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- A ride across Iowa.
Welcome to the Bike Bulletin. It’s like aerobars for your inbox.
As always, please reply directly to this email with your thoughts. It’ll go straight to my email.
This is a weekly newsletter about bike adventures, cycling infrastructure, and people who love two-wheeled transit. I write each episode to gear you up for the week ahead.
Here’s what we have today.
A Vermont documentary.
How to buy a bike.
Ride across Iowa.
Some stats for the nerds.
ROUTE ON MY RADAR
RAGBRAI
Source: Len Radin on Flickr under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED
Here’s what you’d be getting yourself into.
About 424 miles (682km).
10’s of thousands of other riders.
Fully supported over 7+ days.
Official Website - ragbrai.com
Keep Your Daydream’s video - youtube.com
Ride from one end of Iowa to the other with 30,000 of your closest friends. I haven’t done this ride, but I’ve heard so much about it. You experience the charm of Iowa, stopping through 50+ small towns. This year the ride will be July 20th-27th along the southern part of the state. On my U.S. tour my dad and I went along a similar route, and be warned. The south is HILLY. Overall this looks like a great community event, and there are support vans to take care of your gear every day.
BIKE TRIP TIP
Buying a Bike
First, you need to sort out a few things before you buy a bike. I won’t get into these today.
What type of bike do you want (road, hybrid, gravel, mountain)?
What is your budget?
What size bike do you need?
Once you answer those questions, you have a few options for buying a bike:
New or used from a bike shop ($$$)
New from a direct-to-consumer online brand ($$)
Used from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist ($)
Word of mouth/friends ($-$$$)
New or used from a bike shop ($$$)
This option is the most foolproof but also the most expensive. The employees at the shop can help you figure out what you need, and when you do make a purchase you can be sure it will be in good shape. If anything goes wrong, the shop will be there for you. This comes at a premium.
New from a direct-to-consumer online brand ($$)
This option is for the people who know exactly what they want. Some D2C brands include Canyon, Posiden, Moots, Factor, and Alchemy. There are no middlemen so that you can get a new bike at a 25+% discount compared to similar non-D2C brands. You find your bike, add it to the cart, and hit order. One hitch is that the bikes usually come disassembled. You can either go at it by yourself or pay ~$100 for a shop to assemble it for me.
Used from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist ($)
This option is where the steals are (sometimes literally). You can either get a bike for half the price, or you can get half a bike that doesn’t ride. Some notes if you’re buying bikes from facebook or craigslist:
Know basic maintenance. How do the gears shift? Do both of the brakes work? Is the chain rusty? Does this bike fit me?
Walk away if it feels off. A bike with issues can be more frustrating than a brother who eats the last cookie and doesn’t throw out the package.
Don’t be afraid to barter
Give it a tune-up right away (either at home or at a bike shop). This will make it feel new.
Don’t buy a bike that might be stolen. Be cautious if the seller doesn’t know anything about the bike or if the deal is too good to be true.
Word of mouth/friends ($-$$$)
If you have a bike person in your life, keep an eye out when they’re upgrading.
WHAT I’M WATCHING
Ted’s XL’end Adventure: VTXL
Ted King and Joe Cruz made a 300-mile gravel route called the VTXL in 2020. It goes from the top of Vermont to the bottom 95% off-road. Vermont got wrecked with flooding in the summer of 2023, so in October, Ted and a couple of friends set off to see how well the VTXL held up. I was on this route a week before them and shared their enthusiasm. The video shows Vermont in its full glory. Country stores, views, colors. Best of all — miles of pristine gravel roads.
Watch on YouTube.
Stats for the Nerds
1.26 million. The number of cycle trips taken in London every day. (Transport for London)
18.1 percent. The reduction in car ownership when given access to a cargo bike according to one Canadian study. (Science Direct)
5.7 million. The number of trips via Bike Share Toronto in 2023. (bikesharetoronto.com)
35 percent. The reduction in prostate cancer risk among men who cycle versus men with declined fitness. (GCN)
9 feet. The width of roads with the fewest cycling accidents per trip. Wider roads (10-12 feet) were found to be significantly more dangerous. (Johns Hopkins)
A Note From Sam
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