The electric bike category is by far the fastest-growing category of bikes on the market—and that’s for good reason. Not only are they fun to ride, but the electric assist means riders can travel farther, more comfortably, and with more capacity. If you find the right commuter e-bike, it might just replace your car.

We tested 17 bikes in the category over the past year in the city, on bike trails, and carrying everything from groceries to people. Here are our favorite four.

Be sure to also check out our guides to the best road bikes and our many other bike guides.

At a Glance

• Editor’s Choice:
• Best Compact E-Cargo Bike:
• Best Car Replacement:
• Best Budget Bike:
• How We Test
• Meet Our Lead Tester
• How to Choose a Commuter E-Bike

All gear in this guide was tested by multiple reviewers. If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside. Learn more.

Editor’s Choice

Canyon Precede:ON 5

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Weight: 52.6 lbs
Maximum Assisted Speed: 28 mph

Pros and Cons
⊕ Nimble ride feel
⊕ Quiet, fast electric assist
⊗ Accessories are expensive

Canyon, the direct-to-consumer brand better known for its performance-oriented bikes may not be the first name you think of when it comes to commuter bikes. But the Precede:ON 5 is such a blast to ride that we found ourselves looking for reasons to take it out, be it for our daily commute, a jaunt to dinner with friends, or on a weekend ride on the bike trails. The heart of this bike is its Bosch Performance Line Sport drive system—the motor is tuned for Class 3 pedal assistance up to 28 miles per hour, making it an excellent fast commuter. Size medium and large bikes use a removable 625-watt-hour battery, but even the size small bike with its 500 watt hour battery offers 50 miles of range. The 27.5-inch wheels get up to speed quickly and help the bike feel far more nimble than you’d expect.

Aluminum fenders kept the bike clean in the rain, although the bike’s premium-looking champagne colorway wipes off easily. Thanks to its flashy looks, this bike earned more compliments from passersby than any other e-commuter we tested. Ultimately, the Precede:ON 5 is a solid choice, offering stable handling even with loaded panniers on either side of its integrated rack.

Best Compact E-Cargo Bike

Tern Quick Haul D8

Weight: 50.3 lbs
Maximum Assisted Speed: 20 mph

Pros and Cons
⊕ Easy to navigate in cities due to its size
⊕ Large carrying capacity for its size
⊕ One of the few cargo bikes that fits easily in the back of a midsize SUV or wagon.
⊗ Not as large as a typical cargo bike if you need to carry a lot of items

It’s been a few years since Tern introduced its first small-wheeled cargo bikes, but the Quick Haul D8’s new compact design is a real standout amidst the competition. The 20-inch wheels mean it’s the same size as an average commuter bike, but it’s much easier to get on and off of. Navigating narrower streets in a city takes less effort than a traditional cargo bike, too, while its Bosch motor provides plenty of power to carry a whole lot of gear. It doesn’t have the same carrying capacity as a larger cargo bike, but with a weight limit of 331 pounds, it’s integrated rear rack and optional front rack can accommodate groceries, commuter gear, and even small kids on the back. For a quick-handling e-commuter bike, it has a large capacity for its size and comes at a price point that is significantly more accessible than other e-cargo bikes.

The Quick Haul is versatile, too—its one-size adjustability makes the bike easy to share within a household and easy to store vertically if you need some extra space in the garage. If you’re looking for a part-time e-cargo bike, part-time commuter bike for multiple uses, this is your best bet.

Best Car Replacement

Specialized Globe Haul ST

Weight: 77 lbs
Maximum Assisted Speed: 28 mph

Pros and Cons
⊕ Carries up to 419 pounds of gear with a compact frame
⊕ Assist goes up to 28 mph
⊗ Your car might start collecting dust

The Specialized Globe Haul ST is a smartly designed compact cargo e-bike that comes at a fair price without skimping on quality or safety. This class-3 e-bike features a rear hub motor that powers the bike up to 28 miles per hour. With five different assist levels, you can conserve the battery when cruising along on the flats, then crank it up as needed when hauling gear or climbing steep gradients. It offers a compelling alternative to the highest-end models in this category as it offers lots of cargo capacity, plenty of power, and a name brand to back it up at a reasonable price point..

The Globe Haul ST is made for hauling a serious amount of gear—up to 419 pounds (including rider weight), which makes carrying groceries, child seats, and other cargo a breeze. It even has enough space to carry an additional adult. Available in one size that fits riders from 4’5” to 6’4”, its compact frame is about the length of a standard bicycle, and includes a telescoping seat post and a quill stem to ensure proper fit for a range of rider heights. The frame’s low center of mass, coupled with smaller 20-inch wheels, beefy 3.5-inch tires, and wide handlebars, provides a very stable ride, even when loaded down with gear or passengers. Out of all the e-cargo bikes we tested, this one is the most likely to replace your car.

Best Budget Bike

Flyer L885

Weight: 73 lbs
Maximum Assisted Speed: 20 mph

Pros and Cons
⊕ Above-average carrying capacity
⊗ 20 mph assist isn’t as fast as other bikes we tested

Believe it or not, there are a few differences between this e-bike and the wagon Flyer we rode in as children. This Flyer is a class two e-bike that offers pedal assist to 20 miles per hour as well as a throttle to get you going from a stop light. The bike also claims 500 watts of power from a hub-driven motor, which brings the price down compared with mid-drive-equipped e-bikes. Plus, it offers a range of accessories that allowed us to carry a week’s worth of groceries or children, and it does so without costing an arm and a leg.

The Flyer L885 is a bit of a blank slate, as the bike only comes with a rear rack integrated into the frame. Want a basket? You’ll have to add it for an additional cost. The same goes with carrying children. But the result is a bike that can be tailored to your specific needs.. The Flyer L885 is available with a range of child carriers, battery range extenders, a fixed front cargo rack, and more customizable features. Bonus: The Flyer L885 also meets UL 2849 certifications, which ensures electrical and fire safety for all of the bike’s electrical components—a crucial certification for something that will likely replace your car.

How to Choose a Commuter E-Bike

What’s the Difference Between a Commuter E-Bike and a Cargo E-Bike?

A cargo e-bike is a sub-category of a commuter e-bike. Specifically, it’s designed to carry more than just the rider. Cargo e-bikes can be accessorized to meet your specific needs. Some are designed to accommodate child seats, while others can be outfitted with bike bags (panniers), crates, racks, and baskets with ease. Longtail cargo bikes are probably the most common, which place all of the carrying capacity behind the rider. Mid-tail cargo bikes are more compact than a long-tail cargo bike, but still longer than a standard e-commuter bike. These are more maneuverable and lighter than a traditional cargo e-bike at the expense of not being able to carry kids, pets, or other loads as easily.

A front-loading cargo bike (sometimes called a bakfiets, Dutch for “box bike”) places the rider behind the main cargo area. These bikes feature a a low-slung box or container up front to carry anything you might need. These typically are the biggest bikes, and are incredibly stable as a result. The downside: they’re so big that they take up quite a lot of storage space.

What’s the Benefit of a Cargo E-bike?

Data shows that the majority of vehicle trips in North America amount to less than six miles. A cargo bike can easily cover that distance, plus they can carry everything you typically need. Being able to skip traffic and the hassle of finding a parking spot—and getting a small workout as you go— makes a cargo bike an easy choice for commuting.

How Do I Choose the Right Size of Commuter E-Bike?

Many commuter e-bikes will come in a range of sizes to fit riders of all heights. This size range is usually expressed with an XS to XL size range, but some bikes will be measured in centimeters.

A correctly sized bike will place your arms at roughly a 90-degree angle from your torso without feeling uncomfortable. Your knees will have a slight bend to them at the bottom of your pedal stroke. Most importantly, the bike will feel comfortable to maneuver.

Visiting a trusted bike shop is your best bet for finding a bike that fits. Having another set of eyes to help you find the correct size bike will ensure your money is well-spent. The pros will help you determine the right bike for you based on your riding experience, mobility, and needs, and they’ll help you determine proper sizing for things like handlebars, saddles, and even your frame.

Finally, you should give the bike a test ride. That includes standing over the top tube of the bike (sometimes referred to as a crossbar) comfortably with both feet flat on the ground. The top tube can touch you, but it’s better if it doesn’t.

What Is the Difference Between Electric Bike Systems?

All e-bikes adhere to the popular e-bike class system, which differentiates between the top assisted speeds of different bikes. Most of these bikes are rated as Class 1, offering pedal assist up to 20 miles per hour. The fastest e-bikes have motors powerful enough for Class 3 operation, providing pedal assistance up to 28 miles per hour.

Most of the bikes we tested are Class 2, particularly those at lower prices. These models offer pedal assist up to 20 miles per hour, but they also have a handlebar-mounted throttle that can propel the bike up to 20 miles per hour without needing to be pedaled.

Many of these e-bikes use a hub-driven electric motor, offering a compact size and a look that is hard to distinguish from non-electric bikes. Other e-bikes use a mid-drive electric motor, placing the motor where the crankset is. These systems tend to be a bit more powerful than a hub-driven electric motor, but they’re heavier.

How to Best Avoid an E-Bike Battery Fire

The dramatic increase in news around e-bike battery fires means that people are more concerned than ever about whether the e-bike they’re purchasing is safe. Currently, the best way to know that your e-bike’s electric components have been tested for safety is by looking for bikes with certification from Underwriters Laboratories (UL).

There are two main UL certifications to look for: UL 2271 and UL 2849. UL 2271 certifies that the battery itself meets safety and performance standards which ensure that an electrical design is robust and sufficient enough for regular use.

UL 2849 is the more common, and much more comprehensive, standard. This standard outlines a set of required guidelines for bicycle motor manufacturers, including construction, environmental conditioning, performance testing, and thermal cycling. This isn’t just for the battery either: the testing includes the motor, its controller, all of its wiring, and even the charger too.

Not every bike meets these standards, as certification (and the engineering required to meet these standards) is expensive. But just about all of the best e-bikes adhere to these standards, even at more entry-level price points.

How We Test

• Number of Testers: 2
• Number of Products Tested: 17
• Longest Testing Bike Ride: 55 miles

Two riders tested 17 commuter e-bikes, with a vast majority of those miles pedaled on local loops in San Antonio, Texas, picking up a week’s worth of groceries and hauling gear to and from work. Testers specifically looked at carrying capacity, safety certifications, how stable the ride was, and the amount of power each bike had. It was important for us to feel like the bike was making our lives easier, rather than inconveniencing ourselves to hop on a bike rather than take our cars instead.

Meet Our Lead Tester

Alvin Holbrook is a tech editor for Velo and has been in the bike industry for nearly a decade, covering all kinds of riding machines. When he’s not riding or writing about riding, , he uses his background in urban planning to cover stories about active transportation, policy, tech, and infrastructure through the series. He currently lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife and an ever-growing stable of bikes and kitchen utensils.

The post Our Favorite Commuter E-Bikes Might Just Replace Your Car appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Everyone knows cultivating a garden takes work. You must nurture it with sun and water and soil. But you’ve also got to prune it once in a while, and that’s the hardest part. How do you walk into a beautiful garden and start to hack at the greenery? But cut you must if you want it to flourish and remain healthy and lush.

Bikes are no different. If you love to ride it seems impossible to have too many of them. But tending to your garden of bicycles also requires judicious pruning from time to time, and that often means letting some of them go.

So how many bicycles should one person have? Well, there’s no consensus on this matter. For some riders one single speed may be enough, and for others ten bikes with twenty gears apiece might be scarcely sufficient. Of course, cycling philosophers have ruminated on this question since the days of the penny-farthing, and according to the oft-cited , the equation for the correct number of bikes is as follows:

The correct number of bikes to own is n+1. While the minimum number of bikes one should own is , the correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned. This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of bikes owned that would result in separation from your partner.

However, the Velominati rules are stupid and should be ignored in most cases. The Velominati also says you shouldn’t use a saddlebag, which is like saying you shouldn’t keep a spare roll of toilet paper in the bathroom.

Obviously if you have bikes you never ride at all, there’s no reason to keep them. But for a long time I also believed in what I thought was a corollary to this: that whether you had one bike or 100, you could never have too many as long as you were riding them all—which I was. As it turns out, this is a dangerous line of thinking, akin to believing you can never have too much booze in the house as long as you’re drinking it all. Consumption is a bad metric, since you can over-consume anything, even bikes, and because of this it’s far too easy to rationalize your own gluttony.

What I eventually came to realize is that you have too many bikes when you consistently have trouble deciding which one to ride. This is not a question that should require deliberation: if you’re going for a road ride, you take your road bike; if you’re going for a mountain bike ride; and so forth. Easy. Obviously you may decide ride the “wrong” bike from time to time for the sake of variety, but when you find yourself deciding to go for a road ride and then wondering, “Okay, now which road bike should I ride?,” and then standing there like an idiot, it’s probably time to start cutting back.

This was the predicament in which I increasingly found myself. I also found that I’d end up choosing one bike over another mostly out of guilt—if I hadn’t ridden a bike in a while I’d go with that one, figuring as long as I still rode it I could justify keeping it (the gluttony rationale). Furthermore, as my bicycles continued to multiply and I had near-duplicates of pretty much everything I’d concoct ever-more implausible scenarios. “Well sure, there’s a lot of overlap here, but if I ever get a vacation home I’ll just move all the duplicates there and I’ll be all set.” Right. And perhaps the Lord might send a great flood, and biddeth me build a great ark, and to lead all my bicycles upon it two by two. Implausible to be sure, but about as likely as my getting a vacation home, which would also require an act of divine intervention.

It was at this point that I came to terms with the fact that I needed to start getting rid of my bikes. After that it was easy. Do you know that people will often give you money in exchange for bicycles? It’s true! As long as you’re reasonable about price and don’t think your ass sweat has somehow caused your bike to increase in value (a delusion from which many sellers suffer), there’s a buyer for pretty much every bike. Furthermore, the thing about bikes is that they’re merely physical objects, and while we do form strong attachments to our material possessions, we don’t really miss them when they’re gone—I mean sure, we may miss them in a superficial “Hey, I used to have one of those” way, but not in the “I now have a hole in my heart that can only be filled with drink” way.

Also, getting rid of some bikes makes you love the bikes that you do keep even more, and the trusty steed you ride day in and day out brings far more satisfaction than the one that makes a fleeting cameo as part of a rotating cast of characters. Once I figured this out, I found the process of getting rid of a bike to be even more satisfying than acquiring a new one! Yes, bikes are just things, but the bond we form with them is very real, and it grows stronger the more we ride them. This is even reflected in our art. Bruce Wayne was a millionaire, but would Batman have been nearly as compelling if, when the Bat Signal appeared, instead of taking to his trusty Batmobile he stood there in his garage like a schmuck trying to decide which of his many exotic sports cars to drive? Of course not.

A bike should bring you nothing but pleasure, and you should never find yourself riding one out of duty. Moreover a bike can only bring you that pleasure if you ride it, and ride it often. It can be hard to give up a bike, but it’s hard to love a bike you don’t ride, and in the end you gain far more than you lose.

The post Against the N+1 Theory of Bike Ownership appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

If you ride your bike to do various adventures, but could use a little more boost to go farther and faster, you might want to check out Specialized’s new (from $4,500). The new aluminum-frame e-bike that can be used for everything from hauling camping equipment, groceries, trail-building tools, or even skis. Basically, it’s an electric approach bike for getting to more remote areas with your adventure tools.

With 120 millimeters of rear travel and a 130 millimeter fork that utilizes a single-pivot suspension layout, the bike has enough travel for actual off-road riding—this is not just a warmed-over commuter bike. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t make a great commuter, though, especially since all models have fenders, a rear rack, plus integrated headlights and tail lights. The highest end model has a 1,000 lumen front light, and a tail light that gets brighter when the brakes are applied.

The Tero X also has Specialized’s Turbo System lock, which disables the motor and sounds an alarm if the bike is moved when it’s armed. The alarm is set via the Mission Control app, the same app that can be used to customize the motor settings, record rides, and receive over-the-air system updates. Specialized does point out that a physical lock is still the best defense against theft, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have another deterrent against thieves.

There are three models in the Tero X lineup, the 6.0, 5.0, and 4.0. The Tero X 6.0 ($6,500) uses Specialized’s Full Power 2.2 motor, which has 90 Nm of torque and is attached to a 710 Wh battery. The 5.0 ($5,500) relies on the Full Power 2.0 motor, which has 70 Nm of torque and a 710 Wh battery. The 4.0 model ($4,500) has a Full Power 2.0E motor with 50 Nm of torque and 530 Wh battery.

In Eco mode the claimed range is 68 miles with a 20 MPH/32 KPH speed limit, and a range estimator let’s you know how far you can go.

All of the bikes have a 29-inch front wheel and a 27.5-inch rear wheel for sizes medium, large, and extra large, while the size small gets two 27.5-inch wheels.

The post Specialized’s New Turbo Tero X Could Be Your Next șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Vehicle appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Now that I’m back in my office, post-pandemic, I’m back on a commuter bike most days. My office is about four miles away from home, but if I take the long way around and add in an extra hill I can stretch it into a 30-minute ride in the morning and another 30-minute ride on the way home.

Picking out my commuter gear was easy during the summer and fall. Once temps dropped and the sun started disappearing earlier, however, I had to up my gear game. To get everything dialed, I asked for recommendations from , a school counselor and adventure course builder who rides his bike daily in the cold and wind of Wichita, Kansas. Then I did my own experimenting here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Our recommendations will keep you pedaling no matter how dark or cold a commute you’re facing.

Velocio Alpha Glove ($120)

Riding a commuter bike in the cold without the right gloves is a recipe for never riding again. That’s why I’m advocating for these admittedly pricey gloves. Just launched by Velocio, they layer a windproof and water-resistant softshell outer over a lush, instantly warm, and highly breathable Polartec Alpha Direct lining. I’ve worn these gloves in temps below freezing while pedaling 15 miles an hour for 30 minutes and my hands were warm and happy. They also allow a ton of dexterity so you don’t have to take them off to pull out your wallet or turn your bike lights on.

HotHands Toe Warmers ($23 for 20)

LaMunyon usually puts in 100–200 miles on a road or gravel bike each week. He’s become accustomed to shitty Kansas weather that often dips into the 20s, and he says toe warmers have saved him more than once. LaMunyon lets the packets heat up and then places them on top of his toes before putting his bike shoes on. These HotHands warmers are small enough to fit well in a compact shoe.

