Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on two single speed bikes, and the two couldn’t be more different. Loyal readers have seen these bikes before.
One is the Critical Cycles bike that Pete Prebus reviewed here, but with an E-Bike Kit. The other is my grandfather’s Murray Montery, which has finally started to receive my fix-up attention.
The Critical Cycles bike has a pretty high gear. I’m not sure I’d like it on the hills around here. I’m a fan of multiple gears, and hell yes I’m going to use that motor on the uphills of my commute. I’m not hauling 25 pounds of battery and motor around for a workout.
The Murray bike is old and even without a motor and battery it’s almost as heavy as the other bike. The gear is pretty low. I can climb the local hills if I stand on my pedals and huff it. But I spin out when I get in the neighborhood of 20 miles per hour.
The other day, Dara Marks came by and asked me some good questions about the demographics of Commute by Bike readers, like, Where do you people live?
I didn’t have an answer, so I looked it up on Google Analytics. The top 20 cities that visit this Web site are:
- New York
- London
- Los Angeles
- Chicago
- San Francisco
- Seattle
- Toronto
- Portland
- Montreal
- Washington
- Sydney
- Melbourne
- Denver
- Singapore
- Phoenix
- Minneapolis
- San Diego
- Vancouver
- Austin
- Boston
Well Selamat tengah hari Singapore! Nice to see you here.
So what this really tells me is… not much.
Densely-populated, North American, English-speaking cities are well represented in the top 10, followed by more densely-populated, English-speaking cities from everywhere. (Singapore, with a population greater than Los Angeles, probably has just as many English speakers as L.A., so I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised.)
So what are you people really like?
Looking at these single-speed bikes, I think I see a single-question personality test. (e.g. Favorite Beatle?, Grumpy genius or a happy idiot?, Crowded party or quiet library? Ginger or Mary Ann? Presta or Schrader?)
I think the answer to this question will tell me a lot.
Here goes: