Cyclists

[SnowyTasha]

When I was young I was a pretty avid cyclist and regularly rode along the Blackstone River Greenway, or at least the Rhode Island parts of it. Physically, things went bad for me after 15 and now in my 30s I've recovered enough to ride again. Then YouTube randomly recommended my a video by Berm Peak, and that got me thinking. So I got a new bike!



It's a Nishiki Tamarack. It's rather basic. $350 base price with the bottom-of-the-barrel Shimano Tourney derailleur, a basic suspension fork and seat and a rather firm seat, but I am taking it more seriously than the last bike I owned. I have a chain lock and added a rack, kickstand and bottle holder to it. So, now I'm wondering if there are any other cyclists on here. Feel free to share your bikes too if you ride!

[Ribbon]

A big long-term goal of ours is to get back to a place where we don't need to be as car dependent. We used to ride bikes a ton back when we lived in NYC and I miss it. Bookmarking this thread in the hopes that it further motivates this goal, and maybe recommendations as we never really paid attention to what made bikes different back then. - Vire (vi/vim)

[SnowyTasha]

I don't live in a particularly great area for biking either. There's very limited bike infrastructure (no sharrows, sparsely-placed bike lanes in the most random stretches of road, which were not modified at all to accommodate both vehicle traffic and bike traffic while keeping both safe, and the only bike lockups I see in my entire city are by the library and bike shop) and yet, I see people riding anyway. Drivers have also been surprisingly good about giving cyclists the right of way, considering how aggressive Massachusetts drivers can be.

What can make a bike "different" is what you want it for. Do you want it for leisure? Your commute? For exercise? There's no "one size fits all" solution as it all comes down to what you want out of it, and also some other considerations like frame/wheel size relative to your height and the particular kind of ride you want. There are also different purpose-built bikes, and then ebikes further complicate things because those have motors and can allow you to go much faster than a standard bike. I would like to upgrade to one eventually and have one in mind, but I want to relearn how to be confident on a bike first before I bite the bullet.

[NovaSquirrel]

I don't own a car and use my bike as my primary method of transportation, and I use it to get to the grocery store, to the zoo, to the post office, to the library, to various restaurants, to parks, etc. I biked to/from work before I moved to working remotely. Fort Wayne, Indiana has a trail system called "Rivergreenway" (along with many other trails) which goes makes it more convenient to get between different places in the city while mostly staying off of roads, and while avoiding constantly getting stopped by traffic lights at intersections. The city isn't huge, so if you live somewhere vaguely near downtown then you can probably reach most things you might want to. Though there are some areas that are more commerce-focused with busy streets and insufficient sidewalks. There are plans to fix this, though!!

Outside of biking to activities, I like to bike to parks and zoom around in circles. There was an event recently named "Open Streets" which involved closing 20+ blocks and I had this very long stretch of city to bike through, which I had a lot of fun with too.