Fuzzy bike
I’ve seen fuzzy bikes before – but this may just be the fuzziest. Spotted at San Francisco Caltrain station.
Compromise in the great helmet debate
Cycling helmets seem to be a recurring theme here on JustAnotherCyclist as of late. To wear or not to wear. To promote or not to promote. Blah blah blah… There has got to be some way to resolve the issue. Perhaps with better technology?
Folks seem pretty happy with the air bags in their cars. This probably has a lot to do with the reams and reams of evidence for their collective benefits. Unfortunately the same concept does not apply to bicycles. First off there is simply no practical way to mount an airbag on the handlebars of any but the most heavily customized bikes. More importantly is the fact that it is usually the ground or a car – and not the handlebars – that you smack into if you are injured in a cycling crash. If only there were some way to get that same level of passive protection on a bicycle…
Maybe there is.
Wobblebikes
Tall bikes? Down right commonplace. Futuristic bikes of tomorrow? Soooo yesterday.
But Wobblebiks. Now that’s where its at! (Can you hear the sarcasm there?)
I seriously don’t know what to say about these. Here’s a quote from their own page:
“It must be difficult to ride”:
Yes it’s absolutely impossible to ride!
I can still convince myself it must be impossible to ride, even when I have just woven in-and-out of a crowd of people on it. That’s what makes it fun!
Coming out of the closet: I Hate Helmets
I’ve been doing a fence-straddling maneuver here at JustAnotherCyclist regarding the issue of bicycle helmets. Again I will reiterate that I do not encourage folks to go about without a helmet. Nor do I encourage you to ride with one. It is entirely your choice (except for areas where specific laws apply.) My frustration comes entirely from the dogmatic nonsense that the issue seems to instill in some folks.
I first started to become openly frustrated with the whole helmet situation when I was in the hospital for a broken collar bone due to a bike crash. I distinctly recall one of the ER nurses asking me “Were you wearing a helmet?” I simply answered the question at first, but then I started to think a little more critically about the question. Keep reading →
Bicycles, Traffic and Caltrans
It is unfortunately difficult to ride a bicycle on public streets in most parts of the country without running into someone expounding on all the ways that bicycles hinder auto traffic. While there is no denying that a car has occasionally been slowed by a cyclist, the more realistic truth is that cars do a much better job of slowing each other down than a cyclist cruising in a bike lane ever will. In fact, that cyclist is actually helping by removing one car from that traffic snarl.
Ride your bike to Tour of California
If you are planning on attending the finish of Stage 2 of the Amgen Tour of California. Sacramento can be tricky it park in and negotiate on a good weekend day. Throw in all of the traffic for a major cycling event and you’re likely to find yourself walking miles even if you do drive downtown. However, Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates (SABA) are helping to solve this problem for you.
Best bone I could think of to break
I like to think of myself as an “individual” – different from the rest of the pack. I do things my own way, and don’t follow the masses. That’s why I was sure the first bone I broke in a cycling accident would be something interesting. Maybe it would be my foot that got broke – as all the folks that were on my wheel accidentally ran over it. That would be cool. Or perhaps I’d blow up my patella. Sounds super-painful, but has something of the “never heard of that” going for it.
Or better yet, maybe I’d be that guy that had a front wheel buckle in the final turn of a crit, flying into a light pole at about 32 MPH, only to stand right up and start cursing the wheel manufacture in Italian. Oh yea – that’s be my signature crash.
Well, fate has a way of blowing your best ideas.
JustAnotherCyclist and VeloReviews join forces
As announced on episode 22 of the VeloReviews Podcast, I’ve inherited the the incredible cycling community originally created by Jeff Helfand. The announcement was made to the community on Sunday, April 3.
For readers of JustAnotherCyclist that are not currently familiar with VeloReviews – go check it out. Become a member of the greatest no-drop ride on the internet!
Over the coming weeks the resources of JustAnotherCyclist will be merged into VeloReviews. Exactly how that will happen still remains to be determined, but followers of JAC will find that there are a whole lot more resources available to them after this transation.
Stay tuned!
Softride Solo 700
If you’ve never seen a Softride, or bikes that look like it, you might be wondering what’s going on here. No, this isn’t a folding bike. Rather, it belongs to a class of bikes known as beam bikes.
Beam bikes place the seat on a beam that attaches to the frame near the head tube and suspends the rider over the rear wheel without a seat tube or other support.
There actually are a few different manufactures of this frame design, many of them competitive. They had a growing following in the 1990’s among the time trial and triathlon crowd, up until the UCI got involved. In 1999, the UCI banned beam bikes – or more specifically, any bike without a seat tube – from competitive events, declaring them an unfair advantage.
Cycling through Netflix
We all need a little down time every now and then. From the die hard uber-trainer, to the guerrilla urban assault advocate and commuter, to the be seen classic cycle fashinista. All of us will find our collective bums on a sofa instead of a saddle from time to time.
So the question is – how do you best spend that down time? Why, watching cycling movies of course!