Watch this YouTube video by clicking here -> https://youtu.be/gUapMtJIb1s?si=UBQcrUDme1lhx3BB
Wear a high quality helmet correctly & always wear one. Protecting your brain the most important safety principle in life. Helmets reduce brain damage! Helmets are intelligent, wise, reasonable and worth their weight in gold!
Turn & look at traffic approaching so you can see if they see you, without swerving. Adding a mirror to your helmer or bars and aligning it so you can see what's happening behind you easily another way!
If you drop the chain, it comes off the gear, down shift, then pedal gently while upshifting and that can get the chain back on without touching it. You can also stuff a nitric or plastic glove into your bike to have as a backup, since getting dirty chain grease on your hands not a fun time & can be hard to remove.
If you're riding at the front of a group, don't blow spit or snot rockets as they will get on other riders behind you. Instead drop to the back of the pack if you have to clear your airway.
Make sure your seat is high enough so that your foot when at the bottom of the crank enables your leg to be nearly fully extended. This will prevent knee pain & give you more crank power.
Don't surge & jerk your heart rate super high for a burst on a long ride, especially not when riding in a group.
Keep the outside corner leg down, it puts tire pressure as you're turning to shove the tire in the road and keeps your inner corner foot up for clearance as you lean into the corner.
Never brake or slow down much while in a corner, always brake before the corner!
Bring water in easy to reach water bottles or fill them with sports drinks.
When your actively cycling your burning calories & energy much faster than when your sitting around at home watching TV or farting around online on your smartphone, tablet, laptop, computer, game console or whatever sitting too much. This means that eating before you go for a ride & having snacks with you essential to fueling your body for cycling on bicycle trips. I am still figuring out how to combine interval fasting, low carb eating & cycling into a healthy functional lifestyle mix.
Keep your upper body & arms relaxed with arms bent and lean over more. You need to improve your core strength & let your lower body hold you up. Not putting pressure on your hands helps to reduce arm fatigue & your hands going numb or tingling on longer rides. When Meg & I were cycling more regularly we could go about 60 miles per day. I have learned a lot about bicycles & riding since then and hope to teach these points to Meg.
Blinking strobing red rear light essential if your riding on roads with car traffic, to help drivers notice you riding your bicycle. Many bicycle rider fatalities happen because a low skill motorist does not notice the unlit dark bicycle without lights. Lights make you safer by helping other motorists notice your presence. If you ride on busy trails a bell for your handlebar so you can ting it when approaching others going slower a great way to let them know your soon to pass or to get out of your way :) A headlight a great idea if your riding in dark conditions. Bring rain gear or wear protective clothing for the season & weather, including avoiding sun burns in the summer, or being freezing cold & wet in the winter.
Consider form fitting cycling clothing to reduce drag so you can go faster easily, especially pants with gel seat to protect your bum & crotch from seat fatigue.
Add a seat post suspension upgrade, this helps to reduce NVH translated into your spine, keeping you fresher longer by reducing riding fatigue better than anything else! Adding front suspension can help to smooth out the bumps. A plush oversized seat can be nicer on your tush too ^^
Watch YouTube or TicTok videos on "How to Maintain my Bicycle" to learn about it & get the tools & do it every 100 miles or so.
Keep the tires properly inflated to some % of the max written on the side wall. Too low can create a softer ride on fat tires but increases the risk of a pinch flat, while too high can cause a very harsh ride when hitting bumps & increase the risk of a tube break on a hard pot hold or edge hit hard. Tubes or tubeless, you want to keep your tires close to the sidewall embossed pressure ratings.
Clean the chain with a baby wipe or similar by wiping it down as you spin the crank to move the chain, then lubricate the chain. I like liquid chain wax as it dries to a non-sticky solid that melts when the chain is operating. If your bicycle has a belt drive, you don't have to worry about lubricating or cleaning the chain, you can just spray water to rise dirty and sand or debris out of the belt drive. They have belt lubricants if you have squeaking issues that annoy you, that can make the belt quieter. If you have a rear hub internal gearing system or mid-drive pinion transmission, change the oil every 2 years or more if you are logging a lot of miles fast as a commuter.
