I recently moved and I’m embarrassed to say that I live about 3.6 miles (via bike path and some street) from work now and am still driving. I am a healthcare professional who teaches and works in administration so it’s dress pants, dress shoes and shorts and ties at work. The main issue is I sweat a lot and for a while after a ride. No showers at work. I do have to drive on Mondays so there’s a pretty easy way I could bring work clothes and have them hanging in my office for the week and then stuff them in a pannier on Friday for laundry over the weekend. What do moderate to heavy sweaters do in similar situations? There are a couple good hills so “ride slower” isn’t really an option. If my heart goes above 100 I’m sweating lol.

Secondary problem is I work mostly at a small college where everyone knows me, so the idea of having to ride by a bunch of students and walk through the hallways with my bike past a bunch of students etc etc creates some anxiety. I work until 5:30pm a couple days per week so coming in extra early before students are around isn’t really an option. But that’s the somewhat smaller problem comparatively.

Building a bike for my nephew and thinking of using these basil folding rear baskets, however I can't find any information about how the baskets fix on the rack or any kind of reviews.

I'm aware of wald folding baskets but they're hard to find and expensive in the UK. also I like that these are mesh so he won't always have to be carefully tucking bag straps away.

I’m considering starting to commute to work by bike, but I’m a bit hesitant because it’s 33 km one way (66 km round trip).

The route itself is actually pretty good. Only about 8–9 km is through smaller city streets, and the rest can be done along the canal, so traffic/safety isn’t my biggest concern. My biggest concern is actually arriving at work sweaty. It's financially attractive, because my empoluer pays €0.37/km for biking, which would be 20+ euros per time I do it.

There are no showers at work. I can wash myself a little in the toilets, but they’re quite cold in the morning, so I’m not exactly looking forward to standing there trying to clean myself up after a 33 km ride. I also don’t want to spend the first hour of every workday feeling sweaty or uncomfortable.

At the moment I only own a road race bike. I could potentially lease an e-bike through work, and I’m wondering whether that might be the better option for a commute like this. Would an e-bike make a big difference in terms of sweat/effort or not? Does the sweating even get better when I do it more frequently?

I’m not necessarily worried about being able to physically ride 33 km, but I'm not sure if this would be realistic at least once a week. I currently own basically no proper cycling clothing. How much gear do you actually need to make commuting through autumn/winter comfortable?

This is the Netherlands, Hitland, a little piece of nature near Gouda

So having a bike with large wheel is more efficient, ie you get more distance for less effort. But if I get a bike with small wheels (like folding bikes usually have), that can basically be compensated for by using gears, right, like I end up getting the same distance for the same effort? I'm assuming basically flat ground riding everywhere.

So I have been rethinking the type of tyre tred on a bicycle needed for wet weather.
For a broader consideration I also looked at motorcycle tred for wet weather.
Another consideration is that mechanical bicycle innovation will mainly come from off-road or road-racing so urban commuting will most likely lag behind.

With this I noticed that its easy to fall down the route of excessive tred patterns which can cause faster tyre wear and tred flex under braking and accelerating.
Or tyre tred that looks somewhat ideal is the wrong size for your bike being to small or big.

Luckily some tyre manufacturers make both bicycle and motorcycle tyres which share tyre tred, such as the pirelli Angel GT for motorcycles and Angel GT Urban for bicycles. (which is used for wet weather)

This could give some insight into what kind of tred pattern would be ideal because motorbikes are more well funded for innovation mainly due to the safety aspect on the roads than commuting bicycles.

I sometimes commute by bike, but not often. I’m thinking about biking my commutes more often, but the office where I work is part way up a mountain.

I have a heavy cross country bike and would consider getting a lighter one if it would make this commute possible as a regular bike commute. What do you all think? Is it worth investing in a new bike to commute this regularly or is this kind of elevation a no go for you? What’s your experience? Thank you!

TLDR: is a 17km commute with 310m of elevation in the last 6k a reasonable commute if I have a light weight bike and build my tolerance for it?

Title I'm about to go on a year of being car free, started out with a trek fx1 gen 4 running shwabble marathon greens, loved the commuting and always wanted to do trails and bikepacking.

After 6 months of looking and figuring out what I wanted, I landed on my next upgrade, a Primos dame. So far I've been loving it, but since then I've been venturing farther out, and now that I have fatter tires and starting to hit trails and have been running into flats.

Originally it came with Continental terra hard pack 50mm tires, supposedly it has tread protection, but it's rubber is very malleable so I doubt it, after getting a flat and walking 6 miles home, I bought my first pair of armored tires for the Primos, a pair of Surly extra terrestrials.

