I have no idea why the gears in the front of a bike are called chainrings. The set of gears on the back of a bike are often referred to as sprockets, and a collection of integrated sprockets as a cassette. They are all gears to me, but if you call them by special names the mechanics at the bike shop will take you more seriously ( Read more... )

Apparently that's a trend now: camping trips that take less than a day.

Anyway, inspired by a co-worker who biked to Duluth this week, I decided I needed to bike somewhere too. It was time to load up my bike with tent and sleeping bag and head back to the Carver Park Reserve and find the bike camping site.

I left on Wednesday night at about 7 P.M. ( Read more... )

On Friday night, a thought occurred to me: beautiful weather, and just a couple weeks left in Philadelphia. It's time to ride bell-to-bell.

Bell-to-Bell means from Philadelphia's Liberty Bell to the Justice Bell in the Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge. It's about 50 miles, round-trip. I had talked about planning this as a group ( Read more... )

This morning, tawdryjones and I rode our bikes to Pennypack Park in NE Philly. The roundtrip from Center City was about 40 miles (Google says 38, but we had a few detours). The park itself is beautiful, a great paved trail that runs alongside a creek, lots of ups-and-downs and twists-and-turns to keep the trail interesting. We heard many birds and saw ( Read more... )

Last night, chassy and Nim Wunnan and I went on a bike tour of Detroit organized by the University of Detroit Mercy: "The tour is part of UDM's orientation program for new students, familiarizing them with Detroit's many features ( Read more... )

I've been itching to explore the fabled I-275 bike path that supposedly runs from Novi to Monroe. On Sunday morning, flastron put my bike in the back of his awesome $200 VW Rabbit GTI and dropped me off at the Home Depot on Ford Rd. in Westland. From there, it was easy to pick up the bike path. I decided to go north.

( Read on only if you are into cycling or are interested in finding out where my wrong turn took me. )

My new bike, a 2000 Binachi Volpe, arrived yesterday at work yesterday. Here's an interesting comparison of my two* main vehicles:

1991 Buick Skylark standard sedan
Edmunds.com estimated sale price (private party sale): $739

2000 Bianchi Volpe
Ebay.com actual private party sale price (with shipping): $715

* By saying two, I in no way mean any ( Read more... )