Intro post!
Apr. 8th, 2010 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivenwanderer posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
bicyclesHello! I've been bicycling for the last 6 or 7 months. I bike the (totally walkable) .7mi to work each day to keep in practice, and go for longer rides on weekends or in the evenings when I want to see friends in the next town over and that sort of thing. My bike has panniers on it, so if I decide to do errands on the way home from work, I can carry stuff home easily.
The stickers are reflective, though it's not in an area that needs a lot of visibility help--it's mostly just for fun. (They're from http://www.funreflector.com/)
My girlfriend's been biking in the city since childhood, so I think of her as the "real" bicyclist and myself as the dorky "new kid" (though both of us are more Clever Cycles types than either fixies or spandex). It can be tricky to bike together because she tends to be more aggressive about interacting with traffic. Anyway, I love my bike--the upright position and intended-to-have-a-foot-on-the-ground geometry, the balance between speed and hauling capability, and of course the fact that it's purple :)
We're hoping to bike to a pick-your-own berries farm later this summer--it's 12.5 miles away, which is easily 3 times the farthest distance I've ridden (though it looks like the terrain will be relatively easy). How much should I freak out about practicing riding for farther distances to get ready? Will just a few trips to 6-miles-away destinations be enough practice? (How do people usually describe bike trips, anyway? Do you talk about the distance away that the place you're going is (e.g. 12.5mi), or the length of the total round-trip (e.g. 25mi)?)
The stickers are reflective, though it's not in an area that needs a lot of visibility help--it's mostly just for fun. (They're from http://www.funreflector.com/)
My girlfriend's been biking in the city since childhood, so I think of her as the "real" bicyclist and myself as the dorky "new kid" (though both of us are more Clever Cycles types than either fixies or spandex). It can be tricky to bike together because she tends to be more aggressive about interacting with traffic. Anyway, I love my bike--the upright position and intended-to-have-a-foot-on-the-ground geometry, the balance between speed and hauling capability, and of course the fact that it's purple :)
We're hoping to bike to a pick-your-own berries farm later this summer--it's 12.5 miles away, which is easily 3 times the farthest distance I've ridden (though it looks like the terrain will be relatively easy). How much should I freak out about practicing riding for farther distances to get ready? Will just a few trips to 6-miles-away destinations be enough practice? (How do people usually describe bike trips, anyway? Do you talk about the distance away that the place you're going is (e.g. 12.5mi), or the length of the total round-trip (e.g. 25mi)?)
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Date: 2010-04-09 12:31 am (UTC)I went from haven't-cycled-in-40-years to four miles in almost no time, and once I'd been doing my four-miles-each-way commute for a month or so, I pushed myself up to a shopping trip 10 miles from home. I definitely feel the weight of my bike at that distance, and can see where people would go to a touring bike much beyond it.
Welcome here, by the way, and I LOVE your purple Electra!