:sicko-biker: :sicko-biker: :sicko-biker:

edit: let me clarify that I understand biking isn't feasible for everyone or even safe considering how dangerous city streets are. is just funny meme because bikes are cool.

  • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    lol I would be fucking hit by a car if I tried any of these except the backpack

    With the backpack it's only a 20% chance I get hit by a car any time I travel by bike

    • CommCat [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      where the f do you all live? If there's a lot of traffic, it must be a big city right? Don't they have decent bike lanes yet? I haul about 50lbs of groceries using 70L panniers and a back pack with my ebike once a week, y'all babies 🙃

      • bananon [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Cities are actually better for bikers. I live outside a small town of ~25k. In order to get to downtown I need to drive on two separate highways with no bike lanes, and the commute would take over an hour.

        • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yep. In the minor city I went to grad school in, my nearest grocery store was about a kilometer away, but there was a multi-lane split freeway in between, and the nearest crossing point that was accessible by foot or bike was a 20 minute drive away literally on the opposite side of town in the super gentrified downtown area. The nearest grocery store on the same side of the freeway as my building was a whole foods in the downtown area. The only "public transit" in the entire town was a bar hop trolley bus that only ran in the downtown area. This city has about 200,000 people in it.

      • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        I don't think there's a single bike lane (decent or otherwise) in my entire city, and yes there is a lot of traffic

        In fact, I have actually never in my life seen a bike lane in person.

      • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        There are tons of large and relatively large cities in North America that refuse to install any bike lanes at all. Additionally, thanks to the way small to mid size towns are laid out over a huge area based on suburban sprawl so towns with like 20k to 50k people have pretty constant heavy traffic on arterial roads and pretty heavy traffic even on collectors, and often won't even have sidewalks or will ban bicycles from use on sidewalks.

        • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          and often won’t even have sidewalks or will ban bicycles from use on sidewalks.

          This is a big one. Bikes are vehicles and vehicles aren't allowed on sidewalks. Not that it would help much even if that weren't the case, because as you said, often there aren't sidewalks. I see these weird orphaned sidewalks just begin and end next to roads sometimes, maybe like 100m of sidewalk total, starting nowhere and leading nowhere. Otherwise, largely they don't exist at all.

          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yep. The other classic is the fake edge of road "shoulder sidewalks" where they just paint an extra line on the street so now the road is actually not even as wide as the suvs or trucks that make up 99% of the traffic and every time you try and walk down the road you're dodging those fucking giant "tow mirrors" that dudes leave extended so it looks like they actually use the truck.

      • Owl [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I've been to a lot of US towns where it's like... an H of four-lane highways, a cloverleaf connecting the bar of the H with an even larger interstate, and all the highways are flanked with so much parking infrastructure that the majority of the frontage is ramps into lots. Then like two loops of smaller roads somewhere link the H to actual housing, because this is still a podunk town.