bicycle

6/6/2023: Owen Egerton’s Last One Page Salon

~ A Dude Abikes ~ Leave a comment

Owen Egerton founded One Page Salon nine and three-quarters years ago. Now he’s leaving for greener, cooler, and less politically conservative pastures than Texas. From Austin to Boston, to be exact. I wrote about this monthly series where writers read a page of a work in progress two months and two days ago here at this link. (You know you want to click and go read it and then come back. Be my guest.) But since this was his last OPS, it’s worth another post. It was a fitting tribute and send-off with some special guests. Let’s just say we all got a little verklempt from all the feels, as the kids say.

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Biking and Other Goals — When Will Power Isn’t Enough

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 7 Comments

Five months of 2023 are gone with seven to go. One may wonder–quite reasonably–where has the time gone? What have they accomplished thus far, and what’s to come? The year is almost half gone, so what is there to show for it? Only you can answer for yourself (and only YOU can prevent forest fires). In my case, it’s the usual, which is more than nothing, but it’s less than I’d like. Reflection can be good up to point (not great if you’re a vampire looking into a mirror). Action is what propels us forward. Into what, though? The breach? Good trouble, or the other kind? We can hope for the former, be realistic, and remain vigilant that bad luck may find us despite our best efforts to avoid it. We humans try to keep reevaluating and chipping away at our goals. But sometimes will power isn’t enough. Spoiler alert:  I don’t have all the answers, but I think it has something to do with doing your best.

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The 2023 International Annual Ride of Silence in Austin, TX

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 14 Comments

The third Wednesday in May is designated an international commemoration of those people who lost their lives while bicycling. It began in Dallas, Texas, where A Dude was hatched, after one man’s friend was cyxling and got hit and killed by a car. It has expanded to hundreds of cities and countries (222 and 14 respectively this year). It’s called the Ride of Silence, which I wrote about in “5/5/23: 5 Things You *May* Want to Do for Bike Month.” Here’s a recap.

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5/5/2023: 5 Things You *May* Want to Do in Bike Month

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 7 Comments

It’s that time of year in the USA when the sun has come out, the snow has thawed, and the flowers have bloomed. Basically, it’s the best time to, as Queen sang, “Get on your bikes and ride!” In Austin, Texas, it felt like 97 degrees thanks to the humidity coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. Your dude just managed to ride eight miles to the post office before a storm blew in some lighting, thunder, and rain. Summer in Austin often feels like you’re wearing a hot, wet blanket while you bicycle, but sometimes it’s nice after the rain with a breeze. Regardless of weather, biking is what we do here at ADudeAbikes.com, every damn day for over 3.5 years. Like they say, a rolling stone gathers no moss. By now, you MAY have gathered that National Bike Month is here, so here are five things to do in Austin but also beyond, if biking is your jam–or you want it to be. (Mmm, jam.)

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12/12/2022: Slow, but Still I Go — Biking, Walking, Etc.

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 5 Comments

Another month has gone by since my last post, and just a few weeks are left in the year. As the weather cools and holidays and a new year approach, thoughts turn inward, toward retrospection, and to the future. There’ll be time for a review of the year come January, though. For now, what has gone on since 11/11? Work, for one. It has involved a lot of walking, which has been surprisingly exhausting. Seven or eight miles when you’re used to the equivalent steps of three miles, and standing for long hours in between, is a change. Other things like rain, health stuff, and perhaps some existential ennui have slowed me down, too. In the past month, I’ve alternated between 80-110 miles per week riding my bicycle. Not great, but not horrible.

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11/11/2022: 4,000 Miles + Longest Ride of the Year = Tired, But Still Pedaling

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 17 Comments

As silly season, aka the US election drama (or trauma, depending on your point of view) continues, I vote for something all Americans can get behind: a nap. That’s because I’m bushed from bicycling a lot. (Insert a joke about everyone in the US being tired after George Sr. was elected and then his son the Shrub also became president, tired, aka bushed.) Read on, it gets better.

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8/8/2022: Biking While the Heat Is On in Austin

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 2 Comments

We’re on track to have the hottest summer EVER in Austin, Texas. (Climate science deniers ought to move along right now.) Texans are accustomed to the heat, but not like this. In 2011 we had 90 days over 100 F. So far in 2022, we’ve had 58 of those 100+ days. May, June, and July were record breaking hot. August is the worst month. Also, it’s barely rained, so we’re in an extreme drought. Many places from France and the UK to California are experiencing extra high temperatures. The hotness makes bicycling, as well as other important activities like standing up, breathing, and putting on pants a bit challenging.

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5/5/2022: James Clear Is Killing Me With His Atomic Habits

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 2 Comments

At the end of last’s month’s post, Blog Post #666: The Blog In Which I Announce My Retirement from Blogging*, was a little-noticed * aka asterisk. Only one astute reader followed that to the denouement and figured out the meaning in these words, hidden in plain view: “Respectfully submitted on 01.04.22*, ADAB.” That’s European formatting, day first, month second. That reader was the ever-sharp Half Fast Cycling Club (say it out loud — it’s a fun pun) up in Wisconsin. Not only has he (I’m deducing that’s his pronoun) ridden his bicycle across most of the US (and he’ll correct me in the comments if I’m wrong about that), he’s fixin’ to do it again — at almost 70 years of age. Oh yeah, to do the trip, he’s resigning his hospital job as a literal lifesaver of COVID patients (mostly the ignorant “I did my own research on Facebook” variety). So kudos to Half Fast, and to the rest of you (except if you are in other countries where this peculiar American prank day is not celebrated), I say this: APRIL FOOLS, suckahs! Strap in, it’s going to be a long post.

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SOPHIE STOLEN! Beloved Bicycle Boosted by Brazen Burglar! (+ How You Can Help!)

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 14 Comments

The evening of Saturday, January 8, 2022, I was inside a big box store talking to a clerk about replacing my over four-year-old cell phone. I had parked Sophie, the Fairdale Weekender Archer, a bicycle who has been my trusty sidekick since I won her in a Bike Austin raffle in 2017, a mere 10 feet away in the small vestibule for shopping carts. Since I was so close and regularly looking right at her, I did not use my u-lock and cable lock — a fatal mistake I’ll never make again. At 6:30 pm, a brazen thief walked into the little lobby, stood there for 20 seconds, then walked out with my bicycle while I wasn’t looking. The next time I looked up, Sophie was gone, and with her, a piece of my soul.

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FILM REVIEW: Slacker (1991, Austin, and I)

~ A Dude Abikes ~ 12 Comments

Did you miss me? Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all. After writing over 660 blog posts in six years, it was time for a break, so I took it. I’m not sorry I did. Some might say that makes me a slacker, defined in the pejorative sense: “A person regarded as one of a large group or generation of young people (especially in the early to mid 1990s) characterized by apathy, aimlessness, and lack of ambition” (Wikipedia). I may be guilty as charged, or at least I resemble that remark. But director Richard Linklater had a more positive meaning in mind when he made his influential, independent, experimental yet really interesting and fun film, Slacker:

“Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.”[24]

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