Hwy 40 Blue

Slate Magazine has an article by guy who tries to go car-free.. pretty funny.

https://www.slate.com/id/2131049/

sydney_b

Pretty funny. Sounded like with a bit more experience he'd figure out how to handle the troublesome issues.

Guest

He's a boob, for lack of a better word. Boo hooo! It's 40 degrees and raining! I'm going to get in my car! Boo hooooooo! I have to go get dog food! Boooo hooooo! I can't carry more than three bags of groceries!

Etc. etc. etc. It's so silly- he did it just to write the article but I just don't feel like he really tried or investigated or did the research before he started riding. Next time, they ought to get someone who really wants to cycle to try it out and write a real article on it.

Koffee

pedex

One of these days im gonna write a book about all of this and my experiences into a car free life and riding for a living.........sooooooooo many people have so many misconceptions its not even funny. Even rec riders, heck, especially rec riders sometimes.

My messenger bag will easily hold that big bag of dogfood and another 15-20 lbs of groceries with it, and despite the popular misconception that lugging all the weight on your back is far worse than on the bike itself, Im proof it works just fine, so is just about any messenger on the street for that matter.

You can ride w/o bike shorts on a skinny little bike saddle, Im at almost 14,000 miles of it this year alone, I have zero pain or chafing problems.

Rolling up one's pants leg keeps it out of the chain, not a hard thing to do.

MTB shoes are easy to walk in.

Adapt, improvise, overcome !!!!

Guest

Amen, pedex!

I usually can take about 6 bags of groceries from the store back home, plus my kryptonite chain and my onguard u lock. I'm plenty loaded down, and I'm not whining and jumping in a car.

Koffee

pedex

I will freely admit it isnt easy at first. It took me about 10 months of riding 2-300 miles a week just to get used the work load to where I had no pain and didnt feel dead at the end of a day. Took about 3 months to get used to carrying weight of any size on my back w/o pain. Took about 3 months to get used to riding quite fast and and not be at max heart rate all the time. When I started I was in my early 30's and had been a chain smoking car driving overweight couch potato for 17 years.........pretty typical in todays society.

It doesnt have to be anywhere near that drastic though either, a person can ease into to it. Not riding for a living cuts down the mileage alot, but also adds to the timeframe before adequate fitness takes effect. The younger you are when you start makes a difference, as does the other sins of one's past

I have several car free freinds that do not ride for a living, and they dont ride nearly as much as I do. Most can hang with me no problem for short distances. The fitness aspect just makes my recovery and load carrying much easier, they can haul just as much as me no problem. They just dont feel ready to go and get another load like I do, but again, its what I do all day 5 days a week.

Two of them are married and shop together, and they have no problem hauling almost a month's worth of groceries in one big trip, it can be done.

I think what people deciding to take the plunge need to understand is it takes some time and effort, it isnt easy at first. It isnt like flipping a lightswitch. But it gets better after a few weeks. Thats kinda how I got rid of my car. One day I realized mine hadnt been moved in almost 6 months, and it wouldnt start I got it started and decided I didnt need it, so I got rid of it. Going car free wasnt something I really set out to do, being a messenger kinda made the car useless. Wasnt a hard decision to make at all.

kevink159

Having been car free for 9 months or so, I really don't think it is a big deal at all. I did make some adjustments, but now riding to work when it is 40 degrees and raining is a piece of cake. I then read articles like this one or the one from Michigan that was posted here about a month ago and I start to think maybe what we all do is something extraordinary. Maybe we really are more "tougher" than the average person. Maybe we should give ourselves a bit of credit. About this time I usually snap back into reallity and realize the average American has let themself become disgustingly lazy. The sense of entitlement in this county make my head ready to explode. The longest trip in his regular routine was 6 miles, even at a VERY slow pace, a whole 35 minutes and it was too much work. It makes me sick.

Hwy 40 Blue

Wait, read the other article, by the guy in L.A. who really got into it. It's about ditching your car in the city that's wed to cars. I didn't see that one till later. It's better. It's on the same webpage as the other one, just right below it.

cooker

Can't find it....

jamesdenver

boo hoo. why not get a couple small bags of dog food. i understand that i can't go to costco with my bike and bring home those huge gallons of PB and mayonaisse and a vat of clorox, (nor do i want to), so paying a buck or two more for a smaller bag, and getting two bags, (or buying more often), is just a trade off we make for the savings of a car.

this was mean but i love it

As I approached the Kmart cash registers in this early visit, metal cleats clicking on the linoleum tile, the cashier girls stopped comparing their incarcerated boyfriends and stared.

