bicycles??

doesn't anyone ride a bicycle anymore?
i have 3 kids and we ride our bikes or walk most everywhere.

with gas being nearly 3 dollars a gallon .. it's just not worth it to drive anywhere. riding the bus for a dollar is cheaper too. if i do need a car, my family is more than willing to let me borrow one of theirs.

am i the only bike rider?? :H

 

pretty much

 

well .. that just blows.


the bicycle capital of the USA is just 20 minutes up the road from me. tried to move there a few times .. maybe next year.

 

This post must be old...gas is now over $3
joy

 

I love riding my bike…in fact is my one and only way of getting from place 2 place during the summer, I would bike during the winter 2 but ill freeze my ass

 

luckily our scooter fills with one gallon of gas and that goes 100 miles
when we're not scootering, we're biking.
pensascola bike punks, baby!

 

I love my riding my bike and do it often. The only problem I have is I just moved from a city that is on the coast and flat, to one that has hills everywhere. So my one-speed beach cruiser is kicking my ass

 

ahaha i used to have one of those beach cruisers. i ended up giving it to a homeless man when i lived in the sf bay area after i had bought myself a bike with some gears. not easy pulling a kid trailer behind me with no gear change-ups.

some days i ride as much as 30 miles. lately it's only been around 10.

~flexes~

 

I ride almost everywhere as well. School, market, bank. Of course, I don't have a car so it's bike or bust.

 

i'd love to ride a bike everywhere... I might also like to get a motorized bike and a scooter.... I wish Chicago was more bike friendly...or america in general..

 

yeah i totally agree with that.

i yell at so many people while riding my bike sometimes.

"i have the right of way!!!"
i think some people need to have their car taken and forced to ride a bicycle after almost running me over.

 

I have a really cool 60's style bike my neighbor gave me. Wish I had a picture to show you guys.

 

I'm just sitting at my PC after a long riding with bikes.
For me bicycle using means a cool and modest life style!

 

As someone who does both regularly, cyclists and drivers are as bad as each other, its just cyclists usually come off worse. Cyclists seem to think the rules of the road dont apply to them traffic lights all seem green and lane discipline is a complete irrelivance. This seems a little silly when your on a fragile piece of metal fighting for space with 1 ton+ lumps. On the other hand drivers seem to consider cyclists as a small annoyance there to stop going as fast as you'd like. Just another example of how the other side is always wrong.

 

exactly.

i've seen so many people do DUMB!! stuff on their bikes.

i ride WITH the flow of traffic. i signal. i look before i go. i double check. i wear bright clothing. if it's night time i use my lights (i try not to bike at night though..bad night vision) .. i basically ride my bike as if all people driving were blind.. i don't ever expect them to see me, because 9 times out of 10 they don't.. especially if they are on a CELLPHONE.. argh i hate that.

i need to figure out how to put a picture on this thing.. and i'll take one of myself and my bike for y'all.

 

i love riding my bike. and when i lived in a place with lots of trails and wide shoulders on highways i depended exclusively on my bike for transportation. but where i live now it's a free-for-all on the roads, cars don't watch for bikes or pedestrians. i also have a special needs kid who's too big for a normal bike trailer now and would have to spend over $500 to buy one big enough for him. then it would take up half a lane and cars would have a harder time getting around us which would undoubtedly mean getting bumped alot. until i can teach my little guy (who has mild motor coordination problems) to ride a bike i'm SOL...well, and until i move to a better location too probably. sigh...

peace,

pansy

 

I walk almost everywhere I go, but that's not difficult for me, because I live close to a city centre. I 'm considering starting to cycle again soon though - just need to fix a puncture in the back tyre/tube of my bike first.

Incidentally, I came across some interesting arguments for using bicycles in the Ivan Illich Archive recently. I quote:

I'm aware that the language used is fairly verbose - not necessarily the easiest to understand. I might try to 'simplify' the arguments if I have time - at the moment I'm too tired, so ....

I haven't had time to verify the figures used (and probably won't any time in the near future either) - "eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car", for example; not sure about that! - but the efficiency of bicycles as a means of transport is well demonstrated even if one allows for a considerable margin of error.
Not to detract from your own thread Boogabaah, but I think those arguments deserve a thread of their own, if I get around to preparing it.

All the best

P.S. Ivan Illich - any one here read much of his stuff? I've only read brief extracts from his work - as well as very brief biographies - but he seems to have had a beautiful and powerful mind. He was a strong and outspoken critic of schools also (cf. Deschooling society - which, no, I haven't read ) - which enamours him very considerably in my eyes. (..Sorry for the divergence! )

 

i don't know why more people don't ride bicycles.
the way things are going. gas prices are high. smog is nastier than ever. 62% of the population is overweight.
i live just inside the sacramento valley on the west side and after it's been windy and all the smog has been blown out of the valley bowl i can see all the way across the valley to the sierra-nevada mountain range. it shouldn't be that way. i should be able to see the mountains all the time. too many stubborn people. too many lazy people. makes me sad.

you know what else i like about bicycles.. if it breaks.. i can fix it.. usually. no lost keys in the morning.. no locking my keys inside of it either.

when i see someone else on a bike.. we SMILE! at each other. people inside of cars don't do that.

 

For me the absolute craziest thing about bicyling is that it has made the world seem so much SMALLER! Cities that once seemed so big now seem so small and insignificant in the scheme of things.

It seems so counterintuitive that riding a bike would make the world seem smaller than by driving a car, but to me its true. Anyone else feel that way?

 

hmm i never really gave traffic or ligts or whatever much energy when i rode through places with a lot of traffic. i never stopped with traffic and just flew by without abiding by the rules but i was never a total dope about doing it either. i do keep hearing people complain about that but i've never really encountered any problems with cars. a couple times they surprise me in the middle of the road but more often than not thats my own fault.

and the smog being nastier than ever is a big reason people arent riding bikes, at least for myself a couple really health conscious-people i've talked to. sordove the same reason everyone is buying huge SUVS because they dont trust each other, its a vicious cycle. we need some truely become united to stop dancing to oil tune the saudis are playing, and maybe even the tune of the failing system we so readily hand our lives over too.

hopefully, a lot of cars will be run on biodiesel in the not too far away future and you want have to worry about carcinogenic emissions. kinky friedman is running for governor for texas and is a very big advocate for biodiesel, so im really crossing my fingers for him.