We are utility cyclists. We are pathfinders. We see more from the seat a bike. Part of the pleasure of riding in an urban environment is that the terrain, the “bikescape,” is always shifting. For a season a road, a sidewalk, or a building will be under construction, and the traffic pattern will be altered….
“All real cyclists ride clipless pedals.” “No real cyclists use platform (“flat”) pedals.” That’s what you’d think, anyway, from reading many biking websites and magazines. They’ll tell you, in not so many words, that you’re not “serious” about biking if you’re not walking around in clunky plastic shoes and clicking on linoleum like a castanet….
Like the wheels on a bike, the wheels of justice go round and round. Life, like biking, is about do-overs. It’s about learning from your mistakes. Last month a young man made the mistake of stealing my Sport Utility Bike in plain sight of a police officer, who promptly arrested him. When the arresting officer…
My bike was just there. And now it’s gone. I’d been leaning “The Beast” up against the window at Jimmy John’s for a year. For the first few months that I worked there, I was really paranoid about locking it up every time I got back from a delivery. But I noticed that the other…
We ride at night. We ride with our lights and helmets on. We ride tight together. One wheel paces the next. We call the bumps, the potholes, the traffic lights. We ride together, trusting each other half an arm’s length away. We move as a single, sinuous snake, gliding around turns and over bridges. We…
I want a bike that will do it all. I want a Sport Utility Bike. I want a bike that’s comfortable enough to ride all day, sturdy enough to haul an overnight sack, big enough to fit a guy over six foot tall, and reliable enough to go months between tune-ups. I’ve ridden full-suspension mountain…
This Thanksgiving, I gave thanks for the bicycle. And this gratitude was all the more prominent in my mind since I don’t own a car anymore. It’s not an easy path to pedal. I sold my car before relocating to the other coast for a seasonal job as a bicycle tour guide. Sure, it was…
A dazzling display of pedicabs, bedazzled the Philadelphia streets in an amazing display by Cai Guo_Qianq. Deriq Carr tells the story of how he launched Los Angelos Pedicab Company. Austin pedicab riders make their big paydays when the big events come to town. And an entrepreneurial teen is discovering opportunity in pedaling people at the…
That’s me in the Lycra, That’s me on the descent, Losing my abandon. Trying to break my Strava record. And I don’t know if I can do it. Oh no, I’ve said too much. I haven’t said enough. I’ve been chasing descents since I was a kid in the Green Mountains of Vermont. By the…
This is the kickoff off roundup post that I’m experimenting with. The plan is that each week I’ll gather interesting stories from the last month or so within one of the 5 cycling niches we cover, Commute by Bike, Family Cycling, Bikepacking, Road Touring or Utility Cycling. I’ll be keeping notes of interesting stories that…
“White Man: He sit down, walk like hell.” That was how one Native Alaskan described Ed Jesson riding a fixed gear bicycle down the frozen Yukon River in the winter of 1900. How a man with practically no supplies and the simplest of bikes could ride over a thousand miles in the dead of an…
Gore-tex that doesn’t go damp, Treads that don’t wear flat, Chains that never skip or squeak, These are some of my favorite things. When you ride for long enough, you settle into habits and gear. Maybe it’s a brand of socks that don’t bind, or bib shorts that don’t chafe, or gloves that keep your…
But is there a future for the bicycle in warfare? In a word, yes. When the fuel tank is empty, and the gas station has been bombed, then the bicycle is a mighty fine choice.
There will always be a need for lightweight, reliable, stealthy, low-cost transportation.
“So I forgot to clip out of my clipless pedals and fell over.” A well-worn pedal. To anyone who isn’t serious about cycling, the above phrase is nonsensical. In the minds of snobibsh cyclists, nothing distinguishes them more from their casual brethren on wheels than their clipless pedals. Switching to clipless pedals is as momentous to an…
I’m sitting in Bites on Broadway in Skagway, Alaska, a hundred-year-old saloon-cum-coffee house, watching tourists walk down the wooden boardwalks. For every dozen tourists, there’s a local guide biking past. The guides look lean compared to the typically tubby cruise ship passengers. They ride up to the post office mailbox across Broadway to drop off…
It’s cute, but is it practical? That’s the question many folding bikes elicit. Sure, it looks neat, but how well does it actually function? Form follows function. Ergo, the form of a folding bike should follow its function. Folding bikes are designed to be compactly carried and stored in other vehicles, but still provide reliable…
Bicycles are almost as Swiss as Swiss Army knives, and the Swiss Army proudly maintained a front-line bicycle infantry regiment into the 21st Century. While it was disbanded in 2003, The Swiss Army continues to use bicycles for base transportation
In the wake of World War II, the militaries of the West left bicycles behind for the automobile and the armored personnel carrier. Bicycle infantry units in the German army were disbanded alongside the rest of the defeated forces.
“You can laugh at them now, Wesley,” my biking buddy Liz had told me a decade ago on a group ride, “But someday youre going to be one of those old guys on a recumbent.” Well, that day has come. I’m a certifiably older, slightly goofy guy on a recumbent. On my first sandwich delivery…
Recumbents. You’ve seen those oddball, laid-back bikes being ridden by slightly goofy guys (yeah, it’s usually guys). They’re smiling. They’re waving. And they’re looking suspiciously comfortable. Recumbents are practically the opposite of everything that bicycling is supposed to be about. There’s no crying in baseball, and there’s blessedly little comfort in bicycling. Right? Well, maybe…
‘Tis a pity that General Patton didn’t lead a column of bicycles into battle, but Field Marshall Montgomery led an army of foot soldiers and “foot cycles” in Normandy. When the British were bottled up in Normandy with their plentiful bicycle
Are cargo bikes practical? asked a denizen of Quora.com recently (a more polite version of Reddit). An interesting question, I thought, but whats a cargo bike, and whos to say whats practical? If cargo is defined as anything in excess of the human engine, then any bike that can carry a water bottle is a…
Adolf Hitler was a bike messenger? Yes, indeed. And a decorated one, at that. But more on that later. If the Great War had been fought in accordance with the fantasies of armchair generals, then the bicyclist would have replaced the doughboy as the symbol of gallantry and heroism.
Let us now praise Sweaty Men and Women; All hail the Bicycle Courier, Who is fast on feet and two wheels, Bringing us coffee and sandwiches and beer. Three cheers for the bike messengers of the world, the “cyclo-laborers.” While we cower in climate-controlled cubicles, they brave the sun and rain, the light and…
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