2 Wheels Maybe

May 1 is downright magical here at the Mesquite Hugger desk. It's an anniversary. Joining the National Bike Challenge on May 1, 2014 was my start to bicycle commuting. You can read the post here . So here I am seven years later in a very different life and still thrilled to have the month and the challenge roll around again. Honestly, I was scared to start. I had a sedentary lifestyle and a body shape to match. And I viewed Lubbock traffic as a suicide run for anyone not in a car. But I was overweight, high blood-pressured, and wanting to save the world. And the bicycle seemed like a great tool for tackling all those issues. So I got up the nerve to try it. And I'm truly thankful I did. I've learned that life is better on a bike. I'm in much better shape than I was seven years ago. I like the town I live in better and I've discovered a lot of beauty I had not noticed. I have more stamina. I look forward to going places for the ride as much as the desti...

(Another lunch-time lesson in dirt and humility.) I raced BMX as a kid. It was only four decades ago. I should still be good at it. Right? The local weatherman told me a cold front was passing through -  it wouldn't reach 90 degrees until lunch. My brain instantly dreamed up the next micro-adventure: BMX, baby! Flora and Fauna Report Local Flora Local Fauna: I'm gonna need a longer lens, a longer lunch, and more patience to post fauna pics, but I did see two great blue herons, one great egret, two burrowing owls, a few dozen prairie dogs, a black-tailed jack rabbit, and a half-dozen kids on Razor scooters (at the skate park). How about the ride? Four laps on the BMX track Did I get air? No. Did I need oxygen? Absolutely. It's been a dry summer, so all of the low ground is sand trappy and killed any speed I built up from berms and backsides of jumps. I spent the whole time in second gear pedaling hard. Bring your fat tires. Bring your vi...

It's that day again - the last day of bike commuter nirvana. Yep, the Lubbock Independent School District is flinging its doors open to welcome in the chaos kids tomorrow. The sun, it rose. The best part of summer for me is the relaxed traffic. The college students all go home to the metroplex. The locals get to sleep in a bit. And the bicyclists can relax a bit more and not adjust their routes away from schools. Morning commutes in summer are the stuff dreams are made of! (We won't discuss the triple-digit afternoon rides home, but even those are more relaxed.) At coffee - I had the place to myself. Tomorrow - it'll be noisy and crowded. Unlimited Routing This is the last day I'll cruise carelessly past Jayne Ann Miller Elementary. This morning I pedaled past three public schools and cut through the parking lot of one private school. My commute was 4/10 of a mile shorter than it'll be tomorrow. Commuting is for the Birds At ...

So, there I was taking the Chuck (the lab mix) for an early morning walk in Fort Worth. We rounded the corner, and there it was - a real, live electric bike store ( Pedego Fort Worth ). If you live in my part of the world, seeing an e-bike store is only slightly less rare than seeing sasquatch riding a unicorn.  But there it was! Of course, it was closed, but we saw an e-bike store. (For some reason, I was more impressed than Chuck was, but he was glad to see the hydrant out front.) Cool building with built-in cargo container! Pedego is not a brand I write about a great deal. I've run across very few in person, and, to be honest, their prices are (usually) out of my budget and many of their designs have seemed a little dated for my taste. On the other hand, they are known for high quality bikes and excellent customer service. For several years they have been an industry leader here in the states. They even have around 120 bike stores in the US. They are definitely doing ...

For a guy who writes so much about this stuff, I've made a poor showing of riding to work on Bike to Work Week , but I did ride to work yesterday and today. And these are two days that point out the beauty of commuting on a very basic e-bike. Yesterday morning, the weather was gorgeous - low breeze, temp in the low 60's, the sun was shining. Riding to work on pretty much any bicycle would've been really nice. Nine hours later, I went to leave work. It was overcast with winds gusting up into the mid 30's (miles per hour). I was really thankful for the e-bike! Learn more on yesterday's MH post This morning was a little different. It was overcast and the wind was blowing north pretty steadily at 20-30 miles per hour. My commute to work takes me south and west. Every time I turned south I understood why wind generators are such a good idea in this part of the world. Every time I turned south, I was thankful for a 48 volt battery and a 500 watt motor and a...

[Happy first day of the National Bike Challenge ! May you pedal healthily and joyfully, and may your bike haul all you need!] When I think of cargo bikes, two brands automatically pop into my brain - Xtracycle and Yuba. These are the two companies that have been there designing and selling longtail cargo bikes for several years and they have stayed focused specifically on cargo bikes and cargo-bike kits. In my mind, these two are the cargo-bike kings of the hill. For the last few years I've had my eye on one model - the Yuba Mundo Classic. At $999, it has continually been the best bang for the buck if you want high quality and low price. While it's not as high-tech (or light) as the more expensive Mundos, it's a beast that's capable of hauling 440 pounds and has a reputation for lasting year after year. If you're cheap like me, you know this is a great way into cargo biking. The page for saving 20% on the Mundo Classic I had not been on the Yuba s...

The DIY-Huffy-cruiser-resurrection obsessions (Hufferklunk and KargoHuff) continue to rage in my head and amble in the garage, but there has been progress on both. With apologies to Robert M. Pirsig You know that old question What would you do if money and time were no issue? ; would it be awful to answer that I'd build mediocre bicycles out of crappy bicycles? The big progress has been on the klunker. Its first draft is complete! I had a few hours on Sunday and was able to finish running the cables, dialing in and adjusting the derailleur (a first for me), changing the chainring, changing the chainring back, adding pedals, and taking lots of short test rides.  Success-ish! The ride is pretty sweet and the gearing is low enough that I may actually make it up a few hills without getting/falling off and pushing. All that's left is adding sealant to the tires and taking it out to the trails for a real test ride. Woohoo! I love it when a plan comes together...

Find the original here As a kid, I was a bike snob. I could not imagine riding a Huffy! I was kind of a jerk back then. But I grew up, started paying my own bills, and figured out that I would never be a professional cyclist. These days, I'm still kind of a jerk, but I'm quite happy to ride a Huffy. Any day I'm lucky enough to ride rather than drive is a good day. I've actually grown quite fond of the Huffy cruisers. Huffy Number 1: FrankenHuffy! My first (successful) electric bike build was based on a Huffy Cranbrook. I bought it on Craigslist for $50 because I wanted a heavy steel frame to support a lot of weight in batteries. The batteries went into a toolbox in the middle of the frame. A really heavy brushed hubmotor was shoehorned into the front fork. The bike would run over 20 miles per hour and had a range of six miles IF you were conservative and pedaled a lot. It would stop in half a mile. And it destroyed its first tire in two w...

Yep, my most recent distractions have been variations on the klunker. I've always been fond of upcycled vehicles, the ones where you take something old and uncared-for and turn it into something useful and enjoyed. Cafe racers, resto-mods, rat rods, lowriders, bobbers, all of them have caught my eye over the years. And the klunker fits right in. About forty years ago, some people in California started using old balloon-tired cruiser bicycles and modifying them to become the prototype for the modern mountain bike. If you do an image search for a klunker, you get something that looks like this: That's a whole lot of DIY retro-coolness! But wait.... Yep, at least eight of those are not DIY - they are new! Sure enough, for those of you with klunker lust who'd rather ride than wrench, there are options out there, and some are relatively affordable. The Retrospec Sully For a little over $300 you can have a well equipped klunker with retro looks and qu...