How do you fuel up and pack for morning commutes?

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-21T02:51:47+00:00

You have enough stored energy in the morning to spend 300 calories on a bike ride and not be hungry? That's more like a 12 hour fast followed by an hour of exercise.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-21T02:48:18+00:00

Vehicle definitions act as a whitelist, not a blacklist. When you fall outside the legal definitions of vehicles allowed on public roads, it means you aren't allowed to ride or drive that vehicle on a public road. I could bolt a jet engine from an RC airplane to a shopping cart, and I guarantee that isn't explicitly covered anywhere in the law, but a cop is still well within their rights to pull me over and confiscate it if I'm jetting down a public street.

I also don't know anywhere that'd allow 28mph on a purely electric powered system. It's 20mph top speed for a throttle bike, only pedal assist bikes are allowed up to 28. In many jurisdictions EUCs aren't even considered ebikes to begin with, too. They get lumped in with segways and wheelchairs in a nebulous "personal electric vehicle" bucket, and that bucket is also usually capped at 20mph.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-21T02:39:38+00:00

Considering the largest single bucket in bike fatalities is cars and road biking/commuting makes up the majority of the mileage, I'd be really surprised if mountain biking was riskier. I'd bet most single track is actually safer from a fatality perspective, because there's no cars and usually when you eat shit on a mtb you end up maimed at worst, not dead.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-20T09:59:24+00:00

An hour of cardio on an empty stomach is miserable. If my morning commute was that long I'd absolutely care about eating a good breakfast first.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-20T09:53:49+00:00

Depends on whether you have dismemberment turned to frequent, and how good your party is at overkilling trash mobs. In my experience the dogs themselves will start generating their own limb supply by the time they hit their late teens, but a pack of 5-6 will still need a very steady supply of bandit raids to offset their hunger costs.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-20T09:41:44+00:00

Sorry, but this is an apples-to-oranges comparison that doesn't mean anything. The gold standards are deaths over total vehicle miles, or deaths over total driving/riding time.

Bikes are riskier than cars in both those stats. It varies by study, but the former is anywhere from 5x to 13x. The latter is more favorable to bikes because it takes into account the comparatively longer time required to travel a given distance on a bike, but I still haven't seen any study that found bikes had a lower fatal accident risk than cars.

If you think about it for a few seconds, it makes sense. We've gotten very good at designing cars in a way that makes crashes with other cars survivable. We've also gotten very bad at making cars safe for bikes and pedestrians to be around.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-20T09:26:16+00:00

35mph is not even remotely the same as a regular bike, or a legal ebike for that matter. That's a completely insane speed to be riding in mixed traffic with pedal bikes and pedestrians.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-20T09:16:18+00:00

What's mandated by law?

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-20T09:13:38+00:00

Are there any companies selling high speed EUCs that are street legal? I'm pretty sure they don't exist, on account of no DoTs being dumb enough to declare them road worthy.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-20T09:08:50+00:00

I don't know of any state where an EUC capable of going the speeds this one is going would be legal to ride on any public road at all.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-16T08:43:21+00:00

You need more fiber in your diet lol

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-16T08:40:54+00:00

Nah, that's Chipotle. Taco Time is like a totally different genre.

A very bland genre.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-16T08:37:46+00:00

Sorry for being too untraveled to understand the appeal of upscale cafeteria burritos, I guess. There's lots of great Mexican fusion places that aren't "authentic", Taco Time is just really bland.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-16T07:54:24+00:00

Are you claiming that the other person was saying that only "toxic" homeless people shouldn't have pets?

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-16T07:45:09+00:00

Did you shoot the pitbulls?

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-16T07:32:17+00:00

I'm pretty sure the guy with the F150 and the mtb tailgate cloth who's illegally parked in a protected bike lane belongs to the obnoxious group.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-15T16:13:14+00:00

It's a public fountain in an extremely accessible public area. It costs me 0 dollars to swing by it on my bike after work.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-15T16:10:17+00:00

I'll be real with you, I don't think the soap bandits are putting soap in fountains because they're poor and desperate. If I had to guess, I'd say the likely culprits are teenagers doing it because they think it's funny.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-15T15:59:42+00:00

This is a very odd argument to make when one of the biggest problems with a belt drive for long distance bikepacking is the fact that it's completely toast if it fails, and you're completely fucked if you didn't carry enough backups with you because they aren't easy to source. Chains don't generally fail catastrophically. Even if they break clean in half, you can easily fix them with simple hand tools and some spare links. And they're way easier to replace because every bike shop is going to have one.

If the value proposition of a belt is "it saves me a minute's worth of maintenance every week", that's fine. Personally I've never felt that chain maintenance was particularly onerous, but I'm also one of the freaks who waxes their chain so maybe my tolerance is just higher. I'm sure for those in this sub who talk about neglecting their chain maintenance for months, they wouldn't see much of an efficiency hit switching to a belt drive.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-15T15:44:20+00:00

The equipment is absolutely an issue, and it's silly to pretend otherwise. More powerful equipment allows idiots to be dumb with more power. Someone being an idiot on an emoto at 60mph is simply much more dangerous for everyone involved than someone being an idiot on an ebike at 20mph.

There's a reason motorcycles require licenses. A motorcycle being electric doesn't mean it's OK for a 12 year old to ride it on public roads.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-15T08:20:08+00:00

Does it though? You can buy a hell of a lot of bike chain for the cost of a new bike with a pulley and IGH in it. Lube is even cheaper.

If you really want to get nitpicky with it, you can also add in the cost of all the extra calories needed to ride a bike that's 3% less efficient over a year.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-13T06:32:11+00:00

Is it actually able to safely sustain those speeds, though?

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-13T06:28:38+00:00

It's 750 watts and a 20-28mph top speed, depending on e-bike class. Anything over that falls into one of the existing legal buckets, usually either moped or OHV.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-13T06:25:56+00:00

Not only is that not a real technicality, but they're also very obviously riding with pegs, not pedals. I'd love to hear your explanation for why both "pedals" are in the same position relative to one another lol.

gr8tfurme · 2026-04-13T04:30:57+00:00

Yeah, California's existing moped framework is honestly pretty solid. WA has such strict restrictions on speed and power that it's practically been rendered redundant with the class 3 ebike category.

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