Albany Bicycle Coalition

Few events actually shake the fabric of LA. As the Daily Show suggests, if drought, fires, and earthquakes won’t do it closing down a small section of highway will.

JetBlue Airlines thought to get some publicity out of this and is offering flights to from one airport in LA to another for just four dollars. This 3 mile flight will take 45 minuets they say. Not to be outdone a cyclist said that he could beat them to their destination. Never let it be said that bicycle riders are pessimists.

In other news Casey Schreiner, host of the web show “The MMO Report” and G4 TV personality, Is also affected by the cartastrophy. He has the greatest quote in a recent episode, “Hello and welcome to the MMO Report, one of the few places that does not care if they close the 405 or not. Suck it drivers, I have a bike.”

Written by Chris Belsole

I thought I’d piggyback on Chris’ post about what bike commuting means.

Some history. I bought my first grown up bike for exercise. I was driving from East Greenbush to downtown Albany. The 20 minutes in the car didn’t bother me at the time. I didn’t know any better. Things shifted until, for about a year, I was driving from Albany to Saratoga Springs, and back, every day. I was logging ~75 miles every day. The commute would suck up almost two hours of my life. I started thinking about how much time I was losing doing that. How much of my life I was wasting sitting in a car driving to a job I didn’t even like that much.

I started my current job the day before Bike To Work day. So on my second day, I rode ~3 miles to work on my bike. And I never stopped.

That has to be the biggest thing for me. That freedom- that liberation from that cage, that traffic.

Three years later I’ve got a nicer bike for the summer. I’m more familiar with my neighborhood and with the city in general. People ask me for directions and I don’t have to look at a smartphone- I know where it is because I’ve biked there. (And what I can lock my bike to when I get there.)

On spring days, when things are turning green and the sky isn’t gray anymore and it’s warm enough to wear shorts again, I feel really sorry for people stuck in cars. They don’t know what they’re missing. I can zip through the park on my way to work. I get to smell people’s barbecue on hot summer afternoons.

And there are challenges, too. Like winter. You have to be prepared. You have to fail, and then learn. That whole cycle is empowering. It builds confidence. Most people are scared to drive home in three inches of snow, but I know I can ride home- because I have.

{ written by Ethan Georgi }

Oh LovelyBicycle!, how beautiful your pictures are, how insightful your articles are, and how often you get me thinking. What does commuting mean to me?

When I first started back over a year ago it was all numbers. Three dollars a day. That is how much I would be saving on bus fees if I rode my bicycle. Fifty dollars a week. That’s how much I would be paying for gas if I had a car, if not more. That was before I learned to love.

It all started with my Trek. You see, before that I was riding a beater bike that had not been properly maintained and had been sitting in my garage for years. Comparatively riding my Trek was like riding on air, much how my Masi is now, so little effort, so much speed.

Then came the Albany Bicycle Coalition, a group of people who I first thought were tree hugging hippies, no offence, but I have now come to understand that they, I, are passionate which is something that often gets confused with fanaticism. I still remember my first group ride. It ended with Lorenz and I talking and riding up Western Ave. He not knowing who I was or how long I’d be around for, I the same.

It was ABC that introduced me to the Albany Bike Rescue. It was much more disorganized back then, but still able to get much accomplished thanks to the great men and women that worked there. The first time I came in was for a routine, foreign to me at that time, chain cleaning and regressing. It was Dakota, young Dakota for lack of a better adjective, that helped me. I know now that what I’d come in with was trivial, and I was probably wasting his time, or giving him a much needed respite. I can’t recall. What I can recall is that I loved what they were doing. Helping people fix bikes so that they would become more knowledgeable themselves. I had to be a part of that.

Where am I going with this? Bike commuting means so much. If it wasn’t for riding to work I would have never met Lorenz and the rest of the amazing people at ABC. If it wasn’t for ABC I wouldn’t have known the joy that comes from helping a child get his first bike at ABR. The dominoes of life are ever falling and missing that crucial piece might mean that I wouldn’t be talking to you today. Thank you LovelyBicycle! for helping me remember.

Written by Chris Belsole

Summer is here again. Time to get those shorts out because the temperature is rising and people are flocking into the world that winter kept so isolated. The London Cyclist blog has a great article on summer clothing so I won’t replete them in hopes of looking more professional. I will however share a tip I was given by a thrifty friend of mine who does triathlons and is used to buying cycling apparel.

Ebay, but not just Ebay. There is a specific shop called LOVE2PEDAL. This is where I bought my cycling shorts, I am actually wearing them right now, for $9.95 plus $5 shipping, but if you buy a bunch of stuff you can group it all together. What you do is you make the minimum bid whenever you can. If you don’t win don’t worry. They replace the items every day so a new chance to claim your items will happen often. They are not the greatest bike shorts, but at $15 dollars a pair, if you don’t save on the shipping, they are a steal, and with an unbroken Brooks saddle they are a must.

Drink plenty of water. Happy riding.

Written by Chris Belsole

I am not a brave person. I ride the Washington Ave. Extension, but that’s because I follow the rules of the road and am comforted by the hope that drivers do as well. Maybe it is more correct to say that I don’t take unnecessary risks.

What brought me to this though was a timely article that I read from the London Cyclists about saddles and being comfortable. Today was my first day riding with my brooks, as mentioned in the article, and under my shorts I sport my cycling shorts in all of their padded glory. You see, with a leather saddle there is a “breaking in” period in which the leather is hard as a rock. After losing 130 lbs. and quite a bit of cushioning down there my bones are left baron and therefore the shorts in all of their padded glory.

I’ll probably come out with an article in a month of how the breaking in process is going, but for now I’ll keep my shorts snug and my bike upright.

What do you sit on?

Written by Chris Belsole