All of the gear you don't need on your urban commuter bike (and a few things you do)

hey what's up everyone today we're talking about all the things you don't need on your urban or commuter bike and maybe a couple things that you do need as well hey everybody i'm tom and this is shifter a channel about urban cycling bike commuting and the ways we get around our city one of my mantras on this channel is that any bike is a great bike to ride my goal here is to see more people enjoy cycling the way i do because i think it's good for ourselves it's good for our cities and it's good for the planet and so i love the simplicity of cycling but a recent trip to a bike shop reminded me that sometimes it feels like the bike industry just seems really determined to complicate cycling new bikes are amazing and yeah i kind of want to buy them all but they also are loaded with all kinds of gear and technology and it got me wondering if we actually need all that stuff on our bikes and so what i thought i'd do is think back to all the years that i've been riding in a city and as a bike commuter and i thought today i'd let you know all the things that you probably don't need on your bike and a few things that you do for a happy urban bike life all right let's get started okay the first thing on my list of things you probably don't need on your urban bike suspension so sometime in the late 80s when mountain bikes totally took over the north american bicycle market somehow suspension systems became almost standard on a lot of bikes that are sold here but sometimes i think people buy them just because they look cool and aren't actually thinking about how they're used i mean if you're on a mountain trail full of rocks and dirt and roots that is really jarring your body of course suspension systems are helpful but you know it's not that rough usually concrete and asphalt cities are usually pretty smooth let's break this down even further i can't think of any situation in a city in which you need a rear suspension or a full suspension bike rear suspensions are expensive they're heavy and they're really made for those big big jarring bump blows on a mountain bike trail now front suspension i can see if you really live in a city that's full of cracks and potholes and i know a lot of cities are like that including mine in some cases they can be helpful but i think a lot of people don't really think about suspension also being a detriment to your ride if you have a really squishy suspension system and you're going up a hill sometimes a lot of that power that you're putting into the bike gets absorbed by the suspension system instead of getting transferred down to the road to propel you forward so it actually makes your riding a bit more inefficient a bit slower and a bit squishy or a bit harder to ride so if you really feel like you need suspension i say go for it but i'd say in most cases if you're only riding in a city on a bike that's never going to see a trail i don't think you need them and in some cases i think they actually make your life harder and while we're on the topic of mountain bikes dropper posts if you're not a mountain biker you may have never even heard of these but some mountain bikes these days are equipped with a thing called a dropper post a little button on your handlebar that raises and lowers your seat i mean this comes in handy if you're going up a hill and then you're ready to go down you want to change your position and the seat gets in the way but i can't think of a lot of scenarios in a city in which you can't just stop get off adjust your post and get back on i can't even remember the last time i changed my post anywhere i adjusted it save yourself some money forget the dropper post that's the extent of my tap dance skills number three on my list of things you probably don't need on your urban bike clip in pedals so a lot of bike racers and serious cyclists have these pedals and special shoes that connect there's a clip on the bottom that goes into your pedal the idea is that if your foot is a fixed ear pedal you can pull up as well as push down therefore getting more power and speed on your ride the side effect of that is that you get these weird shoes that are super stiff on the bottom hard to walk in and they make funny noises when you walk on your urban bike you're going to be getting on and off a lot you're going to stop at the grocery store you're going to go to the pub if you want to clip clop into the pub to meet your friends plus some studies have showed that the benefits of clip and pedals might be overrated because only it seems like only trained racers trained professionals can get the most out of it most of us get almost no power from the upswing and almost all from the downstroke so if you're not getting anything out of these pedals anyway why are you wearing the weird shoes oh regular shoes so much better okay next on my list of things you probably don't need is disc brakes now some of you are going to disagree with this but hear me out on a mountain bike if you're descending a trail really quickly and you're within four inches of your face becoming a tree trunk and the only thing to prevent it is your brakes then yeah disc brakes are absolutely gonna stop you faster than the old-fashioned kind of v-brakes or rim brakes i'd even say on a mount on a road bike if you're going downhill at 90 kilometers an hour disc brakes might be a good idea although the tour de france riders only adopted disc brakes a couple years ago and kind of reluctantly i'd even say on an e-bike because of the extra weight and speed disc brakes make are a good idea and maybe on a cargo bike and even my winter bike i have disc brakes because i find disc brakes withstand the mud and the gug and all that kind of stuff in a snowy climate but if you're riding your bike regularly 20 kilometers an hour on bike lanes safe bike lanes or pathways and you're not really in that much danger i'd say maybe you could be like millions of people all over the world for the last 150 years and just use old-fashioned rim brakes or v-brakes you'll probably be fine probably so remember earlier when i said that sometimes i worry the bike industry is just a little too focused on bike racing and they put a ton of focus on any little technological advantage in a bike and then use it to upsell you into a more expensive model right well i put carbon fiber frames into that category as well now don't get me wrong carbon fiber frames are amazing they make amazingly light bikes this bike is my old 10 year old cyclocross bike every time i pick it up i'm shocked how light it is and it only has a carbon fiber fork full carbon fiber bikes are sometimes hard to fathom how light they are and how strong they are but they can be can i say