[cvcalhoun]

I used a seat with my own children (back before trailers were invented), and now use a trailer with my granddaughter. The problem with the seats is that the bicycle is top-heavy with the child on the seat. While riding, you have to exert extra effort to keep the bike balanced. If you stop, you have to hold the bike to keep it from falling. If you want to walk away from the bicycle, even a few steps, you have to unbuckle the kid and remove him/her from the seat. I find the trailer (a Burley D’Lite) a lot easier! It’s lightweight, and low to the ground. The hitch is set up in such a way that even if the entire bike falls over, the trailer does not. While I can tell from my Garmin that the extra weight makes me a bit slower, I don’t even notice it while I’m riding. And unlike the seat, the trailer can be used for a second child. My hope is that I’ll be able to use the trailer for my granddaughter and a future sibling until the granddaughter is about 6, then transition into having her ride her own bike. (At 7, my daughter biked the Canal Towpath from Potomac to Harper’s Ferry and back with me, so I don’t see that as unrealistic.)

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With any seat or trailer, the minimum age given by the manufacturer is 1, to make sure the kid has the head and back strength to sit unsupported. The manufacturers’ recommendation is conservative, and I hear that many parents actually use them beginning at 9 months. But for anything before that, you’d need a special cargo bike or trailer capable of allowing you to use a reclining car seat in it.

[cvcalhoun]

While I yield to no one in my enthusiasm for biking, my children are both grown and living elsewhere. And producing another child for the purpose of starting a local Kidical Mass (even if I were biologically capable of doing so) would seem excessive…

@dasgeh 91727 wrote:

Well, if MD would get on the Kidical Mass bandwagon, we could take them seriously as suburbs…

J/k. Kidical Mass is already in Rockville and Gaithersburg. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why it’s not in Bethesda/Chevy Chase and Takoma Park/College Park/Silver Spring. Anyone know any bikey parents out there willing to organize? It’s really simple: find a route, tell people about the route (we can help with that), ride the route.

[cvcalhoun]

And some day, maybe “suburbs” will even include Maryland?

[cvcalhoun]

Just checked Strava, and I’ve biked just under 79 miles a week during 2014. I don’t commute as such, since I work from home. But I typically bike from my home in Bethesda to Georgetown one day a week, and to Silver Spring another. I’m active in community theater, and often bike to rehearsals and performances. And I bike 7 days a week; days when I’m not biking anywhere else, I’ll at least bike over to the gym for my work-out.

[cvcalhoun]

I have bicycled many hours in as low temperatures as we ever get in this area, without getting cold. For the extremities, this is what I’m using:

Hands: Ski gloves under Bar Mitts. I also wear a short-sleeved shirt, a heavy wool sweater, and a down jacket, which keeps the blood flowing down to my hands warm.
Feet: A light pair of socks, with heavy wool socks over them, with heavy leather shoes over them. I’m also wearing cycling tights with heavy wool pants over them, which keeps the blood flowing down to the feet warm.
Face: A buff covering neck, mouth, nose, ears, and top of the head. The neck is also covered by the collar of the down jacket. Then I put a wool cap that comes down over my ears over the buff, a helmet over that, and the hood of my down jacket over the helmet.

And if all that isn’t enough, it is also possible to use hand warmers and foot warmers inside one’s clothing. Of course, my riding is slower with all that clothing, but I have literally never been cold while wearing it.

[cvcalhoun]

Even knowing what the doctrine of contributory negligence is, I’m not sure how it would change my behavior. My primary reasons for avoiding negligence are a) to keep myself as safe as possible, and b) to ensure I don’t injure anyone else. Those provide enough motivation, without regard to what the financial consequences would be if I were to fail at those goals.

I suspect that the legal doctrines have more of an effect when we’re talking about a large corporation that is comparing the potential financial rewards of doing something versus the financial penalties if that action goes wrong. The classic example is Domino’s decision to eliminate its “30 minutes or its free” guarantee, after being sued a couple of times on the theory that its drivers had acted unsafely in order to try to meet the deadline. Presumably, Domino’s would be less likely to be sued if every victim knew that a finding of even 1% negligence would completely eliminate any right of recovery.

[cvcalhoun]

I’ve never understood the issue with biking when it’s cold. I have Bar Mitts (and wear ski gloves under them when it gets really cold). I have an LLBean down jacket. And I can just add layers to the rest of my body. I never got cold while riding a bicycle, even when it got below 10 degrees.

By contrast, in hot weather I have no way to compensate for the temperature. So bicycling in hot weather is a lot more uncomfortable than bicycling in cold.

Ice and snow may be an issue while bicycling in the winter. But I really don’t see how cold is.

@Terpfan 90901 wrote:

Luckily, I will be using bar mitts before the last month of the competition this time. So bring on the polar vortex, my hands will be toasty.

[cvcalhoun]

2014 Trek 7.3FX WSD for $499. It’s too small for me and besides, I just bought a bike (and have no room for more than one). But I figure anyone who bikes across American on a hybrid should get some love.

