About
Like my IG profile currently says: I learned how to ride a bicycle at around 5 years old and I never quit. I wasn’t terribly athletic or coordinated as a kid but I certainly loved riding bikes, sneaking a peek at the BMX Plus or various mountain bike magazines in my backpack at school whenever I could and hopping on my bike as soon as I got home. I even got a paper route when I was about 13 and delivered newspapers by bike back when that was a thing kids still did.
As I got to the age where I could get my drivers’ license most of the friends that I rode with had quit in favor of spending time and money on cars, but I looked at is as an opportunity to be able to drive to places I had never ridden before, or go to my favorite bike shop that was a 30 minute drive away without having to ask my parents for a lift. My first two cars almost always had a BMX bike sitting in the back seat every single day.
And while I’ve been riding bicycles most of my life, I never actually tried a road bike until early 2009 during my senior year of college. I was immediately hooked with this style of riding, going faster than I was used to and racking up the miles. It’s funny to look back on it now and how I started riding with sneakers and jeans!
How long have you been cycle commuting?
Aside from a handful of times I may have ridden to the grocery store I worked at in high school, my first “real” bike commute was on Bike To Work Day in May 2011, when I still lived in Massachusetts. That was a short lived endeavor, however, as the only routes I could take to work made for pretty miserable rides, and my employer and coworkers were not terribly supportive of the idea.
I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in early 2012 and got a job by the summer. Shortly after that I got my own place that was closer to work and that September I started bike commuting on the days it didn’t rain. It didn’t take long until I got fed up with driving on days it was supposed to rain and didn’t, and came to loathe driving in rush hour traffic more and more, so at some point in 2013 I put Crud Road Racer fenders on my road bike and was riding every day no matter the weather!
Your Commute
My original commute in Charlotte was about 25 miles round trip and almost half of it was on roads with bike lanes. While I don’t love bike lanes all the time, having access to bike lanes certainly helped me make the decision to try riding to work again after my poor experience in Massachusetts.
Two years ago my company moved into a bigger facility and I got lucky in that the office was now closer to home, but my commute went down to a little under 15 miles round trip. I found that while I loved getting home quicker I missed the extra miles quite a bit, and since bike commuting makes up the majority of my time in the saddle I usually add a 10-12 mile “detour” most mornings to get about 25 miles a day on average.
I’ll ride in basically any weather, even in the pouring rain or the rare chance we get some snow. Our coldest winter temperatures rarely get below 20F (-7C), which is usually far too cold for most cyclists who have lived here a while but it doesn’t bother me much. I find the summers more difficult, where it can get to nearly 100F (38C) day after day and only early morning rides are really enjoyable.
Over the years I’ve ended up with quite a collection of gear to battle the weather. Some of my best investments have been Northwave winter cycling boots for the really cold days and a Gore-Tex waterproof rain jacket that I picked up on clearance for less than half price, although my go-to jacket this time of year is a Sugoi Zap my wife bought me because it’s fully reflective and still really warm. For more recent purchases I’ve been super happy with my Showers Pass gloves and rain pants to make our wet winters a bit less miserable. As much as I love being a cheapskate and saving money, sometimes cycling gear (and especially bad weather gear) is worth splurging on and I still use some things I’ve owned nearly ten years.
Your bikes
My current daily driver is a custom built Fairdale Weekender Nomad with handbuilt wheels, dynamo hub powered lights, PDW Full Metal Fenders, and Sram 1×11 drivetrain with hydraulic disc brakes. It replaced a Niner RLT9 frame that cracked a few weeks ago, just short of hitting the 25,000 mile mark. Disc brakes and full coverage fenders are critical for an all-weather commuting bike. Less critical is having a rack for pannier bags, although now that I’ve come so used to having panniers I can’t stand the times I commute on a different bike and need to use a backpack.
I have a Fairdale Goodship I built for regular road riding on weekends, although it has done the job as a backup commuter quite a few times. It actually replaced the first road bike I commuted on until I was able to build the RLT9 as a purpose built commuter. For mountain biking I ride a Canyon Lux, which thankfully has never been called up for commuting duty as its dreamy ride quality on the trails does not translate onto the roads at all.
Any top tips?
My top tip for bike commuting is: make sure to have fun! Try to get out and meet other bike commuters, either networking on IG and Facebook or asking around at local bike shops. Don’t be afraid to take the long way home, and don’t be afraid to change up your route if it sucks at first. Some days it’s easy to feel discouraged, but pretty much every day it’s better than being stuck in a car feeling absolutely helpless. Even the days with the worst weather can make you feel so alive.
My top tip for bikes in general is: learn to fix your own stuff! I grew up in an area where all the bike shops nearby would take advantage of people who brought their bike in to get fixed and charge ridiculous prices for replacement parts, so I taught myself how to do most of my own maintenance using a Bicycling Magazine bike mechanics book and tools I picked up from mail order catalogs. I can’t imagine how many hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars I’ve saved over the years doing my own maintenance, not to mention minimizing downtime since I never have to leave my bike at the shop for a week waiting on a mundane service. There are so many resources out there now, especially YouTube channels like Park Tools, GMBN, and GCN, that can help you learn basic maintenance and repairs. A lot of it isn’t as hard as it looks! You don’t need to be an expert on bleeding brakes or rebuilding suspension, but be sure you can change a flat, replace a chain, or make common roadside fixes so you can avoid that call of shame to your significant other to pick you up when things go awry.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rob_rides_bikes
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