Pearl Izumi AmFIB Toe Covers ($20)

LaMunyon also recommends covers that fit over your shoes, cut the wind, and add warmth. Some covers go over your entire shoe, but those can be an absolute pain to get on because they’re slim and meant to fit snug. They’re also overkill if you’re just riding for 30 minutes or so. I prefer this version from Pearl Izumi, made of a stretchy, wind- and water-resistant soft-shell fabric, that just covers the toe. They look ridiculous, but they’re way easier to get on, and you’d be surprised how much of a difference they make.

Smartwool Ski Full Cushion Over-the-Calf Socks ($29)

I find merino ski socks work best for bike commuting because the extra sock height provides additional warmth under my pants. I also usually roll up my right cuff to avoid getting grease stains from the bike chain, so I need socks that come up fairly high to not leave any exposed skin. I went with Smartwool’s version because their ski socks have the perfect fit that’s snug but not too tight.

Duer All-Weather Denim Slim Jeans ($199)

Trust me, you can’t wear a normal pair of jeans and expect to be comfortable commuting in the winter cold. That’s why I went for a pair of durable, triple-stitched Duer jeans, which come with a windproof and waterproof membrane lining. I always wear a pair of padded bike bibs when I’m commuting, and these pants layer well over top. I change into regular underwear at work, but keep the pants on because they look like quality jeans that I’d wear to work anyway. If you don’t want to spring for $200 jeans, you can layer long underwear under regular jeans, but it’s significantly more bulky and won’t keep you from getting wet in the rain or snow.

Arc’teryx Rho Lightweight Wool Toque ($35)

No one likes cold ears. Both LaMunyon and I ride with a thin beanie that fits well under a helmet. I’m partial to this one because it’s made from a high-quality merino wool that adds warmth and cuts the wind, but also breathes—so I don’t walk into work with a head full of sweaty hair. Nab the black colorway if you want a streamlined look with any color helmet.

7Mesh Seton Jersey ($200)

Think of this newly-launched jersey as a that’s cut for cycling with a longer tail and slimmer fit. Inside, the Seton Jersey has that familiar warm and breathable grid fleece. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, there’s a thin layer that blocks most of the wind, but ventilates well enough to keep you from getting too sweaty. I’ve found that the Seton works best by itself in milder winter temps—like you might see in Santa Fe or the Bay Area—but it can also be layered under a vest or windbreaker if you’re commuting in a place like Kansas. If you don’t like the snug fit of a bike jersey, you can also wear a midweight wool sweater that will add similar warmth and breathe nearly as well—plus look more appropriate at the office if you choose to keep it on.

Mission Workshop Interval Jacket ($255)

Patagonia Houdini Jacket ($109)

LaMunyon says the only way he can stand to be on a bike on the worst days is with a solid windbreaker layered over a fleece jersey. The windbreaker is essential, because when you’re moving at 15–20 mph in below-freezing temps, the windchill will absolutely destroy you—especially when it’s already windy out. I love the five-ounce, nylon-spandex that delivers stretchy comfort and lightweight protection. The somewhat stiffer, non-stretchy, 3.7-ounce Houdini from Patagonia is a great substitute at less than half the price. It’s not quite as comfy to wear, but it is durable, cuts the wind admirably, and looks great.

Bookman Curve Rear Light ($45)

A few weeks ago, I nearly hit a cyclist with my car; It was dark and he was going through a roundabout directly in front of me wearing dark clothes and without any bike lights. The incident made me thankful to have Bookman’s curved rear light on my bike. It not only shines red directly behind me, but also throws light to either side. If that cyclist had one of these equipped, it would have caught my eye instantly, even with his bike perpendicular to my car.

North Street LTD Upcycled Micro Pannier 14L ($100)

Wearing a backpack while commuting, even in the winter, leaves you with a sweaty back—a recipe for hypothermia. To avoid this, I added racks to my bike and now use panniers to carry my gear. I love the newly-designed North Street version because it’s made from upcycled event tents. It’s totally waterproof, better for the environment, and has cool, one-of-a-kind coloring. The 14-liter version is big enough to haul a 14-inch MacBook Pro, plus my notebooks, a pair of shoes, and any extra clothing I need for work. It fits on the standard 9mm bike racks, but can also be fitted with hooks for 12.5mm and 19mm racks.

The post Gear to Keep You Bike Commuting All Winter Long appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I’m notorious for getting caught up in the latest, greatest gear. When it comes to hobbies, sports, and outdoor adventures, it’s easy to focus on performance. But my latest acquisition has been a powerful lesson that sometimes, experience might matter more.Ìę

Behold: the Diamondback Topanga. It hails from the early 1990s, when it would have been one of the cheaper mountain bikes you could find in an actual bike shop. Think of it as a bit of an upgrade from the Huffy you’d buy at K-Mart, but an awful long ways from the kind of ride you’d see featured in this magazine 30 years later.Ìę

It came to me through , a local bike shop operating out of a garage where I live in Bozeman, Montana. I was drinking coffee with Mason, one of the mechanics one morning, when she reminded me I’d been talking about getting a new townie. I asked her to build one for me, and a few hours later she texted me a picture of the Topanga frame, wearing some distinctly rusty parts.Ìę

I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with bicycles throughout my adult life. I got into road bikes when I lived in Brooklyn back in the 2000s, and rode every single day that I lived there. My bike habit lasted about three months into my move to Los Angeles, where the speed of traffic and awful road conditions resulted in enough close calls that I gave up riding. I flirted with mountain bikes for the next few years, but the need to sit in traffic for hours just to get to a trail always got in the way. I keep meaning to get back into bikes now that I live in Montana, but my excuses are plentiful: my dogs need exercise, too, the riding season is short (it’s six below zero as a write this, in November), and all the travel, hunting, fishing, floating, and backpacking keep taking priority.Ìę

For Christmas last year, I bought my wife one of Adam Sklar’s new production frames, . She and Adam turned it into a Dutch-style commuter, and she’s been buzzing around town on it ever since. I promised to start riding with her, and here we are.Ìę

While the bare Diamondback frame was in reasonable condition, the rest of the bike was not. I asked Mason to lace a fresh set of wheels, put gravel tires on them, refresh the brakes, and install a new 1×11 drivetrain, along with a new bottom bracket. She also pulled the rest apart, scrubbed it clean, applied new grease, and replaced minor parts where necessary. The total bill was $800. That’s about the same price a Topanga would have gone for in 1993, so considering inflation, this new-to-me one is actually a fair bit cheaper.Ìę

What has that money netted me? My wife and I have been riding to the grocery store together, to figure out our nightly meals. We ride downtown to meet friends, and to Roly Poly for coffee. That’s more time together, doing active stuff, more easily. It means the Land Cruiser stays in the garage a little more often, and burns off the calories gained by going to a restaurant for date night.Ìę

And the bike itself actually turned out really sweet. The wide, upright handlebars make the riding position far more comfortable than any of my old road bikes, and the mild gear ratios make pedaling up the long hill from Main Street to our house a breeze. The brakes aren’t discs, but I’m not going fast. And the whole thing feels like it weighs something south of 20 pounds.

