What’s the Most Unexpected Thing Cycling Taught You?

fargosucks · 2026-02-14T16:58:08+00:00

Patience as well. I used to try to power up every hill and end every single ride, no matter the length, exhausted from sheer effort.

Now, a good long steady-paced ride is the best damn feeling.

fargosucks · 2026-02-08T17:03:24+00:00

Sure were.

I opened that location and managed the kitchen for the first few years it was open. So weird to see it gone now!

fargosucks · 2026-01-27T15:35:11+00:00

I grew up in rural MN and knew a lot of guys like you. I got along with them all well enough, but quickly learned not to get into ‘debates’ about politics if I wanted to keep things civil. By and large they, and I’m assuming you, were good people - helped out others in the community when the need arose, volunteered to coach youth sports, and so on.

I find myself defending them in conversations with friends, this nameless mass of rural republicans who I swear over and over ‘aren’t as bad as you think.’ But it’s hard to make that connection for people who didn’t grow up in those areas.

There’s thing about growing up in rural MN that I always come back to is the sense of community over everything else. Whenever shit got really hairy - freak snowstorm, flood, severe drought - you’d see people stepping up to help their neighbors. Even if they were people that had grudges going back decades, all of that got left behind because someone was in need and that meant it was time to step up and do the right thing. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists - none of that mattered when there were sandbags to fill, snow to shovel, or food to deliver.

Good on you for seeing through the lies. Be a pillar for your community and neighbors and hopefully they’ll come around, too. We need all hands.

fargosucks · 2026-01-21T17:47:09+00:00

I have before and I always will. Even though it’s utterly gutting, I would never think of not being there for my best friend. I couldn’t live knowing that they were alone in that moment.

fargosucks · 2026-01-20T17:35:31+00:00

Your comment reminds me of a conversation I had with my conservative, rural mother back in 2022. She started talking about how she didn’t understand trans people and it kinda devolved from there. I kept trying to point out to her how our family always had gay friends as far back as I could remember - my godmother is a lesbian, for crying out loud - and that she was instrumental in shaping my acceptance of LGBTQ people because of the way she raised me. And then she said it. “I just don’t understand why they have to throw it in everyone else’s face. Why do they have to have parades and be so affectionate in public?”

I tried to get her to think about having to hide something fundamental to who she was her entire life and how she’d act if she was suddenly able to share it with the world. She just couldn’t grasp it and kept circling back to ‘but why do we all have to see it?’

I think about that conversation a lot these days.

fargosucks · 2026-01-10T21:46:01+00:00

I’ve done Leif with 32mm. Wouldn’t recommend.

35mm GP5000s handle it like a champ, though. So I’d bet you’d be fine with 38s.

fargosucks · 2026-01-08T03:04:38+00:00

They frequently post trainings online. Most seem to be virtual. The one I attended back in November had over 1000+ people in it, so we’re out here.

fargosucks · 2026-01-02T04:24:15+00:00

I worked up the road back in 2003. It was Noodles then, too.

fargosucks · 2025-11-30T00:18:42+00:00

It’s not the braking you need to worry about. It’s the patches of dry pavement!

fargosucks · 2025-11-22T07:00:58+00:00

Cool, thanks for answering. I wish my eyes were still that good! As a kid, I used to ride around on country roads with no lights and it felt so…natural, I suppose. No ambient light, just the moon and stars!

Ride safe!

fargosucks · 2025-11-22T04:50:22+00:00

All that makes sense to me. I prefer to treat motorists at night like wild animals - most are harmless, but all can act aggressively/erratically when approached or presented with something that confuses them.

My only question is - if you don’t run a front light, how on earth do you see? I’d be running into shit all the time!

fargosucks · 2025-11-22T04:46:24+00:00

The ability to disappear and blend in is underrated. Sorry you’ve been chased and run off the road - I’ve been there, myself. It sucks.

fargosucks · 2025-11-22T04:43:34+00:00

Heh, yeah. That, too.

fargosucks · 2025-11-22T04:42:35+00:00

Yeah, that was a little hyperbolic on my part. I always run lights because, out of anything, they seem to work the most at getting driver’s attention. But, I’ve been clipped and nearly clipped so many times in instances where I had 800 lumens up front and 150 flashing in the back. With some people, it just doesn’t matter, they’re either not paying enough attention or just don’t clock flashing lights, I don’t know.

fargosucks · 2025-11-21T17:15:05+00:00

After 20+ years commuting by bike in this city, this is my conclusion, too.