Alekhine

It's been quite liberating and pleasurable so far to be car-free for 3 years. I absolutely hated all the extra time and energy they sucked out of my life, between the constant gassing up, waiting in stuck traffic, looking for parking places, DMV bore fests where lines move even slower than in banks, yearly inspections, yadda yadda. Now, if I need to get something, I ride for it and get it. Simple. If I want to go camping, I do it in the most enjoyable way I can think of - by bike. And I'm healthier than I've ever been.

I also decided to treat myself this year with my own custom dream bike from all my savings from being car free, and the frame is finished and beautiful. I'll be using it on a massive camp/touring adventure in 2006.

becnal

I think non-bicyclists underestimate how important bike "extras" truly are. For example, chain guards and rear racks. These things aren't extras at all. They are essential. Just as important as the wheels and brakes. For everday living, a bike that covers your pants in grease or that can't carry home a single thing is as useless as a bike with two flat tires.

humancongereel

pants guards: i just roll my pants above where they can get caught/greasy (both legs, for the grease).

carrying things: bigass army backpack. panniers on the grocery getter for any extras or to take weight off. but those aren't necessary. i do kind of think of those things are extras, but certainly they can be really helpful.

Hwy 40 Blue

Here's the link to the ditching-your-car-in-L.A. story. They had already moved it. Author is Andy Bowers, if anyone still wants to search stuff.
https://www.slate.com/id/2130978/

I-Like-To-Bike

As becnal must be aware, German bicycle shops are filled with bicycles where these important bike essentials are already installed. And he is probably aware from previous experience in the US, that even bicyclists, and especially club cyclist/enthusiast bicyclists react in horror to the thought of adorning their precious cycling machines with such weighty, inefficient, low tech stuff.

Look around at the complete bikes offered for sale in any US bicycle shop to see who is underestimating the importance of those extras; and who is offering "useless" bikes.

cooker

thanks
I liked everything he said except the last line about buying a Hummer...I know it was facetious, but it sort of spoiled the tone of the article.

SpokesInMyPoop

I liked the LA article much better. Made me feel fuzzy. Whereas the other guy is a ******.

some_guy282

No data found? Is there a new link to the article?

cooker

Link works for me.

some_guy282

It's working now, but didn't when I tried it earlier. Weird. Their site must have had a temporary glitch.

Brad M

Roadie queen. He had everything going for him and still quit. Of course, I wouldn't want to bike commute from a rural/suburban area either.

Hwy 40 Blue

Try that second story (see above for link.) It really is a lot better. I wonder how long these links are good for. Maybe if someone clicked on them in a few weeks or a month it would be a story on which laundry detergent works best.

BostonFixed

You could always copy-and paste the text of the articles here so it will stay on the forum in perpetuity.

cooker

The Bicycle Diaries
Is it possible to live in America without a car? Uh, sort of.
By Bill Gifford

"I can't believe how windy it is today," said the woman in line at the pet store.

"I know," said the cashier. Then, rolling her eyes and nodding meaningfully in my direction, she added, "and some people are riding their bikes."

"Mmmm," said her customer, gathering up her kitty litter and heading for her minivan, studiously avoiding even a glance in my direction, which was difficult because I was holding the door open for her.

After two weeks of riding my bicycle everywhere, I'd gotten used to people treating me as if I were somehow not right in the head. Store clerks ignored me, old men gave me the hard stare, soccer moms avoided eye contact. After all, almost nobody in America rides a bike if they can afford a car.

But after Katrina jacked gas prices toward $4 a gallon, my Volvo station wagon was starting to seem a lot less affordable. It wasn't just the $50 fill-ups, either, but the $400-plus repair bill that resulted from the Volvo's annual state inspection, on top of a $200 insurance payment, and the costly new drive shaft that she still needs, the insatiable beast. In mid-October, under the influence of warm fall weather and a recent visit to Amsterdam, I decided to opt out of humanity's little deal with the Devil, known as the automobile.

Long story short: At least I tried.

It seemed easy enough. I'm what the newspapers call an "avid" cyclist—rhymes with "rabid." I own four bikes, which I rarely use for actual transportation. Like most of the 90 million Americans who swung a leg over a bicycle last year, including our president, I rode for fitness and recreation only.

Then, last month, I went to Amsterdam for a friend's birthday party. I was amazed: Everyone rode bikes, everywhere. I saw 80-year-olds pedaling along beside young mothers with two and even three small children perched on various parts of their bikes, and dads trundling off to work in business suits and nice Italian shoes. The Dutch, I later learned, conduct 30 percent of all their trips—to work, for errands, socially—by bike. In America, that figure is less than 1 percent. We drive 84 percent of the time, even though most of our trips are less than 2 miles long. More than three-quarters of us commute alone by car, compared with just half a million (way less than 1 percent) who do so by bike, according to the 2000 Census. As a "committed" cyclist—another loaded adjective—I'd always tut-tutted these kinds of statistics.

In late October, I took a vow of automotive abstinence. I'd go everywhere by bike: daily errands, social events, even the "office" (a Wi-Fi cafe where I often work—4 miles away, over a decent-sized hill). I don't commute to an actual job, but I would go somewhere every day, rain or shine. I allowed a few exceptions, like emergency vet visits and picking up friends from the train station. Otherwise, I'd be helping to cut down on greenhouse-gas pollution and traffic congestion, while keeping myself in shape. I was well ahead of the curve: According to one survey, gas would have to hit $5 per gallon before a majority of Americans would consider walking or riding bikes as alternative transportation.

I'm not like most Americans: I have no kids to chauffeur to soccer practice, no elderly parents to care for, and I commute in slippers. I would still need to eat, however, and I would continue to go to restaurants and movies and parties and shopping. Although I live in a semirural area, suburbia is closing in on all sides, with more housing developments every year. As in much of suburbia, there are almost no services within easy walking distance: It's 2 miles to the convenience store where I buy the New York Times, 6 miles to the grocery and pet stores, 4 miles to my favorite bar. The former country roads around here are becoming busier all the time. Luckily, a defunct local railway line had recently been converted to a 17-mile recreation trail that passes fairly close to the stores I most often visit, as well as a couple of pretty good bars and restaurants. I'd be riding a lot of miles, but as it turned out, the mileage wouldn't be the problem.

That first Sunday, I hopped on a bike to go get the paper, just a couple miles down the rail-trail. I wore jeans, mistake No. 1: By the time I reached the Sunoco, I was profoundly chafed, and worse, my Banana Republic jeans now sported a black, greasy streak at about midcalf, from rubbing against the chain. It was chilly, and I was a tad hung over from a party the night before. By the time I got home, I had a raging tension headache, thanks to my hunched-over riding position.

Three Advils later, I looked at my bike with fresh eyes. It had a skinny little seat that all but required me to wear padded cycling pants when I rode. The handlebars were set forward and low, so a stretchy top was also a must—with a long tail, to avoid showing the cyclist's equivalent of plumber's crack. And it had special "clipless" pedals, which required me to wear special stiff-soled shoes with metal cleats on the bottom. Great for riding, not so much for walking. My beloved mountain bike had always seemed so comfortable on the local dirt trails. But like most bikes sold in the United States, it was an exercise machine, and not intended to be used for transportation. (There are some bikes that work well for city/transport use, including the functional Breezer, the retro-stylin' Electra line of cruisers, and the supremely elegant Bianchi Milano, which is what I'd ride if I actually lived in Milano.)

Years ago, when I commuted by bike to an office job at a magazine, I had established a little routine. It was 6 miles each way, and I made sure to ride at a slow pace so I wouldn't get too sweaty. Arriving at work before most of my colleagues, I'd shut my office door and read e-mails while I cooled down. Then I'd swab myself with Old Spice Red Zone and change into work clothes, trading my cycling shoes for the old Kenneth Coles I kept under my desk. By the time everyone else arrived, clutching their Dunkin' Donuts coffee, I was fully dressed, awake, and presentable. Then one morning, while I was locking my bike to a parking meter, I happened to see the publisher, a pudgy-fingered little man who liked French cuffs and hated bike messengers, which is exactly what I resembled at that moment. My career at that magazine ended shortly thereafter.

I've got a whole dresser full of cycling clothes. And they work well, for their intended purpose, which is exercising. I actually thought they looked sort of cool, as long as you didn't venture into the neon-yellow end of the color spectrum (or worse, purple). But as my first week carless progressed I realized that bike clothes only look good when you're actually riding a bike. The moment you stop, get off, and walk around among normally-dressed people—say, when you drop by the local Kmart and stroll about, in skintight Spandex, holding a toilet plunger—bike clothes don't seem quite so cool.

