Archive for the ‘My Bike’ Category
American cycling infrastructure
Still winter, but the weather this weekend is brilliant. Sunny and 50’s. Not spring, though. Nobody say it’s spring because we’ll all get our hands slapped with a week of snow and 20-degree wind. March was only spring for the Romans because they lived in the Mediterranean. Somehow that hasn’t been cleared up in New […]
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Tags: bakfiets, bay path, bicycle, bike, cycling infrastructure
Groceries
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Tags: bakfiets, bicycle, bike, groceries, shopping
Return to Raleigh
Back on the Raleigh today after nearly a week breaking in the bakfiets. Riding to work felt like I’d stepped out of the on-deck circle and slipped the donuts off my bat. The old steel of the Raleigh rode like it was built for the Tour in comparison. I like to talk about frame weight […]
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Tags: bakfiets, bicycle, bike, carbon, frame, Raleigh, steel, weight
The big snow
The big snow missed us this time. We got a handful of inches. But first we got wet stuff, which promptly froze under the snow. My ride to work was on a five-mile sheet of ice. I went extra slow and I rode the heavy bike, the bakfiets. I wanted to see how it would […]
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Tags: bakfiets, bicycle, bike, car, ice, shovel, snow, Winter
A red Schwinn with a banana seat
A red Schwinn with a banana seat, maybe a Stingray. That was my first bike, the bike on which I had training wheels. I don’t remember it having high handlebars though. My brother’s bike was a blue Stingray, for sure. Great seat on that one. Schwinn called it a “bucket saddle.” I wonder what an […]
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Tags: bicycle, bike, Five Boro Bike Tour, New York, night, Schwinn, Stingray, Suburban, Trek, Varsity
First ride
We had a snow day from work. Only the snow didn’t come until late in the day, so we set the kids off on their first ride to pick up blizzard supplies from Nana, like dutiful New Englanders. R was smiling long after he came inside and G fell asleep on the way home. It […]
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Tags: bakfiets, bicycle, bike, Kids
Our second car…
… is a bike! It’s a Dutch bike and it’s called a bakfiets, which translates literally to box-bike. (Quick Dutch lesson: fiets = bike. That’s the singular. In Dutch, the suffix -en denotes the plural, the same way in English we say ox and oxen. So: many bikes are fietsen; many boxbikes are bakfietsen. Bike […]
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Tags: bakfiets, bicycle, bike, Dutch, groceries
Doppelgänger
I was in Amsterdam this past fall when I happened on my bike’s Dutch doppelgänger on one of the 9 Streets. It’s an earlier model than mine; I’m guessing 1950’s because of the chaincase. It’s been well maintained and has gotten a lot of use, if the additions are any indication. Over time someone has taken […]
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Tags: 3-speed, Amsterdam, bicycle, bike, Brooks, doppelgänger, Dutch, Netherlands, Raleigh, repair
Bikes Can Work 