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[cvcalhoun]

I always figured it was kind of like a 4-way stop. The stop sign indicates that you have to stop before crossing, because otherwise you might careen right into a car that was already in the crosswalk (or too close to it to stop). The crosswalk indicates that cars have to stop for a pedestrian or cyclist. So once you’ve stopped, you can proceed across the crosswalk.

[cvcalhoun]

When my bike got stolen many years ago, the police officer who took the report recommended using two different types of locks (e.g., U lock and cable lock). He said that any lock can be hacked. (In the case of U locks, they use liquid nitrogen to freeze the lock until it becomes brittle, then tap it with a hammer.) However, most thieves come prepared to deal with only one type of lock. Thus, if you have two different types, they are likely to give up and find another bike with just the one type they have the tools for.

Or as my wife puts it, “You don’t have to outrun the dragon. You just have to outrun the dragon’s slowest prey.”

[cvcalhoun]

Already got the fenders, left over from the old bike. I just have to find time to get my LBS to move them, since the hardware is a bit rusted, and I don’t really have the right size tools for it.

@mcfarton 90655 wrote:

Nice ride very similar to what my father rides. It will look good with a set of fenders on it.

[cvcalhoun]

Thanks to everyone who responded on this! I still don’t understand why I’d want a road bike, but at least I understand why I’d want a bike without front fork suspension. Unfortunately, that goal will have to remain in the realm of “covet” for now, as the prices being asked even on Craigslist for the comparable model without front fork suspension (the Trek 7300 FX) were at least double what I ended up paying for the one I bought (a 2012 Trek 7300 WSD). Mine was well within what Bicycle Blue Book lists as market value; the FX ones listed on Craigslist have all been well above that.

I didn’t end up buying from the Craigslist seller, as he was out of the 19″ ones by the time I got there. But I did figure out that what he was selling was leftovers from Bike and Roll, and was able to buy one directly from them. And the price was less than what the Craigslist seller would have charged–$250 instead of $290, so it was less even after paying the tax on the one directly from Bike and Roll.

I’m not terribly fond of the saddle on the new one. However, when I get some time, I’ll switch it out for the saddle from my old bike. And once I have finished moving all the other accessories from my old bike to my new one (I’ve got most of them moved already, but a few will require help from my LBS), I’ll donate the old one to Phoenix Bikes. I actually checked them out as a place to buy a bike, but the day I went, they didn’t have a single woman’s bike, so I figure they could probably use the donation.

@cyclingfool 90005 wrote:

The claim that there’s a $60 retail Bontrager rack on it seems off; I think that value is probably overstated. Bontrager have one rack that costs $75; all others are less than $50. (source)

The rack on it may well be the $75 rack; it seems to be very lightweight. It wasn’t a major factor in my purchase, since I don’t know how much it helps to have a lightweight rack on a bike that is always going to be overloaded anyway. But given that the price for the bike including the rack was within what Bicycle Blue Book lists as market value for the bike alone, I figured that having the rack (and having it already installed) was just a bonus anyway.

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[cvcalhoun]

Dang, we have culture? Who knew?

[cvcalhoun]

I started college at St. John’s in Annapolis in 1970 (and got thrown out in 1972, but that’s a whole other story). A female classmate reports:

The boys had intramural sports when we were there. All boys were assigned to teams. Women were not welcome in the gym until spring of 1973, when a new federal law mandated equal sports opportunities for women. Girls’ soccer was started. I was made captain of a team because I was a senior, but I had never seen a soccer game and had no idea what the rules were. [One of the professors], who heartily disapproved of females doing sports, wouldn’t give us any instructions except that we were supposed to kick the ball down the field to the goal and not use our hands except for the goalie. It was a fiasco. I’m sure I was not the only one to suffer a broken bone.

[cvcalhoun]

I had biked from Bethesda to Hyattsville (in the rain) for a rehearsal last Thursday. My wife figured I should be spared the rainy trip home, so she came and picked me up, and we put the bike on a rack on the back of the car.

Unfortunately, the rack (which was quite old) sort of disintegrated at the first bump in the road. The bike fell so hard the rear wheel got seriously bent.

Under normal circumstances, I’d just have replaced the wheel. But I’d recently been told that the bike was approaching the end of its useful life anyway — that the cost to fix it up was so much that I’d be better off getting a new one. So it seemed silly to get a new wheel for a dying bike.

The problem was that both my wife and I were having openings of plays we are in over the weekend, and there were several times we needed to be in different places at the same time. And we have only one car. So I was frantically searching for a bike in my size (which is not easy to find — I’m 5’9″) that was available immediately. And money was tight.

Fortunately, Bike and Roll came to the rescue. It turned out they had ONE bike in my size left over from last year. It had a broken front derailleur. But recognizing the urgency, they swapped out the derailleur from another bike the same day, so I could have a bike I could use. I bought it, then rode it the 14 miles home.

@dasgeh 90344 wrote:

Nice new bike! But what happened to the old one? So sad to hear of the demise of a trusty steed

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