ChiWhoBike #69
This is my winter bike. It’s an old Bridgestone MB-5 that I bought off of Facebook marketplace, because I didn’t want to destroy a nice bike in the salt. I put on some nicer handle handlebars and some good grips, but overall I haven’t really done much to it, unlike my other two bikes. But it’s just the winter beater so I don’t have to destroy a nice one, because that could happen with the salt and old open bottom brackets. My advice for the cold is just dress warm, get gloves, get a scarf and you kind of just have to do it. It’s not the most pleasant thing on earth, but it certainly saves you a lot of money and it’s kind of pristine, when you’re biking at night and there’s a little snow falling, and you’re just on your way home on a pleasant empty street. It’s a really pretty experience and it’s totally worth being a little cold.
Drivers and bike lanes can be a challenge. We have a system where bike lanes and the decision to put them in is based off of our aldermanic system, which is basically like city districts. Neighborhoods elect a representative for our ‘city congress’, and they have the final say as to whether or not their neighborhood gets a bike lane. Which is silly, because some of these neighborhoods are like a square mile, while someone’s commute is crossing four or five different neighborhoods. So forcing them to crisscross to stay in bike lanes is just ridiculous, if you have to hop four blocks over just to get to where you’re going. One random dude in one neighborhood should not be able to affect something that impacts a good margin of the city’s population.
I personally am not someone who needs a bike lane to feel safe, but most of my friends really do, and it’s really important that people feel safe when they’re biking. Because you’re just so exposed. You’re not in a 3,000 pound vehicle, you’re running off of whatever you had for breakfast, and you’re completely exposed to the elements. Building trails and having protected bike lanes is really important to just make someone who maybe doesn’t do this regularly feel safe.
