I looked at those, or a version of for similar reasons a while back but permadithered. What does it “sound” like in use? Compared to buds/cans/speakers…
I’m with squirrel on the Bluetooth speaker thing: take it on a case-by-case basis and be sensitive to other people around me.
I don’t mind it on the city streets, but it pisses me off a little on MTB trails.
Like, dude, people come here for some peace and quiet, not to hear your shitty euro dance music.
Also, my solution to on-the-road listening is to use a single wireless earbud in my right ear.
I can still hear everything around me and listen to my podcasts and audiobooks at the same time.
It’s perfect.
I have these things:
Yeah I came here to post that. I use wired earbuds but that’s beside the point. Put your podcasts in one ear and ride around without blocking out traffic noises and without annoying everyone around you. And yes, you are annoying pretty much everyone around you with the speaker.
these are suddenly EVERYWHERE on the west side. so loud and dumb and probably fun.
He INSISTED that it was a bicycle and that it was allowed in the bike lane, but it had a motor and a throttle and I never saw him turn the pedals a single time.
Sort of same deal with all the rental e-scooters around here. I don’t encounter them in the bike lane often but I think they are actually limited to 15mph because I had one stop me up bad on a downhill the other day. I want to like the scooters, but from what I can see they aren’t really reducing car trips. What they do instead is give god’s laziest creations an opportunity to buzz people on the sidewalk and run red lights and basically do all of the stuff that motorists complain that cyclists do (because the scooterers are fundamentally motorists).
So while I like the idea that they keep people out of cars, here it appears that it’s people skipping walking trips by riding them on sidewalks and paths downtown and on the university. Once I get out of any zone where it’s clear that you could probably just walk from point to point, the scooters disappear.
I disagree that blue tooth speakers annoy everyone when you’re riding with them. When I ride by an Official Minneapolis Messenger Dirtbag on a QBP Bike who is jamming with a speaker, it’s about half a second of noise. One of the least annoying things I experience on any given commute.
Cruising around town on the family bike with my kid jamming to some tunes is basically our favorite daddy/daughter activity.
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I’m on team speaker. It’s been one of the best things for my commute, right after phat tires.
Really hard to quantify, they definitely have a magical feeling. Noticed they sounded better than my iPhone wired buds but maybe not as nice as my fancy work over-the-ear headphones.
I also wonder if they messed with the EQ settings or explicitly chose certain songs that work well with bone conduction for the demo display.
Seattle people, I tested it at this running store if you are interested: https://superjocknjill.com/
I use earbuds in city because there’s so much engine noise that it’s entirely unlikely that I would hear something in time to react to it. I like the idea of the bone-conducting headphones for longer road rides - I don’t use headphones , or keep at least one ear open, on those rides because traffic is infrequent enough on some roads that I can reasonable hear a car from a while back and move over / be aware of it.
Between glasses and hearing aids, I can’t wear headphones but these look great.
To be fair the average Minneapolis Messenger is louder than any bluetooth speaker could ever hope to be.
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Yesterday I got a phone call from some piece of shit asking to speak to my wife.
After I made sure he wasn’t a reporter I let him know that wouldn’t happen.
He called me n****r and hung up.
Wow wtf. Do you know who it was? Did he call your cell and ask for your wife? Do you have a land line?
Yeah, he called my cell and asked for her. Apparently it’s a thing they do. I don’t know who it was, but the number had already been reported 4 times for calling and threatening immigrants.
False.
I’ve ridden mtbs all over Colorado and see no general difference in boulder.
The only problem I see here is lack of mtb trail access, which puts a high concentration of people on certain trails and increases the likelihood of running into a discourteous rider.
Dude, I wave at everyone (when on a long ride, not while commuting). In my experience, the super spandex racers are more likely to wave back, but casual wknd rec riders never wave. In pdx, we always waved. It’s weird here, maybe no one taught folks to wave…
I’ve noticed that too - the people kitted out in all Rapha with crabon bikes almost always wave, people on tribikes never wave, casual rides never wave, randos, tandems, and tourers always wave and sometimes want to chat.