As I approached the Kmart cash registers in this early visit, metal cleats clicking on the linoleum tile, the cashier girls stopped comparing their incarcerated boyfriends and stared. Then they looked away. One studied her nails, while the other concentrated on scanning the plunger and counting change. This, I'd come to recognize, was The Silence, the awkward, get-this-over-with tension that often accompanied transactions where one party is clad head-to-toe in stretch synthetics that might not smell so great. I paid, grabbed the plunger, and click-clacked out the automatic sliding doors, to everyone's relief. And as I pedaled away, I realized that bike clothes aren't merely ugly, to normal people: They're transgressive.

So I did an extreme biker makeover: I bought baggy shorts to wear over my padded cycling clothes, to spare the sensibilities of store clerks and my fellow customers. I wore neutral-toned jerseys but kept the bright-gold nylon jacket, because it made me more visible and thus safer. I ditched the fancy pedals for regular, flat pedals, so I could ride in normal shoes. And I attached a rack to one of my racing bikes, an act of utter bike-geek sacrilege. It didn't matter: Sooner or later, I'd need to go get dog food.

Still, by the end of that first shakedown week, I was growing to enjoy my bike-bound, self-propelled life. I'd made an executive decision to ride slowly, because it wasn't fun to get all Lance Armstrong-sweaty and then stand in line at Foodland, sweating all over the broccoli. By necessity, I chose less-traveled roads, which led me to some interesting local discoveries, like a natural-foods market run by the Amish that stocked wild salmon and bison steaks. I got exactly one flat tire, on a 12-mile trek to have my DVD player repaired. Luckily I carried a spare tube—essential for any ride, as is a helmet—and was back on my way in less time than it would have taken to get my Volvo filled up and washed.

Since I couldn't carry more than about two or three bags worth of groceries, I needed to go shopping more often, but as long as the weather held, I didn't mind. In fact, I looked forward to longer trips, like a 10-mile jaunt to a local college library. The fresh air and exercise kept me alert during the afternoons, and after humping an Oven Stuffer Roaster up a 2-mile grade, there was certainly no need to go to the gym. At night, after a beer or two at the bar, I was probably safer riding on the wide, empty rail-trail than driving on the dark, narrow rural roads—and there were certainly no cherry-picking local cops lurking on the bike path.

Best of all, the bike turned out to be the hottest dating vehicle I've ever owned. One Sunday, my girlfriend and I rode to a nearby tavern for burgers and beers. We sat outside, enjoying one of the last of the warm fall afternoons and then wobbled back up the hill to our town. We got home feeling slightly sweaty, a bit tipsy, and full of adrenaline. (She opted out of the grocery-shopping trips, however, and refused to bike home from the Amtrak station at 10 p.m. on Friday nights.)

Slowly but surely, I started running low on dog food. And the thing about dog food is that the more you buy, the cheaper it is: A 5-pound bag of my pups' preferred brand goes for $12, while the 15-pounder costs $25. Plus, the 5-pounder would only last two or three days at the most, which is how I ended up in the pet store, lashing an alarmingly heavy sack of "Cowboy Cookout"-flavored kibble to my bike rack.

Once the load was secured, I set out, navigating the rather tricky strip-mall exit onto a busy state road. It soon became clear, as I pedaled along the gravel-strewn shoulder, that I had failed to anticipate the sketchy handling characteristics of a 19-pound bike laded with 15 pounds of dog food in a 25-mile-an-hour crosswind. One especially nasty gust pushed my top-heavy steed into the busy traffic lane; as I swerved back to the shoulder, the Cowboy Cookout decided to continue in a straight line, and the rear wheel skidded around, nearly tossing me into the guardrail.

That night, I went to watch Monday Night Football in the next town over. It was a beautiful, moonlit night, unseasonably warm (the wind had died down), and bright enough that I didn't even need my headlamp. As I sped home through the woods, I soon forgot about the Eagles' catastrophic loss. I crawled contentedly into bed … and awoke with a full-blown head cold. It was my third minicold since I'd started this experiment, probably thanks to all the sweating and chilling I'd put myself through.

At any rate, I wanted only one thing: soup. And I had no soup. It was 40 degrees and pouring down rain. Without a second thought, I hopped into the car and raced down to Foodland, where I stocked up on Campbell's Select Savory Chicken and Long-Grain Rice, and other necessities (like ice cream) that I'd been doing without. On the way home, I passed the Sunoco station. $2.49 a gallon for premium, I decided, was a terrific bargain.


Bill Gifford is a correspondent for Outside.

cooker

Second article

Nobody Bikes in L.A.
But they'd be a lot happier if they did.
By Andy Bowers


Download the MP3 audio version of this story here, or sign up for Slate's free daily podcast on iTunes.

