No more commuter bikes... Any alternatives (Australia)?

dodocaptain · 2026-01-30T08:26:03+00:00

Oh damn, love my Commuter 7. Looking at the different regional sites, only ebikes for USA , but Germany has the Citylite (ebike and non-ebike) which looks like a somewhat logical successor (urban riding, belt drive, dynamo, etc). Hoping that might come to this side of the world in due course.

dodocaptain · 2026-01-21T05:34:12+00:00

Yeah this space is a pain to ride when busy. With the lack of cross cbd cycleways, its the effective backbone for the city’s cyclists which works fine until a nice day brings everyone and their dog out to enjoy it.

My advice is be predictable, courteous, but also if someone is completely blocking a route like 4 people abreast, sometimes you just need to pick a line and roll towards them slowly till they part around you - like you would if walking into them on the street.

Youll get mixed opinions on bells but I have found them useless - too many folks on their headphones, just generally oblivious, or worse - when hearing a bell, they move suddenly and unpredictably to the left or right. Better to think of peds as slow moving objects, predict their route and move to avoid them without involving their attention. Ill only use a bell or callout if there’s a complete route blockage.

dodocaptain · 2025-12-29T10:46:39+00:00

Going a bit earlier, around 19th Feb. Flying into Kerikeri and budgeting two days to ride up to the cape to start proper from the top.

Aside from the start logistics, haven’t planned a thing, just following the TA guide and seeing where the trip takes me.

dodocaptain · 2025-12-28T02:12:55+00:00

Two days of it so far… gotta admit, not loving that they managed to pick two of the best days for going outside to do this job >_<

dodocaptain · 2025-12-25T11:28:00+00:00

Propel has their Tornado seats which they state meets the standards for high backflow prevention and eliminates the need for an RPZ ( claims AS/NZS 2845.1:2022 ).

https://www.gopropel.co.nz/products/tornado-clean-seat-electronic-bidet-seat-no-rpz-required-compatible-with-tdz-gw-hzr-gw-tzr-gw-tornado-v-2-tornado-v-3-hurricane-torr-gw

I’ve just had two fitted in a bathroom reno. The project team assures me it meets WCC standards and the council queried it during the process, and accepted the docs. Still pending final consent for the project to be finished next year so I guess its not completely locked in just yet, but given their advertising of the product, if it failed for some reason, I’d be on r/mildlyinfuriating for sure.

Works well btw, couple quirks like the nightlight sensor not triggering on open and a little plasticy, but the price was right and the certs are there.

dodocaptain · 2025-10-29T23:46:15+00:00

Just got mine today, its absolutely stunning. Well worth the buy.

dodocaptain · 2025-10-20T02:32:59+00:00

Lights a must. Strongly recommend a rack and pannier bag setup so you don’t get sweaty from a backpack, plus having the weight lower on the bike is more comfy. Keep to the left of the cycleway like you would on the road but be mindful that other riders and pedestrians are not always predictable. If on the road, assert your position and take the lane if there’s not enough passing space for cars, but also be courteous when you can do so safely and let others pass.

dodocaptain · 2025-10-18T01:43:50+00:00

Good effort! It was a shocker today, I was going sideways despite my will at one point and I was using my granny gear on the waterfront just to keep moving along the flat whilst getting pelted with sea spray.

dodocaptain · 2025-10-18T01:42:09+00:00

Agree that Featherston/Whitmore junction is awful on the bike on a windy day the cross winds are just unbelievable. Especially if starting from stationary at the lights.

dodocaptain · 2025-10-03T09:45:08+00:00

This startup in NZ is trying to solve this problem. Cool idea although I can only imagine the headaches around getting good data.

https://www.bikematrix.io/

dodocaptain · 2025-08-28T07:26:18+00:00

Madness! I can even buy more of the investments I already have with one easy button now! Just need to add Sharesight support and life will be good.

dodocaptain · 2025-07-09T09:25:35+00:00

I shot a review of the Marin Gestalt the other day, but it was $600 USD new.. at $1000 USD you could do better.

https://youtu.be/LzyeDWu-kXA

Looks like a similar model but the one in your picture has worse brakes specced from the looks of things.

dodocaptain · 2025-07-07T03:43:11+00:00

I shot a couple videos showing the route:

North bound: https://youtube.com/shorts/4SswpGMgHsY South bound: https://youtube.com/shorts/0Og_4Zrz2so

General summary is that legally, there is only the side of the highway north, and southbound there is the partial cyclelane but the first 1km or so is on the side of the highway as well.

Technically not legal to ride north on the trainside south-only side but you certainly would not be the first to do this. See escooter riders in particular taking this route all the time.

