Make no problem with bikes in Florida, when you arrive you are so drenched in sweat you are no longer presentable and stink to high heaven.
Biking to work if you have an office job is out of the question.
Biking to my gym or KungFu school… Perfect.
Just need the right tool for the right job.
Anyone who has ridden in rain and adverse weather would know one reason cars are more popular.
Picking up a week’s worth of shopping for a family, whilst taking your baby with you, in the pouring rain, and you live up a steep hill, and you have joint pain, and a sudden work meeting across the other side of town in an hour…
I’d love a city designed round bicycles (Cambridge, UK is quite good like that in the centre) but man, despite the downsides cars are amazing things.
car go further faster, and car more useful when not in big city.
For this, bike friendly cities have good public transport (bus/tram/metro) and bike shares
Not probably, a human riding a bicycle is the most efficient way to convert energy into movement. No other vehicle or animal can be as efficient.
Thats why I have a bike-sled team to pull my horribly inefficient sled across the asphalt
$20 gas gets me much, much, much further than $20 in eating high carb prepared food when riding my bike between point A and B. Not fuel efficient, in fact, energy expensive, but it is over all cheaper than a car if you can handle the potential physical abuse of riding a quarter mile up hill to your house. I did this last year while my car was in the shop, I learned I lived at the top of a hill, in the middle of a valley. Lost around 14lbs in a week just running errands, and I was carb loading like crazy. Carbs, meat, sugars, and tons of water. Riding a bike is all laughs and giggles until you’re doing it to get meat and milk to fuel your required errands and despite eating everything in sight you’re still losing weight at a shocking pace… They had my car a month, I was able to hold out on most errands until around just before the final week, went from 179, to 165. Kept eating as I felt I needed and was back up to 175 in about a week after getting my car back, and with recent exercise and pushing myself I dropped to 169 while increasing my max weight, it’s really only surprising when you find I was 280ish lbs just 6 yrs ago… I digress, bikes are tough on the body.
This doesn’t match my experience. I eat more when I ride, but not enough to make it a concern.
Someone can probably do the math, but i have a hunch that humans are technically not very fuel efficient if you look at calories burned pr the total mass being moved along.
But whatever it is biking is awesome, but being technically correct is even better.
Humans are actually unusually energy efficient for mammals when walking and even more so when cycling. Here’s a little info graphic showing a breakdown.
One thing to keep in mind if you have a dog is they’re less energy efficient than humans. While dogs can run faster, a reasonably fit human can easily out distance an equally fit dog when walking or distance running.
Also, I love the units. Using miles on one axis and km on the other.
This is very useful. My four friends and I will have to stop swimming to work, and take the car instead.
Nice graphic.
But it seems like it doesn’t factor in kg of mass moved. A human and a bike is a lot lighter than a car or a horse. You could also argue that the vehicle weigh should be ignored but then again you could easily argue back that weight of goods move can possibly be a lot higher with a car if you load it up to capacity. Ignore that. I did not see it said 5 riders for the carI’m back with better data. I’m assuming the travel path is perfectly flat because I don’t feel like modeling elevation changes. I’m being energy efficient (read: lazy).
For cycling, I’m using the global average human weight of 62 kg, assuming the cycle is 8 kg, and the pace is 10 kph, which is pretty relaxed.
For walking, I’m using the 62 kg person walking at 4 kph.
For driving with petrol, we’ll use the same spherical 62 kg human and a 2024 Toyota Prius with a fuel efficiency of 4.8 L/100 km and a mass of 1570 kg. One liter of petrol is approximately 8174 kcal. Double the energy expenditure for an estimate for your typical SUV.
For electric, I chose a 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N with an energy efficiency of 21.2 kWh/100km and a mass of 2235 kg. One kilowatt-hour is approximately 860 kcal.
Walking: 0.74 kcal•km-1•kg-1
Cycling: 0.34 kcal•km-1•kg-1
Driving(p): 0.24 kcal•km-1•kg-1
Driving(e): 0.08 kcal•km-1•kg-1It still doesn’t give us kcal•km-1•kg-1 (or an equivalent), which is what I was looking for. We could do some math to get us some loose estimates, though. I’ll do exactly that and report back shortly.