A few months ago, I decided to try the absurd: I would start commuting the four miles to my office on a bike. In Los Angeles! I'd like to say it was environmental awareness or the high price of gas or even the desperate need to get more exercise that coaxed me onto Raymond Chandler's mean streets without my protective steel cocoon. I suppose each of those played a small role. But what really pushed me over the line and onto the bike was an August dispatch from Amsterdam written by my Slate colleague Seth Stevenson.

Seth described watching a crowd of Dutch theatergoers in their 50s and 60s leaving a play, hopping onto their bikes, and riding off into the night. I couldn't help picturing that lovely scene through an Angeleno's eyes: Wow, I thought, an event without valet parking! Seth went on to quote a friend: "There's something about riding a bike that makes you feel like you're 5 years old." Since that's a feeling I wouldn't mind more of in my life, I decided to get out of my Honda and onto the bike.

I am a fourth-generation Southern Californian. I was weaned on exhaust fumes and the eye-searing smog of the 1970s. I grew up in a hilly area of the city where it was impossible to ride my bike to school or a store without risking real harm. For my entire childhood I never went anywhere without being chauffeured by my parents. My 16th birthday was Liberation Day. My first driver's license picture, taken on my birthday, shows me looking completely bleary-eyed—I had slept in the used VW Beetle my parents bought me for the occasion and presented myself at the DMV an hour before it opened. Driving in L.A. feels as natural to me as walking in Manhattan.
Although I had actually been a bike commuter in other cities (most notably during three years in London), it never occurred to me to try it when I returned to L.A. (this despite the fact that there may be no major city in the world with a climate as perfect for bike commuting as ours—warm winters; moderate, dry summers; alarmingly little rain). Since cycling to work is such an aberration here, I found the idea both exhilarating and pleasingly subversive.


Instead of the major thoroughfares I use when driving, I cycled quiet back streets—the kind that infuriate me in a car because of all the stop signs and the impossibility of crossing major streets without a signal. I found my commute so easy that I soon started looking for other short trips I could make on the bike—picking up a few groceries, going to the gym, returning library books—then longer ones. I plotted new stealth routes no driver would ever take. (Tip: The satellite photos on Google Earth are much better for doing this than a road map, because you can see exactly what the streets look like.)

One day, I found myself biking down an empty little access road next to the notorious 405 freeway during the evening commute. The freeway, as usual, was paralyzed, and I noticed I was actually moving faster than the cars. That's when the revelation hit: Over the past few months, I had discovered a different Los Angeles.

It's very easy for an L.A. driver to think that our city is as choked with humanity as Manhattan. From the driver's point of view, that's increasingly true—there are more and more evenings when every major street is stopped dead, and going a few miles can take hours. At work the next day, people grimly shake their heads and lament what's becoming of the city.

Not only has riding my bike enabled me to glide past all this gridlock (in fact, I'm often not even aware it's happening), but it has made me realize that it's an illusion. The city itself is not gridlocked—merely the narrow asphalt ribbons onto which we squeeze all our single-occupant cars. On the back streets I now take, everything is quiet and serene. The main roads may mimic Times Square on New Year's Eve, but the areas between L.A.'s clogged arteries comprise mile after square mile of low-density, low-stress residential bliss (the same is true, I suspect, of most American cities).

Even if I do need to use a major road for any portion of my ride, I can always veer onto L.A.'s famously empty sidewalks to bypass the seething queues of road-rage incubators. (Before you write in to protest, L.A.'s municipal code allows bikers on the sidewalk as long as they yield to pedestrians.)

Don't get me wrong—Los Angeles is an almost pathologically bike-unfriendly city. It has pathetically few marked bike lanes, and those it has often peter out for no reason and at the worst possible place. Its drivers go ballistic when a cyclist slows them down, even for a few seconds. And of course, it's so sprawling that some commutes would simply be impossible by bike (although I suspect more than we realize would actually be faster on two thin wheels).

So, for now I'll just enjoy my secret Los Angeles secretly, feeling my blood pressure fall as I sail past all the six-cylinder, leather-upholstered pressure cookers around me. My bigger concern is what would happen to L.A. if all the people who currently define themselves by their cars were to turn their sights on bicycles instead. Imagine Beijing-like throngs of wealthy Angelenos careening down Wilshire Boulevard, yakking obliviously on cell phones, demanding valet bike racks, and competing over whose Italian or French import is more expensive. Frankly, if that happens, I might just buy a surplus Hummer.


Andy Bowers is a Slate senior editor.