Utility Cycling
Jul. 13th, 2017 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sadie_sysI love this article about utility cycling. That's basically how I use my bicycle and how I look at cycling in general, except I'm an unmarried queer who can never have kids so I easily get by with just a big basket. I do plan on getting a cargo trailer so I can haul big things, like furniture or lumber, and so I can go on big grocery trips. I might eventually get a dog and then I could put a dog carrier on the trailer. I would love to have a trailer strong enough that I could let my girlfriend ride around in it, but trailers that strong get expensive.
So, my bike. It's a Trek 800 from the mid 90s, so it has a steel body, lots of gears, straight handle bars for control, barely adequate brakes, an knobby tires. I think it was a decent bicycle to repurpose as a city utility bike. Aside from basic bicycle accessories, to make it more utilitarian I added:
The umbrella holder has been kind of an obsession lately. I spent hours upon hours over the last month searching the internet for an affordable way to keep the rain off my head while bicycling. There are specially made rain ponchos which would probably work wonderfully but the cheapest ones are almost $100, and I really would rather be able to wear my normal clothes. There are transparent plastic canopies which almost completely enclose you on your bike when deployed, and fold down into a disc-shaped-pouch small enough for me to store on my bike, but those are even more expensive than the ponchos. Eventually I found these umbrella holders, and while there was very little information about them, they were only $10. At that price I could bet on a dream.
Then I spent hours more researching the best umbrella to pair with the umbrella holder. I have a big list of transparent, aerodynamic, oblong, storm rated, etc umbrellas. Each one is "perfect" for cycling for a different reason. I think I might be turning into an umbrella collector.
Well it turns out the umbrella holder works almost perfectly with any ordinary umbrella. Today I did a grocery run in a light rain and got no more wet then I would have walking to the grocery store with an umbrella in hand. I had to go a little slower than normal, but not because the umbrella or holder couldn't take the wind. Its just that if I went to fast the rain would effectively be horizontal and then I would get soaked below the waist. I was still able to go at a decent pace. Maybe 10mph. And it's best to ride carefully in the rain anyway.
P.S.: In order to get the umbrella holder to stay in place, I had to put a piece of rubber around the handlebar where I clamped on the umbrella holder. A piece of an old inner tube did the trick.
-- SJ
So, my bike. It's a Trek 800 from the mid 90s, so it has a steel body, lots of gears, straight handle bars for control, barely adequate brakes, an knobby tires. I think it was a decent bicycle to repurpose as a city utility bike. Aside from basic bicycle accessories, to make it more utilitarian I added:
- An Ibera PakRak cargo rack that I got from a friend for cheap after she discovered it didn't fit her bike
- A large 14-inch-by-14-inch-by-10-inch-deep metal wire basket zip-tied to the rack that I got from an old broken piece of office furniture sitting in an empty unlocked apartment in the building I was living in at the time
- A set of bungie cords for helping keep way-too-large things in the basket
- A $10 umbrella holder from Smile.Amazon.com that I didn't expect to work as well as it does
- And a set of fenders to keep rainwater from flying up off the tires
The umbrella holder has been kind of an obsession lately. I spent hours upon hours over the last month searching the internet for an affordable way to keep the rain off my head while bicycling. There are specially made rain ponchos which would probably work wonderfully but the cheapest ones are almost $100, and I really would rather be able to wear my normal clothes. There are transparent plastic canopies which almost completely enclose you on your bike when deployed, and fold down into a disc-shaped-pouch small enough for me to store on my bike, but those are even more expensive than the ponchos. Eventually I found these umbrella holders, and while there was very little information about them, they were only $10. At that price I could bet on a dream.
Then I spent hours more researching the best umbrella to pair with the umbrella holder. I have a big list of transparent, aerodynamic, oblong, storm rated, etc umbrellas. Each one is "perfect" for cycling for a different reason. I think I might be turning into an umbrella collector.
Well it turns out the umbrella holder works almost perfectly with any ordinary umbrella. Today I did a grocery run in a light rain and got no more wet then I would have walking to the grocery store with an umbrella in hand. I had to go a little slower than normal, but not because the umbrella or holder couldn't take the wind. Its just that if I went to fast the rain would effectively be horizontal and then I would get soaked below the waist. I was still able to go at a decent pace. Maybe 10mph. And it's best to ride carefully in the rain anyway.
P.S.: In order to get the umbrella holder to stay in place, I had to put a piece of rubber around the handlebar where I clamped on the umbrella holder. A piece of an old inner tube did the trick.
-- SJ
