A quick hello and thought on my bike

[Titania]

Thanks for the recommendation on the book...just purchased a copy from Amazon.

In the future, I'd like to get off the bike paths complete and into doing more road riding. We have a re-purposed Army base nearby that I'm using for riding now. It's road-riding (hills, cars, etc) but is relatively quiet. I plan on riding here for the next year or so until I get my comfort up on riding roads. The roads around where I live are in horrible shape for the most part with no shoulder. I got hit by a car when I was on my bike as a kid, and that fear still sits in the back of my brain gnawing at me. But I want to work to get over that. I'd like to get to the point where I'm riding 20-30 miles at a swing.

Thanks for the great advise...much appreciated.

[Velocivixen]

I did an online training (free) by the American League of Cyclists called "Online Bicycle Education Traffic Skills 101" which was 4 chapters. The website says it takes 4 hours and it took me about 1 hour to do all 4 chapters. I am a fairly astute urban/street rider, however I learned a lot! I highly recommend it. Here's the link if you're ever interested:
http://www.bikeed.org/

[tytbody]

Thanks for the link Velo. I want to learn stuff about riding. And trekking bars? so what do they do for you?

and for all who have those bars that look like horns, what do they do? I mean the straight ahead horns, not ram horns.

[Titania]

Thanks for the link Velo. I want to learn stuff about riding. And trekking bars? so what do they do for you?

and for all who have those bars that look like horns, what do they do? I mean the straight ahead horns, not ram horns.

Tyt, you're a local!

The Trekking bars look almost like a figure 8. The huge advantage they have over straight bars is that they give you lots of available hand positions, key when you need to get off those hand nerve bundles. They're extremely uncommon in the US, for some reason, but very common in Europe, especially for commuter bikes.

I got my Trekking bars from Harris Cyclery here in MA. Sheldon has a nice writeup on various types of bars and their uses, including the Trekking.

http://sheldonbrown.com/deakins/handlebars.html

[tytbody]

Hi local is Shirley near Beverly? lol