I feel like ‘total mass being moved’ is irrelevent if most of that mass is useless (car motor/metal frame/plastic/etc).
Even if a car motor was more efficient per kg, most of the work is wasted on moving the actual car itself, regardless of the passengers & cargo.
Bikes clearly use less energy to displace ‘useful mass’ than a car, so they are more efficient in that sense.
Quick math shows I am quite a bit more efficient than a Nissan Juke traveling 150 miles at 19mph. About 50kcal/pound for the car and 8kcal/pound for me+bike to travel the distance.
I’m disabled in a way that means I can’t use one, but can use a car, which kinda sucks.
Fortunately bike infrastructure usually helps me in my chair, so I’m all in favor of wider bike adoption.
I don’t know your limitations, but you’d be surprised at the number of ways cycling can be made accessible.
For example, there are handbikes that attach to a wheelchair. As with all assistive tech it depends on your specific situation what is possible.
I’ve frequently seen a couple of people with recumbent hand bikes on one of the popular trails near me. They’re decently fast with the reduced air resistance, but road crossings are a bit of a hassle when you aren’t tall enough to be seen by an f450
That blows. Glad the infrastructure helps your chair get around, though. Also, every biker not using a car gives you more space, so that’s an additional plus
Because people with disabilities and chronic illness exist, and because depending on the distance it’s not possible to go by bike and depending on the terrain it’s also no possible. Oh and the weather I forgot the weather… oh and in some roads, like highways, for example, these can’t even drive there:…
These are great arguments for one not to cycle for routine trips of daily life.
Good cyclist advocates don’t shame one for not cycling for everything. They know why people don’t do it. It’s because they feel like they’re gonna die! And they’re not totally wrong in feeling that way.
Good bike advocates lobby for better infrastructure to mitigate these concerns.
E.g. winter weather in particular is addressed just by keeping bike routes paved the same as car lanes. Places that do this see negligible drops in cycling rates even at below freezing temps.
GOOD bike infrastructure is always worth it. It always reduces car trips. Every mile one bikes or walks instead of drives is taxpayer money saved.
Car infrastructure is very limiting to people with disabilities, more so than cycling.
Bikes aren’t the perfect transportation method for everyone all the time but they are a good option for most people most of the time. Also, I have a chronic illness and I ride year round in a place that regularly hits -40
Some people with disabilities can’t drive. Young and old people can’t drive. If anything bikes are more accessible.
Welcome to the Netherlands. If there’s anything that fills me with pride it’s our cycling culture. Most people have a car too, but I don’t, and I do everything by bike and public transport.
Denmark checking in. Not unusual for people in the city not to have a car. I’m happy with my bike that I use every workday to cycle into the city centrum in all weather - I love dressing myself up in rain boots, rain paints and rain jacket and be on my way in heavy rain or snow, feeling like I’m in an episode of Deadliest Catch
I dream of immigrating there.
Arrive to work soaked in sweat because it’s been 100+ degrees every day for the past 8 weeks.
You lose the benefits of it being cheap, but an ebike is a decent solution
I rode one for a while in college.
Didn’t really help with the sweat problem between April and October in Texas. Or was less work than pedaling, but nothing aside from air conditioning helps with the sweat issue in Texas summer heat.
Being cheap is the entire benefit. Everything else is just a plus. If you lose the cost it’s not worth it at that point.
But somehow 20k plus for a vehicle with the added maintenance, gas, inspection, and registration is. Gotcha.
Never said owning a car was cheap. I said if I have to shell out 5 grand for a bike that I still have to drive without ac/heat in the summer and winter it defeats the purpose.
Well, that is largely caused by cars.
Workplaces that require employees to be presentable then offer locker rooms, showers, and enough reasonable time to get ready to accommodate the fact that everyone who works a service job arrives soaked in sweat.
“Just leave it anywhere there is a secure structure” - Yes, I see this regularly when I have to maneuver around bikes carelessly “parked” in the middle of the pedestrian walkway…
Rain, ice and severe cold are a removed. I like bicycles, but driving to work in a heated car looking at that poor cyclist riding somewhere at 6 in the morning at -6°C, sorry, no, I’m gonna go with a car.
