I was forced by circumstance today to ride my dang bike, and because God is good, it was the perfect day to ride a bicycle: cool but sunny, and not at all windy. I rode a lot for the first ride of the season, and my legs already hurt. I’m so happy, though.
Edit: I just looked it up, and I rode 22 miles. That’s a decent chunk of miles for me! I think staying active in the gym over winter helped a lot.
Hell yea. I can’t wait for the weather out here to improve so I can ride my bike!
I’ve been meaning to ask the thread since I know some people on here ride regularly – whats your listening to music while on a ride situation? do you listen to music at all? if so – earphones or speakers etc?
I don’t want to come across as a big debbie downer, especially in the face of Helmet Gate in this very thread, but as a roadie I gotta say my most anxiety-inducing moments of “i have to be even more careful than normal” are when I’m approaching cyclists who have headphones on or are blasting tunes really loud.
imo hearing and awareness are probably the most critical things on a bike after seeing, and i think it’s wicked dangerous and risky to hinder that
I used to only have one earbud in, and only on a dedicated bike trail, but I have stopped doing that after some incidents of not hearing a faster cyclist coming up behind me.
I think this is pretty reasonable. A long time ago I used to wear the default apple earphones on rides but I noticed I tended to blast music on them and lose any kind of spacial awareness.
Then switched to like a small mounted speaker situation which was the best in terms of listening to music without compromising other sounds, but it was a bit cumbersome so I abandoned it.
Having a good bike playlist was a must for me for so long but I sort of gave up on the idea of it when I realized exactly that – need to be aware of close calls and such, car horns, warnings etc.
Another half mile. It was really hot out today so it was extra tough lol but I feel like I can hit my 8 mile goal by mid-May no problem!
I usually listen to podcasts while cycling, which I think is probably less bad for situational awareness than music but still not ideal. It’s pretty rare that someone overtakes me that I was unaware of, though. I was using bone conduction headphones, which don’t obstruct your ear, but they broke recently and I switched to shokz openfit earbuds, which are basically a little speaker pointed into your ear that sits outside of it. I feel like it doesn’t obstruct my hearing very much but it may be wishful thinking. Since I got my recumbent bike a lot more people are talking to me when I go riding and it’s definitely harder to follow conversation with a podcast going but that’s not so different from having two people talk to you at once. I’ve switched my shifters to non-indexed bar ends and I can hear when I need to trim my shifting pretty well. I don’t think I ever get overtaken by cars I didn’t hear coming, though I also check my mirror pretty regularly on the road.
I recently put clip-in pedals (I know the name for these is clipless but come on - they are pedals you clip in to) on the recumbent. I got double sided pedals - clips on one side and flat on the other. No falls yet, and having my foot held in place seems to be helping with holding my legs up for the whole ride. Or maybe I’m just getting my ‘bent legs. I’ve had a few scary moments when I had to stop suddenly and only just managed to free my legs in time, so I’ve started unclipping in the lead up to points where I know I might have to stop and flipping the pedals over to the flat side. This is not super efficient as a riding technique but I’m not going for speed records anyway. I think my closest encounter was a truck that failed to give way to me at a zebra crossing - I saw it coming and slowed down so it didn’t hit me, but I didn’t anticipate it stopping over the top of the crossing and blocking my path. I just managed to steer around the back of it. If I hadn’t been clipped in I probably would have just hit the brakes and put my feet down.
I’ve been going on runs the past couple of days. I like riding my bike but the process of dressing for it, getting it from storage, blowing up tires etc has made it harder for me to just go and do it, and running is just about putting on some some exercise clothes and a pair of shoes and then I’m out.
It’s easy to do and I think I can build a habit of doing it more frequently than I do biking.
Anyway what used to happen to me is that I would start running at a brisk pace then get winded and have to slow down, then start again, become tired and suddenly I’m 15-20 minutes in and I’m tired already. This time I decided to jog much slower than before, and was able to keep the pace for quite some time. Between walking fast and running I lasted an hour and 30 minutes and made it much farther than I had planned. I found that it’s hard to stop once you keep going, and everything was telling me to keep jogging.
