I’m disabled in a way that means I can’t use one, but can use a car, which kinda sucks.
Fortunately bike infrastructure usually helps me in my chair, so I’m all in favor of wider bike adoption.
Welcome to the Netherlands. If there’s anything that fills me with pride it’s our cycling culture. Most people have a car too, but I don’t, and I do everything by bike and public transport.
Arrive to work soaked in sweat because it’s been 100+ degrees every day for the past 8 weeks.
Because there’s no Microcenter in my city.
I used to love to bike but I moved to an area with steep hills and it’s too high effort. Maybe fine for exercise but I always used them for transport and you can’t arrive at work or a music lesson drenched in sweat. Wish they would install those hill lifts some countries have. I walk now. Would love an electric but the expense makes it much more painful when it’s stolen (and every one of my regular bikes has eventually been stolen).
Rain, ice and severe cold are a removed. I like bicycles, but driving to work in a heated car looking at that poor cyclist riding somewhere at 6 in the morning at -6°C, sorry, no, I’m gonna go with a car.
are a removed.
Bro, it might be time to leave .ml lol
I disagree cycling in winter is nice. Just get some warm clothes and good tyres. A car is also really expensive to own in the city. Why pay for a car and parking when the alternative is almost free and arguably more fun.
It was minus seventeen degrees celsius when I got up yesterday. In the time it would take me to bicycle to work on clear paths/roads - assuming no accidents - I would have frostbite on all of my face unless I was also wearing a full-face helmet.
You should check out Oulu in Finland where kids bike to school in cold weather. Not a problem apparently. If that is too far fetched, you should visit Bozeman MT where people bike commute in the winter quite often.
If a full-face helmet works why not use one? You can also just skip the extremely cold days and use public transport instead. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing decision.
I’m less likely to sweat profusely in winter
If the weather is bad enough, I will take transit instead, but cycling down to -10 C is doable without any problems.
I will be far less inclined to bike if it’s raining, that I do hate with a passion. Of course, I could just work from home in that scenario as well, if I don’t feel like taking transit
Was the removed word bitch (female dog) by any chance I wonder?
Because lemmy.ml is run by a bunch of pearl-clutchers that think profanity is a tool of the capitalist oppressors.
Why did you ask if the removed word is removed?
Looks like they shadow-remove the word
Me logged in (via Sync): —
Me not logged in: —
For some reason your comment appears uncensored to me, but the top commenter’s is censored.
Probably because the uncensored comment isn’t being posted from lemmy.ml, unlike the first post. Posting and viewing from the instance in question will probably censor every occurrence.
all of this is wild and i have no idea what’s real anymore
Ice and snow are difficult. But I don’t give a shit about the rest. It’s still way more fun than sitting in traffic.
Bikes were and still are a revolutionary technology. There’s a reason suffragettes were often associated with bicycles.
Good pun.
I don’t see it
Bikes were and still are a revolutionary technology.
lol, thank you!
Revolution to mean revolving/rotating
Thanks!
Bicycle is the wheel reinvented.
Bicycle is two wheels.
Now with double the amount of wheel!
But what if i need to commute 600 miles to work and back every day and on top of that once a year I drive a million miles to my vacation home? Checkmate!
I would get another job. :D
A bicycle gives you freedom of lightweight activities within a few miles of your home. You want to play baritone sax in the band 25 miles away? It’s not happening with a bike.
The 25 miles is a bit much, but if your instrument/sporting gear can fit in a bag, you can carry it on a bike. There’s backpacks for guitars, cellos and tubas and I regularly see kids cycling to their lessons with those. This is a fairly dense town though, so 5km max (20 minutes at child-speeds). Kids also can’t drive cars, so if it’s not happening by bike, it’s not happening at all.
For me? Yeah 25 miles is a bit much depending on how regular that commute is. Once a week, maybe. Once a day, like a job? 5 miles tops is my limit. But I’ve heard of people doing 20-25 mile work commutes before.
If you are really active and can shower at work it can be fine. Bit if not it will suck.
If you do it a few times and get used to it, 20 can be fine, if there is a shower at work it certainly is better.
I live in rural Norway up in the mountain side. We have wind, snow, ice and rain like hell, and I have ~150 elevation to get to the main road to get anywhere.
… I’m still considering getting a bike for all the mentioned benefits.
Cool let me just bike 30 miles to my job and back everyday sounds good
if entire cities were designed around these the way they are with cars, everyone would be fine with it
Don’t forget that maintenance is super cheap AND most people, with only the most basic tools, can do the work in their living room or even just on a sidewalk. And if I don’t get it right and the brakes don’t work perfectly I probably won’t fuckin’ die.
