Road Cycling enthusiasts

edup1975
edup1975 Posts: 486 Member
Hello from Louisiana.
Any other cyclist out there ?
I enjoy riding and I am working up to a 75 mile ride in October.

Replies

  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    I enjoy cycling about town also and fantasize about doing the HH100 in August, but not this year. For now it's enough to ride the lightly-traveled and gently rolling neighborhood streets nearby.
  • peleroja
    peleroja Posts: 3,979 Member
    I bike commute, but frankly you all must be much braver than I am because I hate spending so much time fearing for my life because of drivers. I do it because it's cheap, convenient, and good exercise but every day it's an adrenaline rush because so many people in cars just seem to want to murder cyclists on principle. I follow the rules of the road religiously and ride carefully and as close to the speed of traffic as I can, but it doesn't seem to help and so it's hard to enjoy it.

    I'd love to use my bike for more than just getting to work and back but it is terrifying.
  • muzzmackay
    muzzmackay Posts: 3 Member
    peleroja wrote: »
    ...so many people in cars just seem to want to murder cyclists on principle.

    I'd love to use my bike for more than just getting to work and back but it is terrifying.

    I too get annoyed with car drivers so I've been doing a lot more mountain biking this year.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    Sometimes I can get away from the city and ride on quiet mountain roads.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,597 Member
    peleroja wrote: »
    I bike commute, but frankly you all must be much braver than I am because I hate spending so much time fearing for my life because of drivers. I do it because it's cheap, convenient, and good exercise but every day it's an adrenaline rush because so many people in cars just seem to want to murder cyclists on principle. I follow the rules of the road religiously and ride carefully and as close to the speed of traffic as I can, but it doesn't seem to help and so it's hard to enjoy it.

    I'd love to use my bike for more than just getting to work and back but it is terrifying.

    Some places I ride are busy, but I try to choose the quietest routes I can find ... and fortunately, there are lots of quiet routes out there. :)
  • peleroja
    peleroja Posts: 3,979 Member
    Machka9 wrote: »
    peleroja wrote: »
    I bike commute, but frankly you all must be much braver than I am because I hate spending so much time fearing for my life because of drivers. I do it because it's cheap, convenient, and good exercise but every day it's an adrenaline rush because so many people in cars just seem to want to murder cyclists on principle. I follow the rules of the road religiously and ride carefully and as close to the speed of traffic as I can, but it doesn't seem to help and so it's hard to enjoy it.

    I'd love to use my bike for more than just getting to work and back but it is terrifying.

    Some places I ride are busy, but I try to choose the quietest routes I can find ... and fortunately, there are lots of quiet routes out there. :)

    I guess most of my issue is that I live in a pretty spread-out city of about a million people, and so in order to find anywhere uncongested, I need to ride about an hour just to get out of the city, bringing every ride to a minimum 2 hrs just to get in and out (or load my bike in the car first and drive half an hour each way, which is also not really ideal.) Do most of you have accessible rural areas for this kind of thing, or do you deal with urban traffic too?
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,597 Member
    Where we're living now, we usually load our bicycles into the van and drive to where we want to cycle. Cycling in our local area isn't too bad for traffic, but it is really hilly so every ride is a significant workout.

    Where I've lived before, beautiful, quiet, relatively flat rural roads have been really close by.

    We're hoping to move to a better cycling location at some point in the next few years.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    peleroja wrote: »
    Machka9 wrote: »
    peleroja wrote: »
    I bike commute, but frankly you all must be much braver than I am because I hate spending so much time fearing for my life because of drivers. I do it because it's cheap, convenient, and good exercise but every day it's an adrenaline rush because so many people in cars just seem to want to murder cyclists on principle. I follow the rules of the road religiously and ride carefully and as close to the speed of traffic as I can, but it doesn't seem to help and so it's hard to enjoy it.

    I'd love to use my bike for more than just getting to work and back but it is terrifying.

    Some places I ride are busy, but I try to choose the quietest routes I can find ... and fortunately, there are lots of quiet routes out there. :)

    I guess most of my issue is that I live in a pretty spread-out city of about a million people, and so in order to find anywhere uncongested, I need to ride about an hour just to get out of the city, bringing every ride to a minimum 2 hrs just to get in and out (or load my bike in the car first and drive half an hour each way, which is also not really ideal.) Do most of you have accessible rural areas for this kind of thing, or do you deal with urban traffic too?

    I put my bike in the car and drive it somewhere else. Like you said it's not ideal, but I'm always glad I did. Sometimes I make a longer trip of it and camp or stay in a hotel, and then do several rides.

    The upside for me is that we have all kinds of scenery (ocean, rainforest, mountains, desert) and a car let me pick and choose where I'm going to ride. But another good thing is light traffic.
  • mfpchris
    mfpchris Posts: 279 Member
    I'm preparing for a 55mile ride at the end of July.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,597 Member
    Right now, we're on holiday and as a part of that, we've been able to ride two events with the BC Randonneurs (which I also mentioned in the ultracycling link I included in my first post).

    The first was a challenging, hilly, hot 213 km ride on Vancouver Island on June 24th

    The second was a 150 km ride to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday on July 1.

    We'll return to Australia shortly where the next event on our list is a 400 km we're organising/hosting and also riding (hopefully) in northern Tasmania. :) I'm just finalising the details on that one.

  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,597 Member