Buy bikes now.
I’m thinking of replacing my almost ten year old Trek hybrid commuter with this for more comfortable and stylish commuting.
Hmmm, on second thought maybe not. Although the bike looks like what I want, reports on the Internet say how their bikes are inexpensive because they are chintzy and fragile.
Sevilla removed 5,000 on-street parking places to build out an entire city network of bike paths, and did it so quickly so they had a success to tout for the next election:
“We got rid of nearly 5,000 parking spots for cars in the whole city,” Calvo said. “I can give you this figure now. For a while it was secret.”
“The media would ask us,” he recalled, smiling. “I’d say ‘Oh, we didn’t calculate that.’”
…
“The whole network is €32 million,” he says. That’s how many kilometers of highway — maybe five or six? It’s not expensive infrastructure. … We have a metro line that the cost was €800 million. It serves 44,000 trips every day. With bikes, we’re serving 70,000 trips every day.”
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New backup plan. Moving to Sevilla, becoming a barber.
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Is it a good idea to buy one tire and just replace the worn out back one? Or are bikes a car scenario where you want to replace all simultaneously?
I’ve replaced my rear tire three times in the last ~8 years. Twice for wear, once for damage. I’m still on the original front tire.
There’s no reason to sync front and back tires. I even choose to ride on a different rear tire (a little fatter, a little lower pressure) compared to my front tire (road-bike narrow, high pressure).
That front tire is probably EOL as of this year. I’ll replace it when I clean and tune the bike for the coming season.
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The rear tire is going to wear out faster than the front. If you rotate appropriately, you can get them to wear out more evenly and replace them together. For serious cycling, tire rotation might mess with your handling, but not for normal people cycling. Even so, there is really no need for the tires to be identical. You can even have different size wheels and tires, it’s gonna work.
If you want to save money and the environment, only replace what’s broken. Otherwise, keep patching the tires and replace the tubes or go tubeless. You should only have to replace a bicycle tire when it’s got big unpatchable problems. If there are constant flats, the tire has a problem. If the tread is all the way gone and you can see the insides a bit, then the the tire is done. If the sidewall is somehow broken, tire is done. If the tire is dry and cracking, it’s done.
God damn it. I think I want to buy a mountain bike again.
This would be fine, except that a real mountain bike costs several thousand dollars. A high-end mountain bike easily pushes $7k, due mostly to the suspension.
I could go hardtail, but I worry that as skilled as I am, I’m also old. A mistake on a full suspension mountain bike means I bottom out, maybe ditch. A mistake on a hardtail means I’m launched into the air by my own seat. And then my bike lands on top of me.
(Yes, I’ve had this happen).
You’ve changed your tune. You have repeatedly given me grief for replacing a tire that was showing the internal banding in multiple places. “You just want an excuse to buy a new tire.”
I was giving you grief for replacing a tire that was not that bad.
You gave me grief for a tire that had both of these problems.
The way I recall it I was questioning you out because you appeared to be exaggerating the poor condition of the tire to justify buying new ones.
Also, I should mention that I have the much-hyped Continental 4000sII tires, and they are legit. However, they have now been superseded by the 5000 model, which I presume is somehow superior.
https://www.continental-tires.com/bicycle/tires/race-tires/grand-prix-5000
I have tubes, but there is a tubeless version.
The tire in question is still in the bike room I imagine. Shall I dig it out and post some photos here?
The bike shop guy laughed at it.
You must have attacked it with knives or fire or something.
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I didn’t attack it. Father time did.
The only part of my bike I attack is the spokes. I break spokes like a monster due to hard acceleration. I’m replacing the rear wheel, which is basically a Wheel of Theseus.
Road bike spokes? What are you doing?
It’s a performance hybrid. Road bike tires on a hybrid frame.
I do the thing mountain bikers do. Any time I’m stopped, and I want to start, I stand up and slam down on the pedal hard to get as much acceleration as possible. That habit ain’t going away any time soon.
I also jump curbs. Even with weight shifting to land level, it’s a stress that can pop an already weakened spoke pretty easily.
I uncovered my commuting bike for the first time this year. It’s not in great shape. Needs a ton of maintenance. It has only required minor maintenance for about 10 years, so that’s pretty good. Now it’s time for new chain, new cables, etc.
The thing is, the bike was always slightly too big for me. I’m thinking of maybe replacing it next year, if not sooner. Maybe in the fall when bikes are cheaper. The current front-runner on my list of potential replacements is this:
I got a new bike for commuting last year. It is my first bike with disc brakes. I have found them to be much more trouble than rim brakes.
- I don’t know that they actually help me stop better than regular ones
- They’re always chattering
- Much harder for me to adjust than rim brakes
They still work. It’s not the most awful thing. But if I were to get a new commuter bike today, I would get one with regular brakes.