Hi, car owner here. I do all the work myself and it requires a fair bit of knowledge, expensive tools, space, and a childhood where I was never told I couldn’t do that work if I was thoughtful about it. That’s a high fuckin’ bar and requires a whole lot of privilege-oh there it is, too many people with privilege like to shit on those without and most of North America has dogshit for public transit or bike infrastructure and the “freedom of movement” with a car is all there but heavily artificial. Thanks auto industry and their lobbyists.
I do my own bicycle and auto repair, and the bicycle is way easier. Maintenance is:
- clean chain every so often (500 miles or start of the season) - get a chain cleaner tool thing ($10-20) and 50/50 Simple Green ($10 will last many years) and water, and then rinse, dry, and lube ($10 lasts years) - total process, 10 min?
- replace chain - $20 or so, plus a tool for $10 or so; do every 2k miles or so
- replace brake pads - $10-20
- tires ($50 for a fancy fire) and tubes ($10) - replace tires when bald, tubes when flat (or patch them), and get some tire levers ($5-10) to make it easier
For tools, you need a wrench set, and probably only like 2-3 sizes.
My yearly maintenance costs for all of our bikes (1 adult, two kids) combined is about $50. If that. You could also go to your local bike shop instead for about double that.
Also this is a healthy maintence regime. In my experience most cyclists do nothing on that list except swapping flat tubes and their bikes still ride just fine, if not merely sub-optimally.
Honestly have never done preventative maintenance on my bikes, only necessary repairs. Still thinking about repairing the shifter since I’ve been missing 1st gear for about 7-8? years now.
True. If you’re just riding casually, you don’t really need any maintenance.
But if you’re relying on it every day, keeping up on maintenance can reduce costs long term. Dirty chains destroy the cogs (inexpensive) and drive train (expensive), stretched chains cause gear slippage and inefficient power delivery, worn tires increase chances of flats and reduce grip, and worn pads reduce stopping ability, which could result in nastier accidents.
If you’re riding a lot, keep up on maintenance, just like you would with a car. If it’s just occasionally like once or twice/month, you can probably get away with some neglect.
A bit of easy maintenance should be possible for everyone. Just clean and lube the chain every month. Check tire pressure every two to four weeks (depending on how fast they lose air).
And once a year do a complete checkup either by yourself or by a bike shop.You should easily get 10 years of life out of your bike. 20 years might be possible too.
A quick tip on bike chains; if you are using lubricant you should never use heavy degreaser on the chain. The factory oil is the best lubricant and normal lubes don’t penetrate between links enough.
However, if you are going to degrease you chains, you should use paraffin wax instead of lube. I have an 11 speed chain with 3000+ miles and it’s only showing around 1% stretch. I don’t even use fancy bike specific wax, just food grade gulf wax. Another plus is the whole drive train is dry; doesn’t get your hands dirty if you need to remove a wheel, cassette, or derailleur.
Admittedly waxing the chain is a pain in the ass, but some of my chains are like $70 a pop so getting as much life from them is more important.
Wax can flake off leaving that space unprotected. You have to check it more regularly than a lubed chain and dry it off after rain. It’s not uncommon for a waxed chain to rust. But a big pro is cleanness of the chain and you won’t get greasy hands.
Personally I keep using (eco-friendly) lube. Yes the chain gets dirty fast but I don’t care. :D
The roller links are what you want lubricated and protected, and wax stays in those places much better than liquid lubes. While some chunks will flake off there is a thin layer left behind, I ride near the ocean pretty frequently and had worse rust problems when I was using lube. Ofc whatever works for you is the best practice but wax has been very easy for me. I track my rides, after about 150 miles I re-wax the chain. I’ve never found that I have to check it more often, but I also ride steel frames so I don’t ride in the rain anyways.
I have an 11 speed chain with 3000+ miles and it’s only showing around 1% stretch.
Wow, that’s a solid chain. I usually need to replace mine around 2000-3000, but my chains are like $20-30, and I don’t treat them very well (I stay on high gears on short climbs a bit too long).
I haven’t bothered with wax, maybe I should. I just do a decent job lubing everything a few times per year. I degrease (chain only, I’m careful around the derailleur and hub), rinse thoroughly, dry thoroughly, and then lube and wipe 2x. I don’t get any squeaks and it rides smoother after a cleaning, so I think I’m doing a decent job.
But I’ve heard wax is more of a one and done thing. Maybe I’ll try it the next time I replace my chain.
And if you have a bike with a belt you can replace all chain-related maintenance with “check if the belt looks weird maybe once a year”.
Yup. I recommend taking it in if it looks weird, it’s not worth learning to replace a belt since they’re usually good for many many years.
