I’m currently on a regular bike, and lucky to have my main destinations (work and the store) within a few miles on flat terrain with bike lanes. I definitely want to upgrade to an e-bike so I can ‘unlock’ more reasonably bikeable places and ditch the car for everything except long trips and moving big cargo. I have some people at my work who commute on personal e-scooters and electric longboards, too which is awesome. The more the merrier!
Same. I moved to a place “bikeably” close to the things I needed most (like post office for my work). Every day of the week I toss on some ANC headphones (transparency mode enabled) and head out for a 10 mile bike ride to drop off mail and explore the neighborhoods as I burn some calories and jam out to some tunes. I have a nice size tactical backpack which I use as my “trunk” to carry stuff around (as well as spare parts/tools to fix my bike on the go if needed)
An E-bike is high on my wish-list, but I’m letting the “market” mature and see where things end up so I can get something with an upgrade/repair path to replace the batteries as they age. But I would love to ditch the car for 90% of my weekly needs.
For now I keep my bike tuned up and enjoy the workout.
I don’t know about you but I enjoy biking because I see the same regular people in the neighborhoods all the time, if nothing more than a friendly smile and a hello - you don’t get that same interaction with people when you’re driving everywhere.
I totally feel you on enjoying biking way more. Biking around feels so much more human to me than cars ever will because you can like, see people’s faces. I only need to see a face once or twice for it to be recognizable, but I could definitely sit in traffic and next to the same person in the same Honda civic every day while commuting and never realize. Cars just put so much space, separation, and obstruction between people.
I still have less-than-ideal interactions with pedestrians in high traffic times- our pedestrian/bike infrastructure is mixed and fairly imperfect, and often I get funneled into tight spaces and people on foot tend to do unpredictable things. In cars, when drivers do things that annoy or endanger each other, it’s always horns and middle fingers and road rage behaviors. But on a bike, you can talk to each other. On your left, coming through, excuse me, sorry. I’ve had a lot of interactions where pedestrians say sorry to me as I pass and they realize they were in a weird spot, and I have a chance to holler back that it’s okay, no worries as a ride off.
I’ve also noticed that with other bikers, we have a mutual understanding of how to move out of each others way and navigate the pedestrians/obstacles around us, just through body language and facial expressions. It is so much easier to be nice and considerate and communicative on a bike.
I’m currently on a regular bike, and lucky to have my main destinations (work and the store) within a few miles on flat terrain with bike lanes. I definitely want to upgrade to an e-bike so I can ‘unlock’ more reasonably bikeable places and ditch the car for everything except long trips and moving big cargo. I have some people at my work who commute on personal e-scooters and electric longboards, too which is awesome. The more the merrier!
Same. I moved to a place “bikeably” close to the things I needed most (like post office for my work). Every day of the week I toss on some ANC headphones (transparency mode enabled) and head out for a 10 mile bike ride to drop off mail and explore the neighborhoods as I burn some calories and jam out to some tunes. I have a nice size tactical backpack which I use as my “trunk” to carry stuff around (as well as spare parts/tools to fix my bike on the go if needed)
An E-bike is high on my wish-list, but I’m letting the “market” mature and see where things end up so I can get something with an upgrade/repair path to replace the batteries as they age. But I would love to ditch the car for 90% of my weekly needs.
For now I keep my bike tuned up and enjoy the workout.
I don’t know about you but I enjoy biking because I see the same regular people in the neighborhoods all the time, if nothing more than a friendly smile and a hello - you don’t get that same interaction with people when you’re driving everywhere.
I totally feel you on enjoying biking way more. Biking around feels so much more human to me than cars ever will because you can like, see people’s faces. I only need to see a face once or twice for it to be recognizable, but I could definitely sit in traffic and next to the same person in the same Honda civic every day while commuting and never realize. Cars just put so much space, separation, and obstruction between people.
I still have less-than-ideal interactions with pedestrians in high traffic times- our pedestrian/bike infrastructure is mixed and fairly imperfect, and often I get funneled into tight spaces and people on foot tend to do unpredictable things. In cars, when drivers do things that annoy or endanger each other, it’s always horns and middle fingers and road rage behaviors. But on a bike, you can talk to each other. On your left, coming through, excuse me, sorry. I’ve had a lot of interactions where pedestrians say sorry to me as I pass and they realize they were in a weird spot, and I have a chance to holler back that it’s okay, no worries as a ride off.
I’ve also noticed that with other bikers, we have a mutual understanding of how to move out of each others way and navigate the pedestrians/obstacles around us, just through body language and facial expressions. It is so much easier to be nice and considerate and communicative on a bike.