If you commute in rain, you need to lubricate all the rust or corrosion points with lot of silicon oil, wax, heavy grease or waterproof lubricant regularly to keep water from corroding friction parts. You're going to need to pull the hub & crank & pack them with grease more often if you regularly ride in rain. Dry the bike off & take it inside sometimes to let it fully dry. I recommend keeping your bicycle inside your unit, house, home, so that its less likely to be stolen whiles your sleeping or not using it. Bicycle theft one of the reason that bicycle cars have not become popular, since they are low mass and hard to secure. Use a bicycle lock with thick metal or ceramic thats hard to defeat with a battery powered angle grinder.
Use a newton meter 2-20 range torque wrench to tighten the bolts of your bicycle to the exact torque specifications listed in the printed or PDF version of the manual for your exact model. Consult a reputable bicycle mechanic at a good bike shop if you need help. Such a tool with hex bits can be obtained on Amazon, Ebay or Alibaba for under $50 with all the bits, plus your need a few metric spanners in 12-30mm range to get the bigger bolts :) I use a 1/2 larger torque wrench with metric sockets for this aspect.
Replace the brake pads before they are worn all the way down. If your bike has hydraulic brakes, you have to purge & replace the mineral oil every 2 years.
The motivation to get out of the car comes from a variety of ideas around sustainable transport, not polluting, not being wasteful, staying physically fit & strong & thin, being mentally healthier, having a better attitude and better emotional control, making better use of the eBike we already have, and hopefully improving my strength & stamina so that I can use the analog bicycle in the spring and summer time so that Meg can ride the eBike along with me :) She doesn't want to ride in the cold winter rain or very cold air like me. She also has an analog bike that needs tuning by a professional. This 1998 smaller better fit Marin bicycle was given to us by Joyce a woman Meg used to work for, who was similar in size as Meg. Later Meg & I went to a bicycle shop in Fremont, in Seattle and got a used carbon bar, kick stand, and had a tune-up, but it needs new cables & crank grease & hub grease & stem grease or a major tuneup now, pending until spring time when she will actually want to go riding with me :)
I started riding bicycles as a young boy, on a tiny steel & white single speed with training wheels. At 4 years of age my neighbor friend Matt Mayo chastised me to take off the training wheels & ride naturally so I did :)
A few years later I was bigger & my parents gave me a 10 speed small mountain bike with white accidents on an aluminum frame. I had this bike for a few years and rode it a lot, but was at the local McDonalds in Factoria in south Bellevue, WA, USA and had to tinkle. Without a bike lock, I left the bike outside leaning against the brick wall. When I returned to it after using the bathroom, it was gone, but I looked up quickly to see a silver nissan truck with my bicycle in the back driving away. The driver had darker skin & dark black hair and stole my bicycle.
My mother feeling bad about what happened took me to Fred Meyer & got me a 18 speed mountain bike made of aluminum with low end front suspension. I rode this a lot until I got my drivers license and first car a few years later. I figured out how to put the bicycle in the back of the car by removing the front wheel & loading it carefully into the trunk with the rear seats folded down so it would fit, and transported it this way to many local trails to ride for leisure and activity or exercise to clear my head. I had noticed very early in my childhood that if I was not feeling well, upset, angry, frustrated, anxious, bored or off, going for a long walk or bicycle ride that got my heart rate up and made me breathe harder & sweat, seemed to always make me feel better, as did taking a nap.
On my 21st birthday my mother got me a 21 speed Schwinn Mountain Bike made of aluminum with a solid frame & no suspension. I rode this about 9000 miles until 2020 when I replaced it with a Specialized Crossroads 2.0 with 2x7 Shimano gear train on a hard aluminum frame featuring seat post suspension and a more upright ergonomic posture & gorgeous design, especially the battleship grey blue color with bright green accents. It shifts like a dream and very efficient and fits me better. I am 5 foot 11 inch or 180cm tall and weigh around 74 kilograms or 163 us pounds.