Exactly!
People over-state bicycle maintenance.
$50 and a couple YouTube videos gets you everything you need for the first few years of maintenance. You can get fancy with a bike rack thing, but I never bothered and I’ve been fine.
If you screw up, go to a bike shop and they’ll get you sorted for $50 or so, and they’ll probably teach you how to do it right if you ask nicely. If you have a bike coop, it might be free.
For the newer cars, the lockout of self repair is real. You need an EEPROM reader to get the diagnostics out, and only then using firmware found on a chinese forum. Fixing a part requires you to just order a replacement, and once you take apart the car and put the part in, you then need to tell the cars electronics to accept the part as part of its diagonistics or it wont fucking start, even if its non-critical and everything else is fine.
Yea that’s nearly 100% untrue, though. TPMS sensors can be a little weird but no one is changing tires themselves, only whole wheels for summer/winter.
Brakes, sparkplugs, tierods, suspension, all oils, many sound systems and/or parts thereof, filters, batteries, and even a whole headlight assembly are all things you don’t need to tell the car about. I put a backup camera in my car and it just figured it out all on it’s own since there was technically an option for it, and I wasn’t even using an OEM camera. And the car usually doesn’t even know what’s wrong but if there IS a code you can just use an OBD2 reader, they aren’t exactly expensive and they’re super easy to use.
You either have no idea what you’re talking about or are a mechanic that I’m glad I’m not taking my vehicle to. My 2015 BRZ that has literally none of that, not even TPMS sensors(I know 2015 is not that new anymore but people have been saying this shit for decades). This is exactly why I show people how it works, so that they can understand that it’s not that hard or complicated.
P.S.: if it’s a German vehicle just shoot yourself, it’ll be a much less painful experience than realizing that a bunch of high-paid engineers with great reputations among the laypeople are really just the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet. Also less physically painful, too. You can still do the work, they just put everything in terrible places and use bolts that have needlessly unique and more fragile heads. Fuck you, VW, you idiots.
Mechanical work comes pretty easy to me. I have no doubt I can fix virtually anything on my bike, short of things that require welding (we might see about that someday too…).
But cars mechanical work? Tried it some times. Frustrating as hell, don’t even want to touch it. I hate everything about cars, including the way they’re built.
I think it heavily depends on the make. Both my families mustang and f150 were terrible to repair. But my camry by comparison is a joy. I can tear it apart almost the whole way with a 10 and 12 mm in an afternoon.
I’ve done work in soft manufacturing, so i know how to use a wrench, but never worked in cars.
I acknowledge bikes are way easier BTW, can fix almost any problem in my bike in a few hours, just think repairability should be on people’s minds.
Because it’s harder to kill someone by hitting them with it.
But in all seriousness, you can go a lot farther, a lot faster, across much worse terrain and weather in a car than a bike.
How often does the average person really need to do that? Multimodal is where it’s at! Drive when you need to, don’t when there are alternatives. But alternatives need to exist for that to work, so vote for them.
Cuz putting on a raincoat or some warm clothes is too much for these weak ass people.
I get the sentiment, but a raincoat isn’t enough on its own. Sure, if you’ve got a 5 minute commute, you can get there quickly and spend minimal time in the rain.
A 20 minute commute in the pissing rain and you will be arriving soaked from head to toe. Not ideal for most. Yeh if you can shower at work then great, but then you’ve still got wet clothes you need to dry.
I’m very lucky that I have a 5 minute ride to work, all downhill, so unless the weather is biblical, I don’t really have an excuse for taking the car.
In The Nederlands people bike to school, which can be a bike ride of more than an hour away.
A raincote is not enough, but a rainsuit will do the job.
My issue with biking to work is the sweat …
I’m very lucky that I have a 5 minute ride to work, all downhill
That ride home though.
sounds like a great workout to destress from the day followed up with a nice shower at home
because the entire transport infrastructure is geared towards making cars the safest, quickest and most convenient way of getting places. its by design, absolutely on purpose.
i own a pedal bike and enjoy riding, but i can get places nowhere near the speed and safety. i almost always need at least a bus ticket to get halfway there, which forces me to rent the damn bikes wherever i go if i want to use them. a basic city motorcycle or scooter is fucking cheaper and quicker than mass transit where i live, without the disadvantages. this is probably why they seem to be so popular rn.
it feels like you have to go out of your way for any alternative and its still worse. maybe its time to rethink it but wtf do i know. you can blame the car industry or capitalism for that.
in north america - go to NL and it’s the opposite - it’s a political decision.
for reference, i’m on south america.
sadly, the NL is one of the exceptions, not the rule in the world.