Am I going to crush times on Strava or pull ahead of a college kid on a hill climb? Obviously not. Is it the fanciest bike in the rack outside the coffee shop? It’s a long ways from it, especially when I park next to my wife. But this crappy old frame from the early 1990s has brought the simple joy of riding a bicycle back into my life. And that’s exactly the experience I’ve been missing.

The post I Spent $800 Fixing Up a Very Mediocre Bicycle and Couldn’t Be Happier appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Back when I was living in Brooklyn, New York, I would often see Jody Rosen on a bike.

I wouldn’t say we were the closest of friends—we went to college together, but now, as then, we moved in slightly different circles. Still, we’d often have a street corner stop and chat, trading the sort of shop-talk only of interest to two full-time Brooklyn journalists.

Rosen, typically clad in a newsboy cap, a bag strapped across his shoulder, andÌęastride a bright red cruiser bike—replete with almost cartoonishly large off-white tires—became a talismanic presence for me on the neighborhood streets. I’d see him taking his son to school on the back of the bike, or coolly navigating the heavy traffic of Court Street at a pace somewhat below the usual frenetic velocity of New York City cyclists. When I didn’t see him, I often saw his bike chained to a parking meter outside a coffee shop orÌęleaning against the natural foods store window. Spotting it became a sort of game for my daughter and me. One day, she called out: “Look, Jody’s seat is missing!” (Alas, someone had pilfered the saddle.) Like most urbanites, my eyes were carefully attuned to the sidewalks, and seeing Jody’s bike was like ticking a square in some game of Gotham bingo.

In his new book, , Rosen, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, brings both his acuity as a pop-cultural critic and his genuine—though never overweening or in-your-face—passion for the bicycle to bear in a freewheeling global journey. It begins in a church in a small town in England (where people claim to see, with almost religious conviction, a proto-bicycle in a stained-glass artwork that predates the device’s invention by centuries), and ends with Rosen trying to ride a fixie, less than successfully, in the onetime Kingdom of Bicycles, the city of Beijing.

As you might expect, Rosen has a lot to say about the joys, and travails, of urban riding. “Bike riding is the best way I know to reach an altered consciousness,” he writes. “Not an ennobled state, exactly, but definitely an enlivened one. A bike ride is far better than yoga, or wine, or weed.” The bike is the “best way to imbibe New York, to make sense of the pace, to gulp the town down.” Off the bike, Rosen writes, New York becomes “larger but less magnificent.”

While Rosen’s lyrical odesÌęto city cycling do not lack conviction—or fail to find a complicit audience in me, despite the fact that I now live in New Jersey—what makes Two Wheels Good a particularly fascinating read are his explorations into the rich and peculiar history of the bike, which recount at times the writer Greil Marcus’s foray into the “old, weird America.” The bicycle seems to pop up everywhere and in the most unexpected places. Rosen tells, for instance, the story of a young, aspiring Yukon prospector who falls ill and misses the achievable window to get to the gold fields via dog sled team, so instead acquires a bike and rides for months in sub-zero conditions to beat his gold-rush competitors.

But it’s not always the story you expect. “The popular literature on the bike is a highly sentimental and romantic literature,” he told me, “which construes the bike as this kind of liberating emancipating device, the liberating green machine, the little 19th century machine that’s going to save the world.” There’s something to that, of course, but Rosen says he was interested in a more “tough love” version of bicycle history, whether it’s the extractive industries used to produce it or its curious role in the Age of Empire.Ìę“The bike reached many places in the world when it was ridden by soldiers, or prospectors, or missionaries, and that interests me,” he says. One of the most egregious examples, he notes, is the connection of the late 19th century bicycle boom—all those new rubber tires—and the brutal colonization of countries like Brazil or the Belgian Congo. “In Brazil, one person perished for every 150 kilograms of rubber reaped,” he writes. In the Congo, “the figure was one death for every ten kilograms of rubber.”

Which is not to say the bikeÌęis nefarious, or that it doesn’t historically figure, Rosen says, as a “means of resistance,” or an “agent of social change.” After assuming power in 1933, Rosen notes, one of Hitler’s first acts was to crush the country’s cycling union (which had become associated with anti-Nazi parties). In 2016, the theocracy of Iran declared a fatwa on female cyclists (“It attracts the attention of male strangers and exposes society to corruption,” the country’s supreme cleric declared). Iranian women, not without risk, have continued riding. “For millions of women across the world,” he writes, “biking riding remains inherently political.” People are always downplaying the bike, forgetting its power. Rosen quotes New York Times editor Harrison Salisbury in 1967 as he delivers testimony to the U.S. Senate on why the U.S. was encountering such headwinds in its war in Vietnam. “I literally believe that without the bikes [the North Vietnamese Army] would have to get out of the war.”

The bike, says Rosen, is ultimately a tool, whose inherent usefulness is not limited to any political party or social group.Ìę“To me, the real signal moment of this was during the Black Lives Matter uprising in 2020 in New York City,” he says. “You had a lot of people on bikes in the streets protesting, and they were met by the bicycle cops.” And these were notÌęyour normal shorts-clad bicycle cops pleasantly patrolling a pedestrian mall. “They were up-armored, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cops, who wear hockey goalie gear and use the bike as a shield and a battering ram,” he says.

And when the bike is not being used to battle in the streets, it’s often at the center of a rhetorical fight. In recent years, he notes, it’s become a loaded symbol on the right, of a piece with arugula and lattes. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch even lambasted, Rosen notes, the inclusion of “bicycle repair shops” in a list of businesses deemed essential during the pandemic. And sometimes, the bicycle can even seem just a twee lifestyle accessory, displayed in the windows of upmarket boutiques, parked in a rack (but seemingly rarely used) in front of luxury hotels.