If it’s me on the bike, know that I’m pitying you. -6°C is nothing. I drove a lot of miles as a delivery driver, and saw a lot of faces behind windshields in that time. Very few happy faces. Driving makes people miserable.
are a removed.
Bro, it might be time to leave .ml lol
I disagree cycling in winter is nice. Just get some warm clothes and good tyres. A car is also really expensive to own in the city. Why pay for a car and parking when the alternative is almost free and arguably more fun.
It was minus seventeen degrees celsius when I got up yesterday. In the time it would take me to bicycle to work on clear paths/roads - assuming no accidents - I would have frostbite on all of my face unless I was also wearing a full-face helmet.
You should check out Oulu in Finland where kids bike to school in cold weather. Not a problem apparently. If that is too far fetched, you should visit Bozeman MT where people bike commute in the winter quite often.
If a full-face helmet works why not use one? You can also just skip the extremely cold days and use public transport instead. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing decision.
Could probably rock a balaclava in those temperatures. I bought one in anticipation of winter riding, but the coldest I’ve ridden this year is -11 C and it wasn’t quite necessary yet at that point, but I was debating trying it out.
Climate change is basically killing most of the cold days we have where I live so this is a problem I’m long-term apparently not going to have to deal with. Instead I will have to deal with the way worse type of weather - wet weather.
I’m less likely to sweat profusely in winter
If the cities are built for it, cycling doesn’t become something where you’re doing it for extended periods or distances. Neighborhoods that are setup for bikes means everything is local area, or mostly.
Like my mom used to say: are you made of sugar?
If the weather is bad enough, I will take transit instead, but cycling down to -10 C is doable without any problems.
I will be far less inclined to bike if it’s raining, that I do hate with a passion. Of course, I could just work from home in that scenario as well, if I don’t feel like taking transit
Was the removed word bitch (female dog) by any chance I wonder?
Because lemmy.ml is run by a bunch of pearl-clutchers that think profanity is a tool of the capitalist oppressors.
Why did you ask if the removed word is removed?
Looks like they shadow-remove the word
Me logged in (via Sync): —
Me not logged in: —
It was a little joke.
For some reason your comment appears uncensored to me, but the top commenter’s is censored.
Probably because the uncensored comment isn’t being posted from lemmy.ml, unlike the first post. Posting and viewing from the instance in question will probably censor every occurrence.
all of this is wild and i have no idea what’s real anymore
Ice and snow are difficult. But I don’t give a shit about the rest. It’s still way more fun than sitting in traffic.
Bikes were and still are a revolutionary technology. There’s a reason suffragettes were often associated with bicycles.
Good pun.
I don’t see it
Bikes were and still are a revolutionary technology.
lol, thank you!
Revolution to mean revolving/rotating
Thanks!
Bicycle is the wheel reinvented.
Bicycle is two wheels.
Now with double the amount of wheel!
I used to love to bike but I moved to an area with steep hills and it’s too high effort. Maybe fine for exercise but I always used them for transport and you can’t arrive at work or a music lesson drenched in sweat. Wish they would install those hill lifts some countries have. I walk now. Would love an electric but the expense makes it much more painful when it’s stolen (and every one of my regular bikes has eventually been stolen).
Don’t forget that maintenance is super cheap AND most people, with only the most basic tools, can do the work in their living room or even just on a sidewalk. And if I don’t get it right and the brakes don’t work perfectly I probably won’t fuckin’ die.
Hi, car owner here. I do all the work myself and it requires a fair bit of knowledge, expensive tools, space, and a childhood where I was never told I couldn’t do that work if I was thoughtful about it. That’s a high fuckin’ bar and requires a whole lot of privilege-oh there it is, too many people with privilege like to shit on those without and most of North America has dogshit for public transit or bike infrastructure and the “freedom of movement” with a car is all there but heavily artificial. Thanks auto industry and their lobbyists.
I do my own bicycle and auto repair, and the bicycle is way easier. Maintenance is:
- clean chain every so often (500 miles or start of the season) - get a chain cleaner tool thing ($10-20) and 50/50 Simple Green ($10 will last many years) and water, and then rinse, dry, and lube ($10 lasts years) - total process, 10 min?
