This makes me think of how my parents’ generation would drive across town to save 5 cents on gas. Assuming a 13 gallon tank, you’re saving about 65 cents. Congratulations, big winner coming through! I will pay that 65 cents to have an extra 10 minutes of time to myself and have a hard time seeing how anyone would rather have the 65 cents.

Do you prefer the praying mantis bars, or the under-seat steering? I hear you on the price, I’ve been eying the Hase Pino Tandem for a while now. The driver is upright in the back, while another rider can pedal along recumbent in front. It’s a marvel. Test rode it 2-3 times and I just can’t bring myself to fork over that much dough unless I have to (which is why most of the recumbent riders in my life did it). Also knowing I’ll have ongoing maintenance costs the whole time I have it and some of those parts may not be off the shelf.

The guys who ride the recumbent trikes have it made though, they can pull up their wheeled lawnchairs in a circle and reach behind them into the attached cooler for some snacks.

They neglected road maintenance for decades in a climate with hot summers and cold winters so large cracks developed across the roadways every 10 feet. If I stood for every bump, i would never sit down. I bought a suspension seatpost.

It’s a great way of smoothing out the smaller bumps, or the rumble of crumbling asphault. That’s about what I paid for mine. Unlike a suspension that will suck away my power, once I stand up, the bike is as rigid and connected as ever. When I sit down it’s like I’m floating on a pillow a few inches above my speeding bike. I set it per their suggestion but when I have some time I want to see if I can get it tuned in even better for me.

Thought the same, sitting on this things looks about as risky as teabagging the moving parts in an elliptical machine.

Then you can use your glovebox battery to jump your main battery when you leave the light on!

I hear you on the storage. I just bought a new mountain bike, I was flabbergasted that a lot/most of trail bikes don’t have mount points for a rack. How am I supposed to carry all my stuff off road? Im not oblivious to the fact that I bought a sport focused bike, but ut would be nice to have the option if I wanted to travel further and with a little bit of cargo. At the very least I need 2 locks, my wallet, keys, phone, extra layer for when it gets cold, puncture kit, snacks, water. I also didn’t expect to notice how different the weight and center of gravity was compared to the ebike, but it’s obvious even when I’m shuffling them around the garage.

Having said that, if anyone frowns on you potentially acquiring another bike you can tell them Lemmy thought it was a good idea. :P

“We’ve installed malicious spyware on your computer without you asking for it, but don’t worry, it’s off by default.”

“No.” (Installs GNU/Linux)

As someone who has lustfully gazed at one too many tandem, cargo ebikes the prices go WAAAAYY higher. :)

If you want to give up weight, you’ll likely have to give up some power. I bought a Specialized Turbo Vado SL a few years ago and it’s 35 lbs, class 3 with 35mm tires. I’ve seen people fit larger ones, but I bought this thing for the weight.

It’s class 3 and fairly light, but it won’t drag me up the side of a mountain without my help. It was still worth it to me because I wanted a light bike that I could keep riding after running out of power. My partner bought me a nice solid basket that I fill up in the store and it clicks right into the rack so I can carry some groceries, 2 locks, a backpack, etc. I would guess with the basket, fenders, extra lights, and a coat of dust it would probably weigh within a pound or two of your limit.

All that to point out that you can go lighter, but there may be a tradeoff. I think the other folks who suggested different ways of carrying the bike probably have more affordable short-term solutions than acquiring more bikes… though less fun. :)

I’d bet that these damn lifted F150/Ram coal roller assholes kill and injure way more innocent bystanders than ebikes and electric motorcycles combined. Obviously there has to be a cutoff when you can’t use multipurpose paths and a cutoff for when you need a license, but focusing on this seems like such a misalignment of priorities.

There were apps out there to help with this when I switched from Spotify to Tidal. I can’t remember the name anymore though. It just sucks up all your saved songs and playlists, matches them in the other service then adds them. Almost everything I had moved over without a problem. I do miss the social aspect of Spotify, being able to share links with friends. No one I know has tidal except the people on my family plan. There are services that will turn your song link into a linktree like page with links for Spotify, tidal, YouTube music, deezer, etc., but that’s clunky.

Also, the worst hemmeroids ever and a special CEO diet consisting of nothing but exlax and habanero peppers.

Nextcloud was somewhat difficult for me the first time I installed it, though I did have a usable system in the end. Then I discovered Nextcloud AIO and haven’t had an issue since.

I’m no expert. I want to include that disclaimer up front.

Nextcloud with block storage on btrfs with snapshots seems like it could work for you. No idea about VFS though. I’ll leave that question for someone more knowledgeable. The “drive” portion of Nextcloud is quite decent. I regularly use it to pass large files between my phone (Android), laptop (Linux) and gaming desktop (Windows).

If enough people vote third party, it’s supposed to pull the big two towards them to recapture those voters. If the Dems aren’t courting these voters, it’s their fault and an indication that they can’t be trusted to represent us. Instead, they ignored us completely and will continue down the same bullshit paths that brought us here. If we don’t vote third party, nothing will change because the Dems view us as suckers who will fall in line. That’s why they shamelessly did Bernie dirty. Biden and the Dems have been flopping around their hardon for Israel while it’s obviously splitting their base. It’s almost like they want to lose.

Having said all that, I may vote for Biden this time anyway because I told myself long ago that I would vote for the first prez who rescheduled or legalized cannabis.

Interestingly, a similar problem as with bike infrastructure. The infrastructure isn’t useful until a lot of it is built and it connects everywhere (and timetables get shorter for trains). The infrastructure won’t pass public opinion until it’s proven to be useful to people. I will always vote yes on funding these projects even if I think they will bomb because it puts us a little closer to the peak of that hill. Its still frustrating though. We could easily do like we did with the freeways if we just decided it was worth building.

Agreed. I love trains and it frustrates me to see them bungling the implementation. When they try, they always seem to make the same mistakes trying to bring it to my area.

To see meaningful ridership out here, the train needs to go fast enough to negate the penalty you get at the other end when you have to go from the station to your destination. They wanted to run them at ~55-70mph here, with a few stops between major cities, to parallel a freeway that is 65-75mph. Drive 1 hour (1:10 with parking) or spend 2 hours going to the station, riding a slow train, then going from the station to where you are going? I hate cars, but as someone who only gets a handful of hours to myself after sleep, work, and chores, I’m going to save my time and pick the car. If they ever build the train, as it is planned right now, it’ll just be another commuter train that’s only really used at rush hour when the roads are jammed rather than an all day all week car replacement solution that I can ride to Sunday night dinner at a friends house as easily as a 6am meeting.

/un-requested rant

Ya know, I’ve been saving better than most my age. 401k, savings account, emergency fund, investments, crypto, etc. and I keep being reminded that no matter how much I save, I’ll still never achieve the American dream without help.

Something that stuck with me from at least a decade back was multimodal transit, aka cars that can become trains and vice versa. Imagine driving your low speed cargo pod car thing to the local train station and hitching together with a bunch of others before making the hour trip to a neighboring city on rails at high speed only to split up automatically at the other end and continue to your separate destinations. Its a combination of the efficiencies of transit and the freedoms of an individualized last mile solution. It reduces the need for freeways without hurting mobility at the origin/ destination.

Lol, I would love it if someone coded a plugin that solved all of these captchas for me.