yeah, my method in that situation is to ridt straight at 'em with your eye’s shut screaming ‘I’M BLIND, I’M BLIND, OH GOD, THE PAIN, WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO PEOPLE - WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!?!’
- Hire a poor uni student to carry your bag with spare clothes and lunch for you
- Old spandex is not a crime, its environmentally friendly (plus uni students arent cheap)
- Tight football shorts are just as good as ‘those strange bike nappies’ (see point about the cost of uni students). if you need more than bike shorts in winter HTFU - you dont see AFL players wearing more than shorts and if its good enough for them it should be good enough for you.
- Ride a cheap kmart mountain bike, that way if you get a flat you can just buy another one from gumtree for the price of a new tyre and tube
- Ride your bike like you drive your car - dont look for other riders/drivers and if you do signal, do it at the last moment
- whats the point of spending more on lights than on your bike if you cant show them off, and then say when people nearly swerve into you ‘lucky i got those expensive lights!’
if you are lucky H i might post something serious later…
tshirt+gloves = no stinky sweaty arrival at work + warm toasty hands. If you are too cold in a tshirt in winter you’re not riding fast enough…
My tip: the faster you ride, the quicker you will get to where you are going
Regular commuting with a messenger bag full of laptop/clothes/lunch/cans of pepsi max is not good for the shoulder the strap is on. Backpacks FTW.
Keep a toothbrush at your work/destination, just in case. Dental Hygiene is for real, guys. Plus I hate having dirty teeth.
To save space I usually roll up my belt and put it in my shoes and cram it in with my socks and tie. They don’t need to be crisp anyway.
Rack and pannier: the best move I ever made.
Full mudguards: 2nd best move I ever made.
I cannot recommend these two things highly enough.
Also to reiterate what a few others said: get some fat tyres. I run 32c Marathons, and they make for a comfy ride and just roll forever. And of course always have a pump/levers/tubes.
I think you’re onto something there heavymetal…
The challenge of course is how to integrate these elements with the fixie and make them ‘cool’…
I’m always surprised how few mudguards I see on bikes in Melbourne. The drought’s over guys.
i have a home made rear fender ( the ghetto fender ) that attaches with Velcro and my down tube acts like a front fender on my track bike…
quite nice to ride in the rain, keeps you super dry
Yeh, fuck being cool. My racks/panniers/mudguards are on a geared crosscheck.
Super commuters are the new fixed. Fluoro vests are the new little sisters jeans.
not sure about that jono sweet road bikes are scoring well in the ‘new fixed’ category
I used to think fluro-commuters looked pretty funny, as I spun past them in black t-shirt and shorts with a token Knog light.
Now I’ve had 3 crashes involving cars, and each time, the driver not seeing me has been the cause.
Two of those were in daylight with me wearing a yellow t-shirt (the same one, must be jinxed) and the third time was a grey morning with my lights flashing front and back. So sometimes visibility isn’t everything. Watching the traffic, and everything that it’s doing, is just as important, if not more so.
I would never do the daily commute brakeless, but in a way, it’s almost a sensible idea, because you’re forced to ride so much more carefully and need to anticipate that much further ahead.
I think flashing lights are a bad idea. Much prefer constant on, flashing can sometimes be tricky to gauge the distance of and make out direction of travel.
Good waterproofs, Good tires, enough tools to fix minor issues, a working phone to call the waabulance if all fails and pay attention to what other riders and car drivers are doing or not doing “read the road”.
Ride the morning commute like it’s a Fuk’n time trial with two short blacks in your guts.
Mine starts at 5.30 am.
Cruise home at a leasurely pace via a riverside linear path.
I like both - 2 lights front, 2 lights back, each end with one flashing and one constant. Redundancy, kids.
gold.
12234324534645
Ride to work and enjoy the fact you’re not standing on the tram.
Going back to my original post about having two sets of lights … Human eyes gauge distance alot better with 2 points of reference compared to one. That’s the reason most motorcycles these days have 2 headlights instead of one. The better ones have two tail lights as well. It doesn’t really matter if you keep your bike lights flashing or constant. The important thing is that when you have two, try to keep them at the same light intensity so that one doesn’t drown the other.
Here’s a tip: never assume that you’ve been seen. Ride like you’re invisible. The number of fuckers that drive straight through roundabouts/intersections when I have right of way is just ridiculous. New bright non-flashing headlight is on its way, but I’ll still be assuming that the blind bleary-eyed suburbanites don’t see me.