- replace chain - $20 or so, plus a tool for $10 or so; do every 2k miles or so
- replace brake pads - $10-20
- tires ($50 for a fancy fire) and tubes ($10) - replace tires when bald, tubes when flat (or patch them), and get some tire levers ($5-10) to make it easier
For tools, you need a wrench set, and probably only like 2-3 sizes.
My yearly maintenance costs for all of our bikes (1 adult, two kids) combined is about $50. If that. You could also go to your local bike shop instead for about double that.
This was one of the things that surprised me the most about getting a bike. Parts are cheap. The work is easy. Knowing how to do it is valuable.
Also this is a healthy maintence regime. In my experience most cyclists do nothing on that list except swapping flat tubes and their bikes still ride just fine, if not merely sub-optimally.
Honestly have never done preventative maintenance on my bikes, only necessary repairs. Still thinking about repairing the shifter since I’ve been missing 1st gear for about 7-8? years now.
True. If you’re just riding casually, you don’t really need any maintenance.
But if you’re relying on it every day, keeping up on maintenance can reduce costs long term. Dirty chains destroy the cogs (inexpensive) and drive train (expensive), stretched chains cause gear slippage and inefficient power delivery, worn tires increase chances of flats and reduce grip, and worn pads reduce stopping ability, which could result in nastier accidents.
If you’re riding a lot, keep up on maintenance, just like you would with a car. If it’s just occasionally like once or twice/month, you can probably get away with some neglect.
A bit of easy maintenance should be possible for everyone. Just clean and lube the chain every month. Check tire pressure every two to four weeks (depending on how fast they lose air).
And once a year do a complete checkup either by yourself or by a bike shop.You should easily get 10 years of life out of your bike. 20 years might be possible too.
A quick tip on bike chains; if you are using lubricant you should never use heavy degreaser on the chain. The factory oil is the best lubricant and normal lubes don’t penetrate between links enough.
However, if you are going to degrease you chains, you should use paraffin wax instead of lube. I have an 11 speed chain with 3000+ miles and it’s only showing around 1% stretch. I don’t even use fancy bike specific wax, just food grade gulf wax. Another plus is the whole drive train is dry; doesn’t get your hands dirty if you need to remove a wheel, cassette, or derailleur.
Admittedly waxing the chain is a pain in the ass, but some of my chains are like $70 a pop so getting as much life from them is more important.
Wax can flake off leaving that space unprotected. You have to check it more regularly than a lubed chain and dry it off after rain. It’s not uncommon for a waxed chain to rust. But a big pro is cleanness of the chain and you won’t get greasy hands.
Personally I keep using (eco-friendly) lube. Yes the chain gets dirty fast but I don’t care. :D
The roller links are what you want lubricated and protected, and wax stays in those places much better than liquid lubes. While some chunks will flake off there is a thin layer left behind, I ride near the ocean pretty frequently and had worse rust problems when I was using lube. Ofc whatever works for you is the best practice but wax has been very easy for me. I track my rides, after about 150 miles I re-wax the chain. I’ve never found that I have to check it more often, but I also ride steel frames so I don’t ride in the rain anyways.
I don’t ride in the rain
That’s probably the difference between us. I ride all-year all-weather.
Also shows a big difference in location between us. I only have like 2 weeks out of the year that I have to break out the indoor rollers because of rain.
Hope you stay safe though, I wish everyone could have the benefit of coastal desert weather.
I have an 11 speed chain with 3000+ miles and it’s only showing around 1% stretch.
Wow, that’s a solid chain. I usually need to replace mine around 2000-3000, but my chains are like $20-30, and I don’t treat them very well (I stay on high gears on short climbs a bit too long).
I haven’t bothered with wax, maybe I should. I just do a decent job lubing everything a few times per year. I degrease (chain only, I’m careful around the derailleur and hub), rinse thoroughly, dry thoroughly, and then lube and wipe 2x. I don’t get any squeaks and it rides smoother after a cleaning, so I think I’m doing a decent job.