Back in 2011 I purchased a Prodeco Phantom X folding black ebike named Ebert and rode it for a few years before it was stollen in 2014 from the locked underground parking garage at the Excalibur Apartments on 112th in downtown Bellevue, during a power outage causing the metal security gate to open, while I was at work. Some jerk climbed over my other parked car that was blocking access to it, and stole it, captured on cameras in the garage that worked on battery backup during the power outage. I worked with the FBI to find it, having put a persistent battery powered GPS tracking system in the frame out of paranoia that someone would steel it, back in 2013 at great cost. We found that it ended up in Chongqing China, as part of a bicycle theft ring that a Chinese national had been engaged in for 5 years in downtown Bellevue, stealing high value bicycles and exporting them in a container back to the PRC. This caused me to study the PRC intensely and was the seeds for what would become bitter hatred for the CCP from memories of the June 4th incident that I saw on TV as a child in 1989, when the CCP sent the military in to kill colleges students and others demonstrating for democratize reforms of the CCP to improve liberty & freedom for the Chinese people in China. Now I am part of the End the CCP movement aligned with my brothers and sister in Taiwan and Hong Kong who hate the CCP and their ignorant out of touch emotionally insecure sensitive childish president Xi Jinping.
In 2022 having been researching e-bikes I found Lectric's website and the XP 3.0 was on sale with the 14 Ah 672 Wh 48v long-range battery able to go 65 mi with pedal assistances from the rider, on flat level ground at 15mph in 70 deg F air or best case. This becoming my commuter alternative to get from a mountain in Issaquah to downtown Bellevue where I work, which takes 12-18 min by car, so probably an hour on the e-bike, though I have test the route to determine the time required. Not for every day, not especially during cold rainy or snowy days in the winter, but sometimes, so that I get more activity & exercise than I would always driving my car. I purchased the Step-Thru model so that Meg can use it too, since she is much smaller and shorter. Thankfully the XP3.0 fully adjustable, has excellent ride quality with front & seat post suspension and a plush oversized seat. I like it so much that I started promoting the Lectric XP3.0 as the best value eBike in the world, given that the 10Ah base model $999 comes standard with hydraulic brakes front & rear! A few days ago I tried riding my regular bicycle on these steep hills nearby and just about burned out my legs & got my heart rate so high I became dizzy. That bicycle works great on smaller incline grades and undulating topography trails, but on steep hill climbs requires more physical fitness than I have at the moment. Thus the eBike offers me a pathway out of being sedentary to becoming more active to help keep my HbA1c and blood pressure lower and for mental health!
Riding a bicycle to get too and from the market, grocery store, work or school is a great way to include activity & fitness into your day. You don't need a gym membership, special equipment, or anything costly, you can also just go for a long walk. Walking on steeper trails and hills will give you more cardio exercise and muscle building and bone building activity in less time. Some treadmills have the ability to be inclined to provide an uphill like experience. Many Olympic athletes travel to Denver Colorado to train outside at high elevations with less oxygen in the air, so they bone marrow in response to the lower 02 contented cooler upper alpine air starts increasing blood cell production, to improve oxygen transport efficiency to give a small athletic edge without doping.
This reminds me of Lance Armstrong, 7x winner of the Tour de France, though later stripped of these titles because of a scandal about doping. Though picking on him unfair since doping a widespread problem in most professional athletics. People are even using nootropic drugs to gain a mental edge now! Be careful with your body and mind, you can't buy a new one yet, and if we ever get to a technology commercial state where you can upgrade your body or mind it will be very expensive and only available at price points affordable to the wealthiest people. God warns in the Bible not to engage in the H+ movement, by trying to increase your biological life in order to cheat death, for all people regardless of what technology they use will end up dead biologically speaking at the end of life when they die like all other people have throughout all of human history.
No one gets out of here alive, and we are all running out of time. Time an equanimity enforcer since everyone is running out of time, even billionaires, corrupt leaders, bad actors, they are all running out of time. Even Satan is running out of time and doomed to be destroyed by Christ Jesus. This is why demonic influence seeks to steal peoples souls by corrupting people until they have a cold heart of unbelief, questioning, doubting, fearing, being anxious, scared, afraid of death, and for good reason, for those who do not love God in their heart and accept Christ Jesus as their Lord and Savior and read and practice what it says in the Bible by emulating Christ, will be effectively blotted out of the Book of Life & forever separated from God & heaven where all the faithful end up who are in the book of life, who Jesus welcomes into heaven as their soul passes God's final judgement, the eternal infinite reward of believing in God! This reminds me of Blaise Pascal's wager, have a look at the logical proof for Faith in God!
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