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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • It’s great for cities that have the budget and manpower to build protected bike lanes everywhere. But even the North American cities that are at the forefront of bike infrastructure are still decades away from having a system competent enough to remove 50% or more of cars and car roads from their cities. :/

    Until the time when most cities and small towns are safely bikable, I see class III speeds being the only rapid bandaid on a complex and unfortunately, quite political problem in both Canadian and American cities.

    In the meantime, we will fight NIMBYS tooth and nail for every square meter of bike lane, boneheaded decisions from city governments, and federal governments complete resistance to funding major continental projects like HSR, or anything that doesn’t remotely rely on cars. I just wish we had the time, but we really don’t, with climate deadlines getting awfully close.







  • Wahots@pawb.socialtoBicycles@lemmy.caWhy am I so slow at cycling?
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    4 days ago

    Gearing, tires, and geometry make all the difference in the world.

    My Transition Sentinel is only geared for mountain biking. It’s a terrible city bike. Tons of shock, high torque gears for steep hills, cannot go very fast. But it’s insane when you need to climb or descend mountains. It has knobby, 2.4in tires.

    My city bike is an ebike, and even though it’s a single speed, it’s pretty comfortable going between 10-30mph on that gear alone. The battery allows me to haul lots of groceries or baggage (and climb steep hills), and it’s tires are wide enough to not get stuck in tram rails or gaps in the concrete road. I have knobby tires to avoid popping tires, but smoother, thinner tires will be more efficient.

    Edit: if you have a shock, try locking it out if it has lockout.

    I’d also recommend checking out city bikes, such as road, gravel, and upright bikes. There’s an incredible amount of diversity, and a downhill mountain bike is about as far from a road bike as one can get. One can roll over a rock the size of a watermelon, the other can coast for meters off of a pedal stroke. Ebikes also are phenomenal as car replacements (or even just as car offsets), but generally cost $1,500+ with tariffs.


  • I lived too close to a hospital. Apparently, the road I lived next to was the road that all fire, EMS, and police used. Tons of sirens at all hours of the night and day. I toured the place on a quiet day, so it never occurred to me about the noise. That was a bit of a suffer fest.

    One funny thing about that place, someone always swore consistently on the street between 17:00-20:00 each evening. It was always someone new, but it was like clockwork. Guests wouldn’t believe it at first, but it became a thing, lol. Sometimes it was someone on a skateboard eating shit in the protected bike lane, other times it was a pissed off pedestrian, someone having an argument, someone having fun, or someone clearly off their medication. No apartment has had that before or since.












  • I met some nice people, but had better luck just meeting people naturally in my 20s. I think the reason why dating apps didn’t work is that it’s kinda like job apps online, where there’s just waves of people, and everyone is just kinda putting their resume on their profile. Hard to stand out and meet “real” people among bots/hidden likes/ app design/bad matches.

    Usually these companies make money by having users churn through loads of bad matches and then continually pay for premium.

    I’d recommend joining a club IRL or volunteering, it might be a more organic fit. Friends -> dating can come naturally out of that.