But what Gorsuch clearly did not have on his mind was the fact that, as Rosen notes in the book, “around the world, more people travel by bicycle than any other form of transportation.” Sure, bike culture includes Instagram accounts with well-dressed people on beautiful bikes, hipsters on fixies, and Lycra,Ìębut it also includes, in a city like New York, a massive fleet of working-class riders—sometimes called deliveristas—who were, particularly during the pandemic, an essential factor in keeping the city functioning.

In less supple, more dogmatic hands, a book like Two Wheels Good might begin to coast a bit on its own self-congratulatory spin, but Rosen pulls off that most wonderful non-fiction trick: making the familiar strange. His narrative is a bit like his self-described cycling style: it’s not rushed, but itÌędeftlyÌęmaneuvers through crowded terrain, with impressionistic, cinematic glimpses of the world sliding by. One minute you’re learning about a 19th century Edison film called Trick Bicycle Riding—produced by a roller-skate pioneer—the next you’re in Scotland, with ace trials rider Danny MacAskill, as Rosen (a self-professed “turkey” when it comes to raw cycling skill) tries, and fails, to keep up on what he terms a “beginner’s level mountain bike trail.” MacAskill, on the heels of Rosen’s wipeout, says: “I’m a wee bit worried that you’re going to kill yourself.”

I can’t help asking Rosen about that old red bicycle I used to see on the street (which, it turns out, was a Felt “Big Chief”). He’s moved on a bit, stylistically, and is currently riding a bike from ; as a self-described “terrible” mechanic, he lauds the low-maintenance belt drive. The Big Chief, however, remains in reserve in his condo’s basement storage area. And as it happens, I wasn’t the only one whose eyes were caught by that two-wheeled steed. Once, years ago, the bike was stolen while parked outside a cafĂ©. Rosen took to Twitter, essentially asking New Yorkers to keep watch. And, in fact, someone spotted the bike, fixed by a cheap combination lock to a pole in Union Square. Within hours, he was reunited with the Chief.

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E-bikes have become the gateway to cycling for many new riders because adding motorized assistance breaks down age, fitness, and ability barriers. The e-bikes we tested this year ran the gamut—boutique road and gravel machines that enable riders to keep pace on spirited group rides, utilitarian models that make quick work of daily commutes, and cargo bikes that function as pedal-powered minivans for families looking for an alternative to automobiles. There’s something for every rider among our favorite e-bikes of 2022.Ìę

Alchemy eRonin ($10,999)

E-gravel bikes are a great way to explore new routes and conquer climbs that you might have otherwise shied away from. This Class 1 Colorado-made carbon model weighs 29 pounds as tested with Shimano’s electronic GRX drivetrain. It also boasts a unique drive system: unlike with most gravel bikes, the eRonin’s designers combine the motor and 250-watt-hour battery into one removable unit that provides a boost of power up to 20 miles per hour. Want to go analog? Simply remove the drive unit from the down tube and replace it with a cover that turns the empty space into a cargo compartment, which saves you seven pounds. Some e-bikes feel like a chore to ride beyond their maximum assisted speed. Not the eRonin. Its mid-mounted Fazua Evation motor has minimal resistance, and although we wished the top speed was a bit higher, especially when we were trying to keep pace with a group of fit gravel racers, the eRonin never felt like dead weight when we exceeded the motor’s output.

LeMond Prolog ($4,795)

If you’re a member of the generation that grew up idolizing Greg LeMond, it might be time to invest in an e-bike to keep pace with your children. Striking good looks and low weight makes this one our favorite for daily riding—even though we’re nervous leaving it locked up for longer than it takes to order a latte. A sleek carbon frame, one-piece carbon handlebar and stem, carbon wheels ($1,800 extra), and Shimano 1×11 GRX drivetrain keep the complete bike weight to a paltry 26 pounds. The 250-watt hub-mounted Mahle X35+ motor is smooth and quiet, with pedaling assistance up to 20 miles per hour. We averaged 45 miles per charge during testing, and an external battery (available separately) can boost the bike’s range by 70 percent, which is great for longer commutes and gravel adventures. Even without the motor on, the Prolog has a light and lively ride that puts range anxiety to rest. The bike’s low weight also makes it a wonderful option for apartment dwellers who have to lug bikes up multiple flights of stairs.

Bunch Bikes Original ($3,999)

Bunch Bikes’ goal is to make European-inspired cargo bikes a mainstream transportation option for North American families. To that end, the Original is less bicycle and more three-wheeled minivan, with seating for four children in the spacious front cargo box. It can also hold a week’s worth of groceries or your favorite four-legged friends. Bunch makes it easy to customize the Original to your liking with accessories like a rain cover, sunshade, toddler seats, and dog bed. The 500-watt hub-mounted motor has a maximum assisted speed of 20 miles per hour and provides enough get-up-and-go to ride efficiently, even while hauling two kids and four bags of groceries. In testing, fully loaded like this, the Original’s average range was 27.5 miles per charge—plenty for most around-town errands. The turning radius of this three-wheeler is big compared with that of most two-wheeled models, but we think this is a worthy trade-off for its stability, which is a great attribute when carrying heavy loads (or excited children).

GT E-Grade Current ($3,350)

The E-Grade Current is the electric counterpart to GT’s popular gravel bike. This Class 1 flat-handlebar version features gravel-ready 40-millimeter WTB Nano tires and neutral handling, so it’s equally suited to recreational rides and errands. We’ve tested many e-bikes with the hub-mounted Mahle Ebikemotion X35 drive system and always come away impressed with its natural feel, low drag, and color-coded interface, which is built into the top tube. Riders can switch among three modes with a maximum assisted speed of 20 miles per hour. The slim, 250-watt-hour battery housed in the down tube has enough range for most excursions (we traveled 40 miles on a single charge). At 31 pounds, it’s not as light as LeMond’s Prolog, but testers noted that the durable aluminum frame and understated appearance are important traits for an e-bike that may get locked up in busy public spaces like offices, college campuses, and coffee shops. This is a great e-bike for commuters and casual riders looking for a no-nonsense ride.