I also remembered that when I was a teenager I would leave the house at 5am to go for a run before school. I didn’t live in a “safe” neighborhood by any means so I’m a bit impressed by my past self commitment to going for a nice run. I think I’m gonna keep up the habit, I found it to be a very enjoyable experience. Plus, a dedicated trail and walkways means I can listen to music without worrying too much. If I had to be among traffic I wouldn’t do it.
I’m considering getting a device that would help me track how long I’m out for or the distance I run, but that’s further down the line. Right now I just turn back when I feel like my legs are tired.
Gotta get a JBL and blast that **** homie
Had a minor crash on the bike today - I was coming up a hill on a shared path that was about to split into seperate bike and pedestrian paths, riding into the setting sun so I was going slowly and couldn’t see very well and needed to cut across oncoming foot/bike traffic. I realised a bit late that there were several people coming on bikes and scooters so I slowed down a bit so they’d be past me before I needed to move through their lane. The actual couple of seconds in which it happened are kind of a blur in my memory but I think because I was going slow I was a little wobbly and the last guy going in the other direction thought I was going to move in front of him so he veered to his right, but at the same time I veered back left (this is a drive on the left country so I think I was doing it right and he was doing it wrong) so we both moved in the same direction and collided, fortunately at low speed. My bike fell over but I managed to unclip and get my feet down so I didn’t, the other guy I don’t think fell at all.
I swore and called him “mate” and embarrassingly said he should have gone left and it was his fault, and he just kinda stood there and didn’t say anything. He was on an escooter and totally dressed in black hand to foot, wearing a motorbike helmet with a visor. While I applaud the safety gear as someone who works in trauma and meets a lot of people who recently got an escooter, I think the fact that I couldn’t see this guy at all under all that gear and that he wasn’t speaking got me more agitated. I think I was worried he was gonna blame me or get aggressive and I came on too strong. Shamefully, I didn’t think to ask if he was ok until he was already scooting away. I could have handled the situation a lot better.
My handlebars had moved out of position when the bike went down and my mirror is way out, but I was able to get both roughly where they belong. The chain dropped off at the front which was easily fixed, but once I started home again I noticed a couple of noises each time the pedals went around and eventually figured out one of the teeth on my biggest chainring was bent:
I think the chainring hit the post of the scooter (looks like I picked up a bit of paint from it too), which I guess is how the chain got dropped. The bent tooth was catching the chain above and below the ring on each rotation when I was using the middle ring (90% of the time). I didn’t have any obvious way to fix it so I just put up with it for the ride home. I never use the big ring anyway, so I’ll probably just try and bend it back with pliers or something so it stops catching.
Before I got a GPS watch this is what I would use to measure how much I was running.
That stinks! Sorry to hear that. I think its hard to handle accidents well so I wouldn’t worry about that too much.
Glad to hear you’re physically ok and that the bike is mostly ok 
This is a nice tool! I hold my phone and look like a dork I guess.
e-scooters strike again. I’m glad it wasn’t serious but also sorry you got shaken up!
good weather for a running lately (pro tip detour off the main trail down on the breakers at this point because they have foot and bike traffic blended and it’s not too safe)
did some cultural heritage on the way miss you big man RIP
The season is very very young but you better believe I’m taking advantage of spring weather already! Finally got a 2 hour ride in
Glad you’re ok. Once I had a chainring slice right into my calf and I still got the sharkbite to show for it. Sorry your chainring is destroyed though.
in this scenario, in my opinion, the real culprit is that all that foot/bike/scoot traffic is corralled into too narrow a path. when riding in the road, the road is so big, bikes and scooters never collide. So, once again, cars are the enemy. #walkablecities #killcars
@connrrr not Noby noby Boy iOS?
not that i disagree or anything, but i think i’d also like to point a finger at gig economy technocrats that willed an entire class of incredibly stressed out, underpaid, and unlicensed motorists into existence in an infrastructure that cannot support them so other stressed out people could buy taxis for their lunches. every time i nearly get clipped by someone running a motorized vehicle on a fucking sidewalk i feel equal amounts of sympathy and fury. there was a story a week ago about a delivery guy getting caught riding on an arterial highway against traffic and people are like “that guy should go to jail for endangering himaelf and others!” and all i could think of was like… come on, just like… imagine the forces that put that dude in that position… 
in any case, im glad everyone is safe
Yeah Can’t say I disagree with any of that lol. I’ve also been that guy.
