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Asking for Help on a Bike Tour
Plus, NYC Five Borough bike ride, new research on e-bike, and stats for the nerds
Sam Westby
March 20, 2025
Welcome to the Bike Bulletin, fueling you for the long haul — no bonking allowed.
—Sam Westby @samcwestby
This is a weekly newsletter about bike trips, urban cycling, and a love for two-wheeled transit. The more time you spend on a bike, the better. I share new editions every Thursday, gearing you up for the ride ahead.
Here’s what we have today.
🌍 RIDE: Five Borough Bike Ride
❓ RESEARCH: E-Bikes Cut Car Use
💡 TIP: Asking For Help
🎥 WATCH: Copenhagen to Nice in 7 Days
🚲 ARCHIVES: Ride a Bike (1929)
📰 NEWS: Rihanna, a $70m bridge, and group rides
A NOTE FROM SAM
I’m graduating with my Ph.D. this semester! It’s been a long road, and I’m not sure how I managed school + social media + cycling.
If you can believe it, my research has nothing to do with cycling.
The quick hits about my research:
I want to know what our jobs will look like in the future.
My early projects were about humans working with artificial intelligence as teammates.
My current project looks at software developers and generative AI.
It’s really helpful for entry-level software developers, but that means employers don’t need to hire as many.
I’ll livestream my dissertation defense on Monday, April 7th at 3:15 pm EDT. The livestream link will be in the next two editions of the Bike Bulletin and my Instagram.
RIDE ON MY RADAR
Five Borough Bike Ride
Here’s what you’d be getting yourself into.
40 miles through New York City’s five boroughs.
They shut down streets so all 32,000 riders can enjoy a car-free day.
Overall good vibes
The registration cost is $148
May 4th, 2025!
Here’s a link to the official website bike.nyc.
FROM THE IVORY TOWER
E-Bikes Cut Car Use
A new research article published in Transport Reviews looks at all the evidence around e-bikes and travel behaviors.
Here’s what they found:
E-bike access (through loans or purchases) increased e-bike travel by 5 kilometers (a 26% increase).
Getting an e-bike reduced people’s daily car travel by 10%.
E-bikes are a great alternative to cars!
What’s the take-home message? Make it easy to get an e-bike and people ride them. AND people will ride the e-bike instead of driving.
The researchers don’t claim e-bikes are car killers, but these numbers are pretty good.
Read the full article in Transport Reviews.
BIKE TRIP TIP
Asking For Help
It’ll happen on every long bike trip. You’re going to have a situation you didn’t prepare for.
On Day 32 riding across the United States, I broke my second spoke of the trip.
We brought everything to fix it except for a wrench to take off the disk brake rotor.
How do we find a wrench? I started knocking on doors. No luck.
We went to a trail parking lot and asked people. No luck. Until one said his friend owns an auto repair shop nearby!
10 minutes later he was back with a wrench, and 25 minutes after that I had 24 properly tensioned spokes.
What’s the lesson? Explain that you’re traveling by bike and ask for what you need. People will help if they can.
Send me your story about a stranger’s kindness on a bike tour! I’d love to feature it in next week’s Bike Bulletin.
WHAT I’M WATCHING
Copenhagen to Nice in 7 Days
Some friends take on an ambitious ride — 2000 kilometers in 7 days with an absurd amount of climbing.
The entire film is in Danish, but YouTube’s English captions were good for me.
Watch on YouTube
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Ride a Bike (1929)
Source: The Saturday Evening Post. I was shocked to see that they’re still around nearly 100 years later.
Rihanna. She teamed up with a Malawi-based charity to provide girls with bikes and scholarships. (Essence)
7.2 miles (11.6 kilometers). The length of newly approved bike lane projects in Oklahoma City. (Free Press OKC)
$70 million. The cost to rebuild a Provo, Utah bridge to be better for everyone (cars, bikes, pedestrians). Construction starts in June. (KUTV)
Every Thursday. A social group ride and happy hour for adults in Saratoga, New York. (Saratoga Living)
April 6th. The annual Family Bike Ride in Glendale, Arizona. (Glendale Independent)
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