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We don’t think much of the ambient sound in TV shows or movies until they go wrong, like when Kevin Bacon’s track bike in the 1986 classic occasionally makes inexplicable freewheel sounds.ÌęWe relate to our own steeds similarly, in that we don’t really pay much attention to how they sound until something starts creaking somewhere, at which point we put our entire lives on hold and spare no expense in our attempts to rid ourselves of the distraction.

Car manufacturers know that we have such a visceral response to sound that they now pipe engine noises and exhaust sounds . Bike companies aren’t quite there yet, but there are certain sounds that have come to connote high performance, such as the whooshing of carbon wheels and the aggressive snarl of a tightly-sprung set of freewheel pawls. Yet the sound of speed is also ever-changing. Recently, I’ve been riding a vintage Colnago with eight-speed Dura Ace hubs. Their precision purr is barely audible and wholly sublime, but it would never fly today, when a coasting race bike is supposed to be nearly as loud and obnoxious as a heavily-modded Honda Civic. The soft snick of the first-generation STI lever is also badly outdated, and while it shifts as well as it did 25 years ago it’s positively quaint compared to the futuristic servo whirring that now alerts you to the fact that the rider on your wheel is about to attack.

Other once-familiar cycling sounds have gone virtually extinct. As cables are routed internally or eliminated altogether, you seldom hear the “ding” they make when they contact a steel frame tube. (Steel was a material they once used to make bikes. It was like carbon, but durable.)ÌęThe sound of a chain clanging against a chainstay was once as much a part of mountain biking as shin bruises and peeing in the woods; now it’s been silenced forever by the advent of the clutch derailleur. Executing a gear change was also once a cacophonous affair. Before indexed shifters and the ramps that help move your chain swiftly and silently from one cog to another, your drivetrain would crackle and rat-a-tat-tat like a Gene Krupa drum solo in between gears. And if you didn’t get it just right, the rattle would continue even after the gear shift was complete, and you’d have to make micro-adjustments to your friction shifter until it ran silently.

New or old, bikes can sound fast, but they can also sound slow. A bicycle’s acoustic properties are probably a better indicator of slowness than they are of speed—if your bike sounds fast it may not be, but if it sounds slow it probably is. Still, the sounds of sluggishness can also have an outsized effect on your perception of the bike and be downright demoralizing. Few things sound slower than the humming and thrumming of knobby tires on pavement; no doubt they’re slower than they’re slick counterparts, but if it weren’t for that sound you probably wouldn’t feel like the power was being sucked from your legs with every pedal stroke. A dry, chirping chain will also make you feel like you’re a medieval dungeonmaster operating some kind of torture contraption. True, you could be through your unlubed chain, which is enough to reduce your speed from 20mph to 19.5mph, but it feels like much, much more, which is why we’re willing to spend money on .

But the most dispiriting sounds of all are often the most benign. Today’s bikes are made of large-diameter sound-amplifying tubing, and they’re held together with lots of low-torque fasteners, so a loose bolt here or a dry thread there can be all it takes for the thing to sound like it’s falling apart. Such sounds really prey on your mind if you’re riding carbon, since in the back of your mind you’re always just a little bit scared that something might fail catastrophically, however unfounded that fear may be.

But the most transporting sounds are the ones your bike makes on various surfaces: the subtle sucking sound of tires on wet pavement, the gentle clicking of loose rocks beneath your mountain bike wheels, and that tantalizing crunching sound as you leave the road and hit the gravel.

The bike companies aren’t pumping any of these sounds out via speakers hidden in your frame tubes, but as components continue to go electronic it may only be a matter of time.

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There’s more slack in the global right now than in the drivetrain of a poorly-maintained fixie. As a result, shortages and price anomalies are increasingly becoming the norm. For example, bicycles and components have been in short supply, meaning some cyclists have been forced to ride the same carbon fiber bike for two seasons now! Another area in which you can observe supply-and-demand wackiness is as automakers struggle to build new ones to meet demand due to the microchip shortage.

Recently, I was having some work done on my own vehicle when another customer whose lease was expiring asked the garage owner if he should buy back the car. “Absolutely!,” the owner replied. He explained how lease buyout prices are currently much lower than used car prices, which puts lessees at a considerable advantage. This particular customer had a Toyota RAV4—the small SUV in America—meaning the buyout price would no doubt be a screaming deal for him in today’s market. He could even turn around and sell it and pocket a nice chunk of change for himself if he wanted. Plus, we live in the 21st century; as the garage owner explained to his elderly customer, “ will bring a check right to your house.”

This got me thinking. Like many bicyclists, I have a fraught relationship with cars. I appreciate motorized vehicles as machines, I love ones with wheels that go fast, and I’d be dead inside if I didn’t relish the feeling of depressing the accelerator on a stretch of open highway. At the same time, cars can be expensive to maintain and burdensome to own in a city like New York, where we have . Not only can driving be miserable here, but the sheer deluge of cars can make life miserable for everyone else, too. So it requires considerable cognitive dissonance to ignore the fact that, if you own a car, you’re a part of the problem.

In recent years I’ve thought more and more about getting rid of my car. I live a bidon’s toss away from a subway station, a commuter train, several bus stops, a national car rental agency, and who knows how many Zipcars. Also, I own like ten bikes. All of this is to say that I should know better. So I looked at the seven year-old car with less than 50,000 miles on it that I own outright (I’m not saying what kind it is, but it’s pretty much what every middle-aged bike dork with a family drives) then pulled up the Carvana site on my phone. In a matter of minutes I had a quote, and it was substantial enough that, like any responsible adult, I immediately found myself daydreaming about what kind of custom bike I could get with that money.

Here in New York, we demonize driving more and more with each passing year. In 2019, we were going to “.” When the city closed down in 2020 and the streets were empty, The New York Times imagined a “.” As , “Ban Cars” has become a social media rallying cry. Yet, even in transit-rich New York City, where , I’m far from the only pedal-pushing car skeptic who keeps one anyway. Cars are like cigarettes—everyone likes to badmouth them, but people keep firing ‘em up anyway.

Of course, we self-hating motorists are always just a spoke’s breadth from getting rid of our cars, but in the meantime we convince ourselves that we’re somehow different from everybody else. We drive responsibly, unlike all those lead-footed louts. Our compact SUVs are slightly more efficient than other people’s full-sized SUVs. We only drive to leave town, we ride bikes or use transit whenever we can, and we totally support and paying market rate for the street parking we’ve gladly accepted for free all these years. Because it’s only fair, right?