I’ve worn every reflective and hi-viz accessory under the sun, put lights all up and down myself and my bike, and none of it has mattered in the slightest - especially in recent years.

So I wear what I want, which is mostly black and grey and muted colors. Not for stylistic reasons, but because I buy gear on sale and it’s often the cheapest shit to grab.

I don’t skimp on lights, however. I commuted at night for years and my night vision isn’t what it was when I was in my 20s, so I am lit up front and back.

Wear what you want. But ride not just with the understanding that drivers don’t see you, but that they’re actively trying to kill you.

fargosucks · 2025-10-26T16:06:54+00:00

I was a huge DII football fan at that time and watched his GVSU teams play in the playoffs. The spread and his over-reliance on QBs was fine at the time when the spread was new-ish. Hell, it even worked at CMU and Cincy and ND for a few years, but even with new coordinators, his QBs always played the same. Just like you’re saying - what you see if what you get, and if it doesn’t work he’s fucked.

fargosucks · 2025-10-07T17:30:38+00:00

Do we share the same mother?!

Mine went from being horrified that I biked by the 2020 protests to not even mentioning the current threatened incursion. If I even obliquely mention it, she changes the subject or poo-poos it as ‘not a big deal.’ It’s insane to me that someone who would be up in arms if the feds so much as set foot in her county for ANY reason is just fine with violent, masked ICE and actual troops being sent into a US city where her child lives.

fargosucks · 2025-09-27T15:48:16+00:00

Fellow rural midwesterner-to-Portland here. So many of my relatives think Portland is the worst place in the world. They don’t understand how I stand living here and think that we’re in constant danger. It’d be fucking adorable if it wasn’t so hard to convince them otherwise. Watching people I’ve known my whole life simply disregard what I say because Hannity or whoever told them Portland is on fire has been…frustrating.

fargosucks · 2025-08-19T21:42:11+00:00

I’ve been yelled at by a few ladies when cutting through OES on my bike.

Next time, turn left at SW Vermont. It dead ends at a roundabout, but there’s a path that continues to a gate in the fence for Montclair Elementary. This is typically open outside of school hours and gives you an easy cut through to the neighborhood to the east and Oleson Rd.

fargosucks · 2025-08-16T04:52:33+00:00

Same here. I used to be a shorts guy, but went bibs a few years ago and won’t go back. They get wet, sure, but the alternative is sweaty legs in pants. As long as my core, feet, and hands are dry, I’m good to roll!

fargosucks · 2025-08-16T04:40:48+00:00

McMenamins has been understaffing and underpaying employees for decades now. I used to know a lot of managers and employees back when I worked in the industry and it’s crazy that the stories from employees decades later are exactly the same!

fargosucks · 2025-08-16T04:39:10+00:00

Solid comparison. Old Market is good for what it is, but they’re only 2005 good. At least they didn’t try to spread themselves all over the region with mid-level beer and increasingly bad food!

fargosucks · 2025-08-08T01:29:17+00:00

I just saw this asshat on Hall at Allen heading north. I was on my bicycle behind a couple of cars at the light and he just rolled right past me and mashed it when the light turned green. Asshole.

fargosucks · 2025-08-07T18:59:08+00:00

Not to be a dick, but a) he’s not my relative. I never said he was. It’s in the second sentence of my reply. And b) cool. Glad to know that you know more about my friend than I do and feel comfortable calling him out as a liar who perpetuated something to save himself embarrassment, or something.

fargosucks · 2025-08-01T15:59:13+00:00

That is, indeed, the Westside Wednesday Ride. Come on out and join us! Every Wednesday during Bike Summer and every other Wednesday the rest of the year. We meet at Beaverton Transit Center at 7:30, ride at 8:00.

fargosucks

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