It was nearly 90 degrees outside today. This bothers me. Some deep part of my brain, the part that would make me hibernate if I was a bear, is very unhappy with this. In the north east, and the mid west, there are supposed to be 4 (1, 2, 3, 4) seasons. So far this year there have really been two, rainy and cool or hot and dry. I really hope it gets what we used to call “seasonably cool” soon.
To do my part in helping to bring the chill, I have been using a bicycle as my main form of transport for the last three months. I really want to ride all winter long, but the problem is my current bike has too many gears and stuff to get encrusted with ice and snow, the solution was to buy a much simpler bike. I brought home my new baby today and it is absolutely stunning.
It is a single speed/fixy (flipflop back hub) Specialized Langster 2007, “rust” colored with a black carbon front fork, and tiny skulls at the bottom of the front fork and near the cranks. It is so fast, and stiff and jumps like it wants to go fassssst (which it does). Without all the gears, and derailleurs, and cables the lines are super clean, and there is very little for ice and slush to glom onto. And the best part is that now that I have two bikes, I can bring non-bike having friends along with me for rides. Joy!
I have a couple pics now, but will get some better ones when it is light out.
I fill up my car about once ever two months. I used to put gas into it once every two weeks, with the price of gas (40 bucks to fill the tank), I should pay off the entire price of the bike in a year or less. Not a bad payback, and I really enjoy it. I have not tried the fixed gear yet, I am going to wait till this weekend and find a nice flat parking lot to try it out. If you have never ridden a fixy they are a little strange. If you pedal forward, you go forward, pedal back, you go back. If you are rolling and you stop pedaling, the pedals keep turning. I have seen people on fixies do some amazing amazing things, someday I want to be one of those people.
Why don’t you use a closed chain guard to protect your bike from snow and ice? I use the same on my bike (standard for the kind of bikes we use for city travel) and it never gives me grief. It even saves you on maintenance and you can still use your gears.
Collin, I could use a chain guard for my other road bike, but it has a substantial gear stack in the back and we tend to get a lot of nasty salty slushy kind of freezing rain weather here in the winter. I am not sure a guard would do anything other than trap salt water into my gears.
Plus, look at that thing I couldn’t leave that bike at the shop :) Also it is such a nice ride, I took it to work this morning and it screams.
If you have a good closed chain guard that shouldn’t be a problem. Lots of people here use those and never have a problem with them whatever the conditions (you need to dunk you bike in water before it will infiltrate into the guard).
But the bikes we use for cities (or day to day use) are substantially different than the ones used in the states. And with the current technology most models have a maximum of 8 gears (although these are designed for city use and you can reach quite high speeds on them):
http://www.gazelle.nl/nl/imagebank/fietsen/2007_furore_alumina_h_t8_popup.jpg
Plus they have a nice feature, you can use your normal clothes thanks to how they are designed. ;)
(Nothing wrong with the current one you use, only they are rare over here for day to day use. Most of those are used in sports.)
Thats a very nice looking city bike, but as you say, thats just not how we role around here :) When this city gets it’s act together and puts up some decent bike infrastructure I will get a nice city bike and ride it, but until then I am going to stick with my slick urban warrior bikes. I really need to get over to Europe and ride around your cities, I bet it is great.
Depends which city and which part of a city you go to. We do our cruising in the countryside and villages. Most of the time we use our city-bikes for that (if you ever visit I would love to help).
I use my mountainbike for such trips for the simple reason that I don’t have such a slick city bike (the one I have have is 19 years old, but still going strong). As my mountainbike is more comfortable for long rides (full suspension and what not) and use the oldy in the city as no one steals bikes that old. :P