But I’ve heard wax is more of a one and done thing. Maybe I’ll try it the next time I replace my chain.
Oh I’m sure you’re doing a decent job and wax isn’t a perfect solution for everyone. I’m just saying that one of the reasons you may only get 2k miles out of a chain is the degreaser takes away the factory oil. When I was on lube I was getting about 1% stretch per 1k miles, but it also depends a lot on the drivetrain and what kind of riding you do.
I would definitely consider wax though, especially if you move up into 10, 11, or 12 speed drivetrains. Everything is so damn expensive on them that wax is well worth the extra work, not just the chain but my cassettes look almost new still.
Exactly!
People over-state bicycle maintenance.
$50 and a couple YouTube videos gets you everything you need for the first few years of maintenance. You can get fancy with a bike rack thing, but I never bothered and I’ve been fine.
If you screw up, go to a bike shop and they’ll get you sorted for $50 or so, and they’ll probably teach you how to do it right if you ask nicely. If you have a bike coop, it might be free.
Bike maintenance is a matter of what kind of equipment you’re riding, how far, what conditions, how much you weigh and how strong you are. When I was putting 40 miles a day commuting, my cheap bike needed maintenance about once every 2-4 weeks depending on the weather and taught me that I fucking hate cleaning and repacking my bottom bracket.
The proliferation of Ebike caliber equipment changed a lot at least for durability and comfort.
I have never once touched my bottom bracket, what kind of weather you riding in?
And if you have a bike with a belt you can replace all chain-related maintenance with “check if the belt looks weird maybe once a year”.
Yup. I recommend taking it in if it looks weird, it’s not worth learning to replace a belt since they’re usually good for many many years.
For the newer cars, the lockout of self repair is real. You need an EEPROM reader to get the diagnostics out, and only then using firmware found on a chinese forum. Fixing a part requires you to just order a replacement, and once you take apart the car and put the part in, you then need to tell the cars electronics to accept the part as part of its diagonistics or it wont fucking start, even if its non-critical and everything else is fine.
Yea that’s nearly 100% untrue, though. TPMS sensors can be a little weird but no one is changing tires themselves, only whole wheels for summer/winter.
Brakes, sparkplugs, tierods, suspension, all oils, many sound systems and/or parts thereof, filters, batteries, and even a whole headlight assembly are all things you don’t need to tell the car about. I put a backup camera in my car and it just figured it out all on it’s own since there was technically an option for it, and I wasn’t even using an OEM camera. And the car usually doesn’t even know what’s wrong but if there IS a code you can just use an OBD2 reader, they aren’t exactly expensive and they’re super easy to use.
You either have no idea what you’re talking about or are a mechanic that I’m glad I’m not taking my vehicle to. My 2015 BRZ that has literally none of that, not even TPMS sensors(I know 2015 is not that new anymore but people have been saying this shit for decades). This is exactly why I show people how it works, so that they can understand that it’s not that hard or complicated.
P.S.: if it’s a German vehicle just shoot yourself, it’ll be a much less painful experience than realizing that a bunch of high-paid engineers with great reputations among the laypeople are really just the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet. Also less physically painful, too. You can still do the work, they just put everything in terrible places and use bolts that have needlessly unique and more fragile heads. Fuck you, VW, you idiots.
Mechanical work comes pretty easy to me. I have no doubt I can fix virtually anything on my bike, short of things that require welding (we might see about that someday too…).
But cars mechanical work? Tried it some times. Frustrating as hell, don’t even want to touch it. I hate everything about cars, including the way they’re built.
Trick is to buy a Subaru. Everything is just nice and simple, and there’s lots of space to do everything. I’ve only owned them but I’ve helped family and friends with all kinds of other makes and it sucked.
I think it heavily depends on the make. Both my families mustang and f150 were terrible to repair. But my camry by comparison is a joy. I can tear it apart almost the whole way with a 10 and 12 mm in an afternoon.
I’ve done work in soft manufacturing, so i know how to use a wrench, but never worked in cars.
I acknowledge bikes are way easier BTW, can fix almost any problem in my bike in a few hours, just think repairability should be on people’s minds.
