dear internet,
my bike has been broken for some months now. I have a working arrangement with both tyres: They lose air and I pump air back in. However, the situation is trickier with regards to lights: I have battery-powered ones that are hidden behind my two baskets, but the regular ones which are still visible are both broken. I only use the bike for short trips around town. What do I do with it?
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clears throat :0)
Cycling without being visible is an absolute no. Do you have a driving license? I used to cycle without lights, because it is not so bad for the cyclist most of the time. But when I got my driving license and started driving at night, I was so shaken by a near miss with a cyclist that since then I have ... well, I have lapsed at some occasions, but always with a real hightened sense of danger and avoiding roads and pedestrians very carefully.
Not only is it really unfair to other road users to not have lights, it also adds to the resentment that car drivers have towards us, so in a political sense it is doing yourself and other cyclists a huge disservice to not be visible!
phew, sermon over
So, what can be done?
Having good working lights is essential, and if your's are obscured get them moved or remove the basket. On top of that make sure that you wear hi-vis clothes or at least some reflective straps to be seen!
Please also adjust your lights correctly: Many people with great powerful halogen front lights point them up, which ends up in anyone coming up against them being blinded (no joke!) and then you and other innocent bystanders are in danger!!
Headlamps are not a very good option - not only do they blind if you look up, but when you look to the side... you are invisible from the front. Again I know this from experience because I nearly knocked over my treasured housemate one day when she cycled towards me, but was looking to the side... And as a cyclist you do tend to look around a lot more than you realise. As an emergency stopgap a headlight is of course better than nothing - but be aware of the people who might get a scare when near-missing you!
As for the tyres - as long as you are happy to pump every time you go, it's exercise, no worries ;0) However, cycling on semi-flat tyres has some drawbacks: It costs you lods more energy to cycle on soft tyres, you may slide in corners and lose grip, but most of all: they die. A good tyre can last up to two years (although one year is more the case I find) if you cycle a couple of miles every day. However, the same tyre at half pressure ridden a few times will dramatically reduce the life time of the tyre. they go brittle at the sides, and they lose stiffness, which is quite important to the tyre. So, unless you can make sure that the tyre is always properly filled up when you are cycling, fixing the leak is absolutely worth it.
Hehe, that was a ratehr long post... Let's see whether di has a limit :0)
Oh, and as for the options: Fix it or get it fixed - but use it. Cycling is good ¦¬]
Sorry - I know that you did not include "keep riding with no lights in the dark" as an option! I just got carried away...
Find someone nice who likes fiddling with bikes, and cook them a meal - in return they fix your lights. That is usually much nicer than paying a shop (even though in times of recession we ought to go and take money to shops, I am told...)
learn to do it yourself, i suggest, because if you are really liking your bike you will want to care for it anyway.
be SAFE is priority!
Can you not reposition the battery-operated lights to somewhere visible? With the days getting shorter you're really limiting the # of trips you can accomplish with the bike if you don't travel at night. And I assume if you remove the baskets that the bike becomes much less useful to you.
For the tires, if it's not the innertube it's the tire and both are super easy to replace by yourself. If the trouble of having to do it yourself will keep you from doing it for more than a week, take it to the shop. Labor'll probably be like ten bucks on top of the cost of the materials.
sheepofages: No, I really can't reposition the lights. I'm thinking about changing the front basket to a different model, though.
Everyone: Thank you for your votes and remarks. I'd like to assure everybody that I'm safety-conscious enough not to take out the bike when it's not safe to do so.