fragile is the wrong word but i'm going to say they can be a little fragile and if you're riding in a city and you're leaning your bike up against fences or sometimes it falls over or you're leaving it out where it can be stolen then i'd suggest that maybe carbon fiber is a little bit overkill in fact i'd say the bike industry's fixation on weight in general might be a little bit overkill i mean i understand if you're in a bike race every tenth of an ounce makes a difference but if you're just commuting to work or just riding around i'm willing to bet that that 10th of an ounce doesn't make as much difference in your overall ride as you think it does plus carbon fiber is expensive and it will just break your heart if your bike gets stolen so if you want to save yourself some anxiety and maybe a headache and maybe some money maybe stick with steel or aluminum or titanium even instead of carbon fiber you might be thankful for it in the long run number six is too many gears so i have a whole video out there about why i love my three speed internal hub i even have a soft spot for seven speeds but i do think most bikes sold these days are overloaded with too many gears you just in a city you just don't need them i find that even when i ride a bike with 18 or 21 speeds i usually stick to five or six or seven and that's the max and i actually get around every day using three speeds and i find the more you cut down the speeds the more you cut down on the maintenance required as well so think about cutting down on the number of gears and at the very least get rid of that front derailer you don't need that and you'll save yourself some headaches in the long run oh and while i'm squatting down here let's talk about tires this will be number seven are we in number seven i don't know what it's like in your city but because i live near the mountains the default bike around here is a mountain bike and they often come with knobby tires and i think some people forget how much difference smooth tires make on asphalt and pavement if you're going to make one change to your bike to make your urban life easier get some smooth tires next on my list of things you don't need i thought about modeling these for you but nobody wants to see me in lycra lycra shorts are amazing on long rides those padded butts you'll be thankful for if you're going on a 100 kilometer ride or you're out for days and days upon at a time but if you're just riding to work or riding to the neighborhood pub or the grocery store do you really need to dress up like a cyclist why can't you just wear your regular clothes and ditch the athletic wear if you're worried about sweat just slow down no one's measuring your speed and time anyway just get where you need to go remember it's about the destination not the journey okay that's enough about things you don't need on your bike now i'm going to give you a few things that you do need or at least things that i use all the time that i really like have you read jodie rosen's new book called two wheels good it's a good one anyway in it he makes the point that the bike is an urban machine it's easy to forget that these days in north america especially when so much of cycling is focused on road racing or mountain biking or bmxing the sport side of cycling but fundamentally for most of its existence and in the most of the world right now the bike is a machine for getting around cities in fact you could say the one thing that defines the difference between a city bike and one of those other kinds of bikes is practicality and the most practical thing you can do to your bike and i've said this before is make it so you can carry stuff so key to an urban bike is a rack you need to be able to carry stuff to make your bike a truly functional practical urban machine get a rack which leads me to the next thing you need on your bike once you've got the rack is you need a carrying device of some kind a basket that goes on the back or the front pannier bags you want to get the stuff off your backpack and into onto the bike because it makes the ride that much more pleasant i've got another video about this that i'll link below but those are two important things to your urban bike life a rack and something to carry stuff with so my next thing that you want on your urban bike is i'm kind of embarrassed to say a new one to me and that is a kickstand now for a long time i resisted having a kickstand i don't know why i thought it was like too heavy or ruined the sleekness or the aesthetic of the bike but i got one recently and i'm like why did it take me so long the kickstand is so practical i use it all the time you can't it's better than leaning your bike against some random fence post or a bollard or something like that and what does it weigh as much as a water bottle it's not going to slow you down get a kickstand don't be like me here's another one of those no brainer things that i don't know why everyone doesn't have these and why it took me so long fenders if you're going to ride every day to work or somewhere practical your pants are going to get dirty unless you have fenders just get them okay accessories now i can sympathize with those people who think that too many accessories ruin the vibe of your bike nobody wants their handlebars too loaded up with stuff but there are a few accessories that come in handy for me one is a bell it actually may be the law in your city to have a bell at the very least it's a courteous thing to alert other people to your presence lights uh there's all kind of lights out there i prefer the hub dynamo kind they're powered by your pedaling but these aftermarket lights are great now how do you turn this one off there you go a phone holder i use this peak design case and i really love it it is nice to have your phone accessible because you can look at it for directions and that kind of thing it's just a nice to have kind of thing i would say it's crucial what is crucial is a good lock your bike is going to get stolen so make it as hard as possible for a thief don't cheap out on the lock i mean there's lots of other things you can consider too a chain guard i don't know reflectors they're not as good as lights but they're better than nothing flags streamers i don't know accessorize your bike as you see fit make it your own so that's it those are the things i like on my bike so i hope that was helpful again no judgment on anyone for the way they ride their bike i think it's great for anyone to ride i'm just here trying to maybe simplify things a little bit in a world that likes to over complicate things so i hope that was helpful and thanks for watching i'll see you next time

Channel: Shifter

Views: 371,902

Keywords:

Id: S3lXVwb2W04

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2022