I accidentally concisely summarized my position on bike helmets in a Facebook comment: It might be a good idea to wear a helmet, but it’s a waste of passion and effort to try to get other people to do it. Spend the effort and breath you would have spent on helmet debates on making it […]
Category Archives: Equipment
Bikes – 1
I sold my oldest bike today (Minerva, my Trek Navigator 200 city/utility bike), to a friend, which got me thinking about how long I’ve had it. I’ve owned that bike since summer 2001. With the exception of some of my musical instruments, it’s the high-value possession I’ve owned the longest and used the most. (I’ve […]
SKS Raceblade fenders
The Terry website, when I bought Meg (and still — also, wow, it costs $750 now?!), said that there is enough wheel/brake clearance to allow the installation of fenders. I’m honestly not sure what Terry was thinking of when they wrote that, because although there is more wheel/brake clearance than a normal road bike, every […]
Wet ride
It was raining like crazy all day yesterday. I had agreed to go to a party in the evening, so I decided, in the spirit of adventure, to find out whether my bike raingear was up to the task of keeping me relatively dry and comfortable on a 9.6 mile ride in moderate to heavy […]
The miracle of rotated handlebars
So I went through this entire odyssey after I discovered that Meg’s handlebar/stem combination wasn’t working well for me and wasn’t going to be easy to replace. I looked for stems that would work and found almost nothing, and I couldn’t figure out whether any non-31.8 handlebars would work. I think the odyssey is finally […]
Nashbar wins again
I’m guessing the crappy knicker thing with Nashbar was just a fluke, because I ordered some more stuff from them recently and it came today and everything looks great. The Cateye magnet works fine with the Cannondale computer I mysteriously either lost the magnet for or which was defectively packaged with no magnet. I also […]
A matter of course
Today was an interesting bike day. In the morning, I had a bike-car contact moment when a guy stopped suddenly in front of me (someone had stopped suddenly in front of him). I had a moment to think “Huh. My brakes aren’t going to stop me in time. Whoops, I just hit him.” Fortunately it […]
I’m a self-propelled person!
I picked up a copy of Momentum magazine (“The magazine for self-propelled people”) out of a box they brought us at Maker Faire to take to SFBC. It turns out it’s an awesome magazine, and it’s incredibly cool that the ads are all for things I might actually want, or want to know about — […]
I just LOVE cargo bikes!
Here’s some awesome stuff I’ve been checking out: Bakfietsen How can you not love something named Bakfietsen?! Okay, they’re stupidly expensive, but you could still buy four of them for the price of a car, and with a rain tent for your cargo and enough room for three kids and groceries, why would you need […]
Gear update: 2WG bag
After I finally got my 2WG bag from the post office, I’ve been getting used to it. I didn’t want to do a review of it before I got used to it, because it takes a while to get used to a new bag and figure out where you want to keep everything and what […]