheel and small), check out Dahon http://www.dahon.com/ , or if you want a really high-end folding bike that folds down really small, Brompton is the way to go http://www.brompton.co.uk/ . There are a few other bra…
If I had a bit of a longer journey post train it'd be a good idea, but it's under 5 minutes from the station to office. A commenter below suggested locking it up at the station I leave from (which I was a bit hesitant about) but I might try it that way. Some of those do look pretty nice though, I remember seeing the first folding bikes and it looked like people riding clown-bikes, they've definitely stepped up the qu…
I don't know what your station is like but my wife and lots of others do this from Bristol to London (~235 mile round trip by road).
http://goo.gl/xscqD - image search for Bristol Temple Meads bike rack
Fortunately my trip between uni/childminder/home is quite short so I'm going to try running it when term starts again.