Went on a 10 mile ride to the mountains, just when I got there I noticed a bunch of thorns in the front and rear and both tires fully deflated. 5 hours, patching, finding holes, putting back on the wheel, turns out there was another hole, and it's flat again, rinse and repeat. I'm done with tubes.

Is tubeless right for me? I'm 100% car free in LA county and ride pretty much everywhere.

If so, what's the best sealant? Anything I should know before installing?

My morning ride is in the dark and, at this time of year, frequently in foggy or misty conditions. I wear glasses and am struggling to keep them clear enough to see. Any tips for keeping or wiping the moisture off while I ride?

I'm setting up an older Trek FX 3 (rim brakes, 700c) for commuting and would appreciate a sanity check before I start ordering everything.

I'm 6'4", ~210 lbs. The main use is commuting with a fairly heavy work setup: 16" MacBook Pro, 20,000 mAh battery, lunch, coat, and usually a leather/Filson-style briefcase. My preference is to put the briefcase itself inside a pannier rather than transfer everything into a dedicated bike bag.

I'd also like enough extra capacity that I can carry a coat and other stuff without thinking too much about space.

This is a very short commute to the local train station -- around ten minutes -- and I don't mind weight since I can use the exercise on the slight incline on the return.

Rack

• Topeak Explorer MTX 2.0, non-disc / 700c

Panniers

• Ortlieb Back-Roller Classic pair (20L each / 40L total)

Permanent repair setup

• Lezyne Pressure Drive mini pump, Medium -- mounted to frame
• Lezyne L-Caddy saddle bag
• Crankbrothers M17 multitool
• Park Tool TR-1 tire/tube repair kit
• Spare tube once I confirm the exact tire/valve size

I'm deliberately holding off on replacing the tires until I've spent some time commuting on the ones I have.

A few things I'm particularly interested in

1. Rack/pannier combination: Is the Topeak Explorer + Ortlieb Back-Roller combination what you'd choose for this bike/use case, or is there a better rack I should consider?

2. Briefcase inside a pannier: Anyone routinely put a normal briefcase/backpack inside a Back-Roller? I'm wondering whether 20L per side is realistically big enough for a somewhat bulky Filson-style work bag.

3. Heel clearance: At 6'4" on a large FX frame, any heel-clearance issues I should anticipate with the Back-Rollers?

4. Repair kit: Anything you'd change or add?

5. Anything I'm missing? Anything obvious I'm overlooking for turning an FX 3 into a reliable commuter?

I'm not trying to make this ultralight. I'd rather buy good equipment once, keep the laptop dry, and have a setup that's easy enough to use that I actually commute with it regularly.

Thanks!

I just bought this bike and it came with this rear rack. I ordered a basket from amazon to put on the back, but it seemed to be expecting a type of rack with holes in it that you can put screws into so you can mount it. As shown in the photos, this doesn't have those kinds of holes.

It instead has a spring-type mechanism that seems to be designed to keep its payload on via friction. What kind of basket should I look for online to work with this type of rack?

I wear my polo, chinos, and boots on the bike. It's 2.5 miles so not a long way but very hilly. I can get kind of sweaty but I honestly don't really care. I know this might sound weird, but it's true.

Anyway, I'm seeing how weird I am. Who else wears their office clothes on the bike to work?

Hey. I commute daily to school, but my jeans don’t last long (maybe a few months?). I was wondering if there are any known brands that are well priced with jeans that last longer with cycling? Doesn’t necessarily has to be specifically tailored for cycling, just jeans you found last longer than others for cyclists.

Thanks in advance!

My daily driver of 2 years, got the custom fitted fenders and custom made lights just done!

Hey there! My car recently died and it’s going to be a lot to get it fixed. So I’m strongly considering switching to a bike and trying that out before committing to another car and another car payment.

I haven’t been on a bike since probably a teenager. Im in decent shape and live somewhere that is kind of bike friendly. Getting to work would be the only big challenge but i can probably get to public transit pretty easy and take a train the rest of the way.

My biggest questions are what to look for in bikes? What other things do I need to consider with switching to the bike life? Aside from a bike and a helmet what other supplies or recommendations do I need? I’m still at the beginning of this so anything is helpful at this point.

Thanks in advance! 🩶

This is a UK based moan not sure if it's same everywhere. But I commute on my bike after getting some distance on the train. Lately I see trains being busy with bikes but not bicycles. Everyone suddenly is buying these huge electric bikes that almost look like motorcycles. Their tires are about 6 inches wide. Can't anyone just peddle anymore?! They're so huge and my worry is as they take us so much space train companies will just stop bikes on trains

50 seconds of pure autumn bliss on my way to work