Derf

Hi all, I know there are a couple of cyclists here. I've been riding a mountain bike outfited with road tires for more than 10 years for commuting. I rode an old Trek until 2004 when I got a Giant to replace it. I feel I made a wrong decision in getting a mountain bike again, so now I am getting something more adapted to commuting. I decided to go with a performance hybrid bicycle and I'm not sure with which one to go. My budget is around 800-900$CDN. I was thinking about disk brakes, but I'm not sure if it's worth the price and weight for city/road riding. I ride about 3000+ km per year and my daily commute is 40 km (2x 20 km). The most interesting bikes I have found up to now are the Trek Soho 1.0 and 3.0 and the Jamis Coda Sport. The Jamis is very interesting because it is one of the few bikes with a steel frame (and I like steel frames). Any suggestions or recommendations? Thanks!

Don't forget, Prior is Canadian and Canadian Thanksgiving is about a month earlier than American Thanksgiving (unless they do it during the American one).

In a normal braking situation (on and off road), the front brakes does 70% of the work. I can't confirm this number, but I know it's something like that. I too had some front wheel skid, and yes, it can be scary. As for road bikes, I think it is a weight issue as disk brakes are heavier than regular brakes. You see them on some touring bikes and some hybrids now too. The UCI banned the use of disk brakes in Cyclocross. I'm in the process of shopping for a new commuting bike (performance hybrid) and I'm thinking about getting one with disk brakes, but I don't know if it is worth the extra weight and money for city riding.

People driving trucks is indeed a problem. Most don't understand the principles of inertia and center of gravity and lots don't realize that what they drive is big and that the blindspots are proportionnaly bigger. The goal of driving a Prius is not saving money, it's to pollute less while driving a car. With the price of Nickel, the batteries are recycled. The problem is not the internal combustion engine, electric cars won't solve the problems, hydrogen even less likely; the problem is the dependence to the car (and the car oriented development). The way this is going, we're likely to end up with those NG terminals here in Québec. There are 2 projects: Cacouna and Rabaska. And there are lots of people opposed to them. I didn't think they were related to the oil sands. As always, your comments are among the most insightful that I read on Bomber. I saw it last weekend, very interesting, worth watching it.

Exactly. Lobbies. The insurance lobby is too powerful to let the government give away free healthcare like other countries do. The car and oil lobbies are too powerful to let the cities be developed around public transit, unless they can be part of it (i.e. make money off it). Individualism. Not much can be done about it. Most people (I think) understand the benefits of taxes and social measures, but lots don't believe in it because if they are well and succeed, other poeple just need to do the same when, in reality, it is not always possible. Isn't there an agreement between the 2 countries that forces Canada to supply a big part of it's production for the US? So this has already happened, but on paper.

I bike to work 2 or 3 days a week (4 days/week), even if my new job is 20 km from home. I changed my driving habit, my gas consumption went fom 9-10 L/100km to ~7 L/100km, I drive around 7000-8000 km per year and fill my car once every 3 weeks. I don't care much about gas price.

Quickest reference when reading forums, too lazy to find an accurate one.

I saw it a couple of years ago, great movie! I loved it so much, I bought the DVD (single disc edition). My personal favorite is The End of Suburbia. A shortened version (52 minutes) is available on YouTube here:

I would say go cycling, but cycling in the rain sucks.

Obligatory Wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je_me_souviens Even there, it's not clear.

Ride more often. I only went riding once last season. This year I only work 4 days a week (one day left for snowboarding) and I work next to a small ski hill that is open on evenings (go riding directly after work). Install springs on my Catek's heel bail. If I ride enough, get an all mountain board.

utahcarver, PSR could probably be added to that list of voluntary departure.

Congrats!

I wasn't sure about calling it a recorder since English is not my main language (I speak French). In French, we call it a "flûte à bec", so that's why I called it a flute. I really hated playing it in my obligatory music course in high school. My father felt bad when he spoke to the teatcher and told her he was a professional musician. About an aluminium recorder, I don't know. I know the material changes the sound of instruments, especially stringed instruments since these instruments rely on the resonance of the body to make a sound, but I don't know how it would affect a wind instrument. My father was given recently an old trumpet by someone. Before playing keyboards, he played the trumpet in his high school marching band. He says he needs to fix or clean the pistons so it sounds good again.

I played some electric bass also. I learned by myself with my high school music book (for the flute, wikipedia calls it a recorder) and some bass tablature. I was not good, but I enjoyed it. My musical theory is absent. My father, on the other hand, was a professional musician for over twenty years until 1980 (he played piano, synth, organ, keyboards). He started playing music again when he retired five years ago. He knows a lot regarding music theory and arrangements. It's hard for him to find some music he likes because he feels everything he hears is the same and has been done before (at least in popular music). He's not into classical music, more into jazz.

I never rode one, but another vote goes for the Kona Jake or Jake the Snake.

I don't visit often these days, maybe once every one or two weeks (compared to once or twice a day a while ago), since I (almost) didn't snowboard this winter (lost some interest). I came here today and read this thread. Wow. Just wow. What can I say. This is the internet. I've never had issues with D-Sub, either by forum or email. His sense of humor can be hard to get, but I leaned how to (I think...). I don't know what got exchanged outside of the forum, but Fin and the others must have had a reason. As for his postcount, he said it a million times, his work (or at least what he did for income) involved being in front of the computer all day, and he posted pretty much everything he thought about, unlike me where I often write something and don't post because I consider it's not worth posting and won't bring anything constructive. He will be missed, but there are plenty of loudmouth here anyways, old and new, so flame on. Just respect the absent. When discussions get heated (bans, guns, stuff like that), I post after reading all posts in the thread, then the thread dies off. Either it's the effect I have or it's the moment when I choose to post. Anyway, it should mean this thread wiull die soon.

Nice! Looks like a lot of fun too! I have a good hill where I live, there's even an annual street luge/long board/other gravity sports race each year.

I change at work and I don't sweat that much. I don't pedal at my maximum pace as I want to have some energy left to work.;)

The video quality of the trailer is really awesome, the best I've seen, great work!

I started biking to work for my new job: 20 km from home instead of 13 km for the old one. I work 4 days/week and bike for 2 days of those. For the other 2 days, I take my car but I'm trying to get the lowest consumption I can get with some (safe) hypermiling techniques. Driving at 90 km/h instead of 100 km/h can save me around 25% in gas consumption.

Habs are out as of tonight, I won't watch much hockey in the next weeks.

Hand made in the province of Québec!

Ouch, I wish you a fast and good recovery.

Those police goons will never cease to amaze me! I you got a ticket for speeding in a car, I would say "good for you, you deserve it". But speeding on a bicycle? That is just plain stupid on their part. If you didn't have an odometer, how would you know? You could easily contest it. If you have one, you could say it was not calibrated. I'm a bicycle militant, and some things I read just make me angry. Policemen always pick on the weakest: pedestrians and cyclist. it's not the cyclists that are dangerous on the streets and they don't cause the death of thousands of people each year.