What we don’t do is admit that a car’s a car, and that it’s taking up the same amount of precious urban space regardless of how conflicted you feel about it or how progressive your politics are.

Well, if you’ve ever seriously considered divesting yourself of your vehicle, now’s the time to put your money where your mouth is. Advocates swooned when they heard that . Why couldn’t we do that here? Well, the free market is doing those self-righteous Euros one better—we may never see a used car market like this again. Now could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to perhaps sell that recently acquired vehicle for more than you paid for it, or in my case, recoup a stupid amount of money on a car you’ve driven for years. Not only can you buy the of your dreams and put all those insurance premiums and registration fees and maintenance costs to better use, but you can also criticize car culture with the confidence that you’re no longer a part of it.

But what if you don’t sell? Does that make you a bad person or a filthy hypocrite? Do you need to abandon your conviction that cars aren’t always the answer and that we should continue to strive for safer, healthier, and more efficient solutions? Of course not. But it’s time to come to terms with the fact that, like it or not, you’re a motorist. It means acknowledging that you’re no better than all those other motorists out there, and that their reasons for driving are just as valid as yours. Most crucially, it means recognizing that there’s a difference between telling people what they could be doing and telling what they should be doing. If you’re not ready to move on from car ownership it’s unreasonable to expect the same from someone else. Instead of hating your car and yourself, maybe you should learn to appreciate both it and your good fortune.

And no, I didn’t sell the car, even a few days later when Carmax outbid Carvana by a whopping three grand. How could I? I’d just had the oil changed.

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When you’re growing up, there’s your first bike, and your first real bike. Your first is merely the one upon which you learned how to ride, but your first real steed is the one you truly made your own. You took off the reflectors. You put on some cool stickers or some dice valve caps. And you ditched that corny-ass kickstand.

I probably don’t have to explain to you all the reasons why kickstands are deeply uncool. They add weight, they distract from the clean lines of your frame tubes, and that rubber boot makes them look like a doorstop. If you make a hard landing, kickstands can even make a cartoonish “sproing!” sound, like a Looney Toons character getting hit in the face with a two-by-four. For all these reasons, raiding the household toolbox for the adjustable wrench and figuring out how to remove your kickstand is a rite of passage, as time-honored as taking scissors to sleeves and making your first muscle shirt. Most of us had bikes growing up, but if you were a real bike kid, sooner or later you gave yours a bris. And all your “real” bikes have been kickstand-free ever since.

Fortunately, unlike a bris, or that tribal armband tattoo you got several years later, a kickstand-ectomy is easily reversible. As it turns out, most of the stuff I thought was uncool is in fact eminently useful if not outright indispensable—which, in the final analysis, makes them even cooler. For example, math also seemed impossibly lame to me when I was in school, but now I know that being able to perform quick calculations in your head is one of the coolest skills you can have, right up there with throwing a knife with deadly accuracy. (Alas, I can do neither.) When you stop on a ride, flipping down a kickstand and leaning your bike on it is way cooler than looking around for something to lean it on, just like knowing what to tip on a date is a thousand times classier than having to work it out on your iPhone.

Granted, there are certain bicycles on which you assuredly wouldn’t want a kickstand. There’s obviously no reason for one on a road racing bicycle, since weight and aerodynamics are major concerns, and apart from the occasional pee stop you’re really not supposed to get off until the ride is over anyway. The same goes for other highly specialized or competition-based bikes, such as mountain bikes, cyclocross bikes, and so forth, where the possibility of accidental deployment may also be a concern. Grand Prix motorcycles and motocross bikes don’t have them either.

Nevertheless, motorcycle enthusiasts know better—competition is one thing, but everyday use is another, and nobody’s removing the sidestand from their Triumph Bonneville. Yet even non-competitive cyclists persist in resorting to all manner of chicanery in order to keep their bikes kickstand-free. They lean their bikes against walls and street signs, prop them up by a pedal on the curb, or simply surrender to gravity and risk all manner of cosmetic damage by laying them down on the ground, all instead of deploying a simple, elegant kickstand with the casual flick of an ankle.

Again, if your velocipedal outings begin and end at your home or your car, and you only get off the bike mid-ride in order to repair flats and/or relieve yourself, your bike probably doesn’t need the kickstand. But here are some signs that it does.

You Ride in Regular Shoes

If you’re off the bike often enough to want street shoes (which, to be clear, is a wise choice), you’re also off of it long enough to warrant a kickstand.

You Get Off Your Bike More than Twice Per Ride

Getting off your bike once is normal; getting off the bike a second time suggests extenuating circumstances; more than that means you’re not just cycling, you’re also living your life to its fullest, in which case, do yourself a favor and get a kickstand. (Anyway, you’re probably already wearing street shoes.)

You’ve Experienced Any One of the Following Scenarios

You’ve leaned your bike against your car, only to watch the bike roll along the car and fall down, scratching your bike, or your car, or both in the process. You’ve laid your bike on the pavement and when you picked it up the bar tape plug came out. You’ve laid your bike down at a crowded rest area during a group ride and another rider (or you) have fallen over it.

Your Bike Satisfies the Accessory Checklist

You should immediately remedy your bicycle’s kickstand deficiency if it already sports at least two of the following three accessories: a bell; a mirror; one of those handlebar-mounted beverage holders. Seriously, you’ve got one of , and you don’t have a kickstand? Come on!

Granted, there are exceptions to the above. Fixed-gears are exempt from the kickstand criteria, since you’ve already forfeited the convenience of not just coasting but possibly brakes as well, and the whole point of these bikes is that they defy common sense. Also, through no fault of your own, your bicycle may lack sufficient clearance or mounting provisions for kickstands, and you may not wish to risk the integrity of its tubing by resorting to clamp-on solutions. (Though assuming you’re careful and you’re bike’s not made of carbon fiber, there are some out there that you can affix to your chainstay or seatstay. And in fact, there are indeed for carbon fiber bikes.)

But if your bike has adequate clearance between the rear wheel and seat tube—or, better yet, has an honest-to-God kickstand plate, get yourself a . Sure, you may even have to cut it to size—unless you get an adjustable one, in which case, . Either way, once you’ve got it set up, the next time you stop for a leak you’ll wonder how you ever lived without one.

So stop leaning your bike on random stuff, and start living!

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