Don't speed.

[i_am_badger]

It's amazing what a difference decent gas mileage makes. My car already gets good gas mileage and I've always had efficient driving habits, but I experimented in the past two weeks with using cruise control and staying under 60mph on my way to work on the freeway. I can only do this for about half the trip, when I'm on I-405 going against the flow

Comments

[i_am_badger]

I'd be willing to try out a hybrid, but only because I'm sure they've improved mightily in the past 15 years. That's the kind I'm replacing, and two of the reasons I'm leaning towards something really basic is fewer parts to break or maintain, and weight. I'm obviously not going to go out and buy a $2K titanium hybrid, so anything I got would be pretty heavy, heavier by a bit (or a lot? I dunno) than a similar road bike and definitely heavier than a single speed or fixed. Party what I need to figure out, for sure, is exactly what I see myself using the bike for 90% of the time. I don't see myself biking to another neighborhood many miles away, for example, at least not on a regular basis. I might do weekend bike path rides occasionally, but if I couldn't handle the mostly gentle hills in those situations I couldn't handle riding around Seattle at all anyways. Mostly I see myself taking it on pretty short trips. To the library, to the other side of Capitol Hill, to the grocery store. Oh, and up and down and up and down the stairs to my

[i_am_badger]

Oh, and I guess this is important: I want a bike that's fun, that for fun, as much as I want a bike to get me from here to there. So that's definitely a consideration, whichever way it points to...

[becala]

The single-speed versus fancy geared bike thing has been on my mind, too. My boyfriend was sick of the maintenance required in dealing with a derailleur and lots of gears, so he got himself a custom single-speed freewheel and rocks it one-speed style, but not fixed gear- the bike still goes even if he's not pedaling