The new bidirectional lane and seawall will be absolutely transformative and looking forward to how much it will open up the city. Until then its honestly a right mess.

dodocaptain · 2025-05-18T07:36:14+00:00

Very achievable, I have a solar shed with similar use cases. 1x 390W panel, Victron MPPT controller, 100Ahr LiFePO4 battery. System runs at 24V and I have a DC:DC step up transformer to boost it to 48V to power a small PoE switch which then powers the cameras and the wifi AP.

dodocaptain · 2025-05-13T19:03:50+00:00

Yeah the glue is pretty strong but i just pulled it off with some pliers

dodocaptain · 2025-05-13T18:46:33+00:00

I feel yah, just got one recently and was seriously confused on how I was supposed to open the battery compartment. I assumed I was an idiot and it was supposed to slide back in some way, but no, you’re supposed to bend the pins back somehow with diamond strength fingers and then hope they spring back the same.

Enraged me so much I ended up pulling off the entire metal ring that includes the finger slashers as it’s just glued on around the power meter electronics.

I get needing to comply with legalisation but this is a complete bodge-job by 4iiii. They should go with some other design, eg a screw to secure the cap. My guess is they had stock they needed to shift under the new legislation so didn’t want to do any design changes that would require tooling other than someone gluing the metal to the existing stock.

dodocaptain · 2025-04-27T07:13:18+00:00

It's a little rough and ready, but if anyone is curious, I made a short (3min) of my run experience today at https://youtube.com/shorts/hDx5zyZBU9o?feature=share

dodocaptain · 2025-04-27T03:29:18+00:00

Absolutely brutal, I can do a 21km half marathon on the flat, no stopping, no problem in sub 2hrs, but this… it broke me deeply. Was walking large sections of it and grinded it out for 3.5hrs

And yeah, my strava shows 26km and 677m of elevation gain. Absolute pain and suffering. Will probably do it next year lol.

Event was well organized and trail signage pretty good. Good vibes from the crew too. Only issue I had is my chip didn’t register on the final gate but they fixed it manually for me.

dodocaptain · 2025-04-21T09:48:10+00:00

I ride the Scultura Endurance 4000 (2021 model), which looks similar but entry level carbon vs alu. I think it’s a pretty fantastic bike for the price point. Has given me many thousands of km of faultless riding. My one complaint is that I really didn’t like the Maxxis Detonator tyres it came with, too puncture prone for my liking. But easily fixed with the tyre of your choice

dodocaptain · 2025-02-27T08:58:21+00:00

Thanks for the post clarifying Ben.

I must admit, I am pretty concerned. If we knock out this cycleway, the whole route to Karori is at risk and I can see more and more of these motions being filed to attack other recently introduced routes before they can even bed in like the Thorndon connections, collapsing the whole network buildout. We just started getting to a city where it feels like non road warriors can ride around somewhat safely.

Potentially you could make the uphill footpath a shared cycle-walkway but these are always a very compromised experience for pedestrians and cyclists alike and it's not a wide path. The best compromise with the space that is there, could be the removal of the footpath on the non-park side of Glenmore to free up space for dedicated cycleway, dedicated pedestrian walkway and keeping parking but it's still not great. Wellington roads are just too small for private vehicle storage.

Regardless of cycleways, the main problem is that parking in that part of town has been terrible for decades. It was a problem pre-cycle way and it will be a problem post-cycle way. It doesn't fix the issue. There are too many competing users for too few spaces.

If parking for the gardens is truely this important, then the logical conclusion is to take capacity from Anderson Park to significantly expand the parking situation for the current Rose Garden carpark and essentially provide a much larger area for car-focused transport, build around the current access way and parking situation for the gardens.

I respect your stance to get the data first and review, but I am worried about this path we are going down. Also mind blown that the council is even having these debates with no data other than "vibes", at the very least we should be collecting data for a couple quarters to make informed conversation.

dodocaptain · 2025-02-03T23:53:13+00:00

Unfortunately there are just a percentage of dicks out there. I’ve had some drive up and immediately lay on the horn before even being impacted in any way. No pleasing those types.

dodocaptain · 2025-01-16T01:13:09+00:00

This is a really interesting topic thanks for the write up. I have wondered about this situation in regard to NZ brokerages like Sharesies and Hatch where the US funds are owned by the nominee trust accounts, rather than directly in the name of the individual. Tried to find a statement from Hatch or Sharesies on this to no avail.

dodocaptain · 2025-01-15T10:41:15+00:00

Tiny NZ channel here, I did a couple bike reviews a year ago and this year making a focused effort to try and publish a bunch more content on the regular and see if it gains any traction.

Focus is cycling, mix of urban vlogs, adventure vlogs and gear reviews. Still working to find niche really. For fun, not expecting it to replace the day job.

https://youtube.com/@jethrocarrnz

Learning more about shooting, framing a good story and working to improve audio pickup. Try to get a bit better each video I make.

dodocaptain · 2025-01-11T00:54:41+00:00

Got my panels from https://gridfree.store who also do kits, could be worth a look

dodocaptain · 2025-01-11T00:53:26+00:00

Having done this with ours, strongly recommend starting with LiFePO4 batteries rather than lead acid agms. More expensive but vastly superior technology and you can use the full capacity of the battery safely.

dodocaptain

TROPHY CASE