Comments by "dixon pinfold" (@dixonpinfold2582) on "Not Just Bikes"
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@garygjl9036 "you cant ride in T.O.? lol weak". Yes you can. The word can't should not be in this video's title.
I ride about 51 weeks a year and don't consider it any sort of stunt. I'm not a diehard, it's just not a big deal.
There's a week or two every winter when it's better to get around some other way or just try to stay home due to heavy snow, deep cold, or constant rain. (Again, no stunts to prove anything. No diehard nonsense.)
But ordinarily it's all right despite a few problems, namely: In places, the lanes aren't cleared properly or are centre-bare but narrowed by encroaching ice. Many drivers stop parking tightly to the curb, so that can take away a foot or more from a painted lane. At intersections you encounter the same problem pedestrians do, deep slush or pools of water on the street within about four feet of the curb, even where snow clearing is overall not bad.
A major reason few here cycle in winter is that now most Torontonians aren't even from Canada. They come from places where it doesn't snow or rarely does, so it never occurs to them to cycle in winter. They quite naturally assume it's dangerous and unpleasant, which is too bad.
Thus I would venture to say that when you see a winter cyclist in Toronto, the odds are very high that his or her grandparents were born in Canada. But I should probably just say his, because it's a rare female who doesn't put her bike away for the winter—very, very rare.
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You ask "Why can't Canada just get some dang bike paths in our towns and cities already??" The answer is that Canada is gradually becoming impoverished and can only afford the basics like health care and public transit with increasingly great difficulty. Even what we do get is more and more bought with borrowed money, so how senseless would it be to borrow billions more for something like bike lanes which aren't even an investment, but simply an expense. (Bike lanes save very little on things like road construction and maintenance, public transit, and health care, despite what professional advocates might claim.)
I use bike lanes/paths every day and am greatly in favour of them, so don't get me wrong. My point is only that the solution to their relative scarcity is greater prosperity. Prosperity: everybody wants it, everyone thinks we deserve it and should make use of it, but few seem to think we should create it. Many people think it's just there, like the air.
When it finally disappears altogether, such people will scratch their heads and wonder where it went. After a brief pause they'll then angrily blame anyone less poor than themselves, and consider themselves smart and wonderful for having such insight.
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@aishwaryalakshmi7500 Any sensible person would be inclined to think wider is better if they didn't know for certain from direct experience.
I nonetheless go with the direction I've gotten from these skinny, longhaired, veteran bike mechanics whenever I go in for parts or service and pump them for advice.
They say go for skinny and smooth. The first time I said "What?" and probably sort of made a face, but after the third time I said ok, and it's worked out fine since then. 35 mm seems to be good.
But as they say, your mileage may vary. Who knows, maybe these guys are lunatics who give horseshit advice and I'm just lucky to be a fantastic and brilliant rider who keeps cheating death against the odds.
LOL I don't think so. I think I'm a good rider, not a great one. Try it tentatively for a while, and ride the best way you know how. See if it agrees with you and the bike.
Concerning my bike, I use a pre-1990 Fuji which I set up commuter style. It's steel and my summer bike is aluminum, so it sounds crazy on the face of it, but I don't want salt getting at the steel parts of my better bike. If it's out commission I use the good one—well, to me it's good—a Trek 7500FX, and it rides just as well as in the summer. These are both road as opposed to mountain bikes, but are hybrid/commuter-y in configuration.
Rinse the salt and mud off the thing after (all or most) sloppy rides with a bucket's worth of tepid water, and let it dry off indoors somewhere after bouncing most of the water off. Later take two seconds to dot lube where it needs it, and don't be cheap.
Instead of a wool hat/winter hat/toque, wear your helmet with a thin cap thing (whatever that's called) underneath. I almost want to say du rag, but that's not what it is. They're $15-40 at bike stores.
Your ears and head will definitely be warm enough under the two items, as the temp almost never goes down much below minus 20C, which you know. It's about minus 3C practically 90% of the time, in other words a piece of cake.
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