Im pretty sure cycle commuting is the cause of a good part of the angst in my life.
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FTFY
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I do know this to be true. Drivers piss me off but I am much more generally irritable if I have to drive or ride a motorcycle.
I think I’d actually say that being able to bike to work and the store is one of my top priorities in life. I am going to be applying for jobs again in about a year and I don’t want to live anywhere where I can’t afford to live close enough to work.
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2010: commuting 90% on my Kona paddywagon.
Some road racing on a series of too small bianchi road bikes.
Some cross on a cross check
2012: commutard the cross check upon discovering that I needed gears for Seattle hills.
2014. First kid. Rode the paddywagon for mental health.
2015. Needed to commute 10 miles each way, so cross check got dusted off and pressed in to service.
2016 finally put nerdavinden together, sold paddywagon and cross check and everything else, got an xtracycle. Moved to Castle Rock and only ride xtracycle to bike park for kid to shred.
2019 finally, can bike commute. Bought 300 dollar dew off facebutt. Super commuter. Nerdavinden sits in a closet with a box of parts ready to go.
Steamroller
Paramount
Tempo
Buenos Aires
El mariachi
Ahearne
Serotta
Winter
Winter
Raleigh
Faat caad
Ogditherer
3rensho
Omnium
Maybe another
My decade in bikes, counting the ones I had before the decade started:
heritage Trek 1000
heritage Soma Speedster
Talera
Ahearne
SE draft
Trek 400
Mountainhack
kit bike
emergency randonneuse
IGH project bike
gravel®©™ bike
traditional randonneuse
disco travel bike
Bianchi Strada
(and a fistful of junk frames waiting for inspiration to strike)
started the decade with my road bike situation in disarray - two cracked custom frames, a lot of failing components
bought a crosscheck for commuting and general bike riding
bought a Gunnar Roadie as a stopgap while commissioning a new frame
liked it and rode it a lot, replaced the frame when the first one died when I t-boned a deer coming down a hill real fast.
got a Broakland road bike, liked it a lot more
got an Edgerunner, loved riding with the kid, and getting groceries not with a huge messenger bag.
Got a Saila rando / long distance road bike, started riding more miles when I moved to a flatter part of the country
Sold Edgerunner, bought a longjohn
got a Raleigh cycletruck, it’s now my commuter bike, and is fun and ridiculous
(got a vintage mtb and almost immediately gave it to a friend)
I’m hearing January 2020 for the Endpoint I’ve put a deposit on, but I’ll throw it in to this decade.
Rode the crosscheck this morning.
Next decade:
alu disc road frame built to my measure
possibly a different longjohn?
aforementioned Endpoint
Chinese titanium minivelo cycletruck? I can’t get the idea out of my head.
If custom carbon gets relatively cheaper, maybe another trry at a road frame in that material.
probably need to throw a new chain on the crosscheck sometime in the coming decade.
2010: pretty much hung up my sw8 fixies and moved to the outer suburbs. Commuted on shitty road bikes for a while til @Blakey enabled me into a crosscheck. Put a lot of commute KMs on that.
2011: wth, cancer. Rode my only ever CX race, on my crosscheck. Discovered dynamos.
2012: custom roadie, first kid born. Long commutes continue, lots of weekend riding.
2013: lots of commuting, lots of weekend riding.
2014: second kid born. Replaced crosscheck with khs flite 300, shimergo etc. That bike was good.
2015: commuting, less riding on weekends. NFE came into my life through a conspiracy between sup and Blakey.
2016: NFE actually arrives, after over a year since ordering. That becomes my commuter/gravel/get around bike.
2017: commuting but hardly any weekend riding. Kids start shredding on their bikes.
2018: spicy curry acquired. Heaps of fun had on school runs. Commuting as usual.
2019: pretty similar to 2018.
To sum up: went from sw8 fixies to fat tyre adventure bikes and a cargo bike. Peak suburban dadding.
So heading into a new decade. Want to keep the 2 day/140km commuting weeks. Need to get out on the roadie at least every 2nd weekend. Use the spicy curry for everything under 5km radius from home, including grocery shopping. Hopefully be down to just the 3 bikes: custom roadie, NFE, and spicy curry.
Major priority: get my kids doing longer rides.
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2010-2013: Minneapolis. Riding my college commuter, a 26"-wheeled nashbar MTB with a 50/34 crankset and 11-28 8-speed cassette. Rode it less and less as my jobs moved further away from my apartments. Stopped hanging out at the bike co-op.
mid 2013-early 2015: Moved to CA, MTB commuter got 700Cx35 wheels and tires and a CETMA rack. Halfhearted attempts to commute by bike more were semi-successful.
2015: MTB commuter bike was in bad shape, bought a Spesh Cirrus disc. Joined some friends for a lightly-planned yolo bike tour from Tokyo to Kyoto. Set a distance- and elevation-per-week record I have yet to beat. Remembered that bikes are Good and I like them. Bought a used '10 Specialized Epic and started mountain biking for the first time since XC racing in high school. Built up a Vaya with the intent to do some road touring, but it kind of morphed into a proto-gravelbike.
2016: Bought a Black Mountain Monstercross and built it into the historical-reenactment gravel/adventure bike of my dreams, and rode it everywhere - still might be my favorite bike today. Introduction to Compass tires. Sold the Cirrus and rebuilt the college bike into a dropbar basketbiek commuter. Did the Lowkey Hillclimbs ride/race series (RIP), which introduced me to some of the southbay’s best riding. First year of consistent data collection: 2,300 miles, 169,000ft.
2017: Rode my first centuries. Basketbiek commuter moved from 700Cx35 to 650Bx48, then got a low-trail VO Piolet fork, then finally to the wheel size Arni Nashbar intended for it when I put on 26"x2.3 knobbies and took it on my first two bikepacking trips. 2,500 miles, 182,000ft.
2018: Started to slowly grow out of 3x9 (on all four bikes at the start of the year) and friction shifting (on three of them). Sold the Epic and built an on-trend-for-2018 27.5+ hardtail with a 1x11 drivetrain and a big dropper. Bought a Black Mountain Road+ and built it up as my only mostly-pavement focused bike. Put flappy paddle shifters on the Vaya. Bought a '93 Hardrock, purely because of the purple-pink fade paint scheme, did every galaxy-brain idea that popped into my head - and was surprised when it turned out to be a great bike rather than a joke bike. Heard the Good News and installed dynamo lights on three bikes. 2,700 miles, 221,000ft.
2019: Kind of burned out in a lot of ways. Friend group from the past several years is kind of spread across the bay now, so fewer group rides. Started to get over the idea that every weekend ride has to be longer and more epic than the last, more 20-40 mile rides and fewer 60-100 mile rides. Replaced the bar-end shifters on the old college bike with indexed Sora 9-speed levers, leaving the monstercross bike as the sole remaining friction shifted drivetrain. Longer commute means I’m still racking up the miles, if not the feet: 3,000 miles, 161,000ft YTD.
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