When you break your rear derailleur or your rear derailleur hanger while out on a ride, you effectively lose your ability to shift gears at the rear.
What do you do now?
Ex-pro rider Daniel Lloyd and the folks over at Global Cycling Network have a get-you-home solution: Turn your bicycle into a makeshift single-speed machine.
For this to work, you will need basic tools and the knowledge of how to use them.
We once asked Gilbert Serrano of United Folding Bikers to share his experience with bicycle commuting. He is a good source on the topic, as his job requires him to show up in long-sleeved business attire.
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SHOWER FACILITIES IN THE OFFICE?
First off, if your office has shower facilities, that’s a huge help. At our office, we just relegated a seldom used comfort room to be a “shower room”, although technically it’s a “tabo” (water dipper) room because there’s no real shower.
INVEST IN A COMFORTABLE BAG
I use a Broke V2 Messenger Bag by Abnormal (you can look him up on Facebook). It’s waterproof, made of 1000D Cordura Ripstop material with Tarp inner lining, well-balanced, and doesn’t cover your whole back. It also has a “third leg” stabilizer strap so your bag won’t spin around.
My Broke V2 carries
I’m pretty spartan when it comes to office attire. I’m not into fripperies like colognes, gels and what-have-you, so it’s basically just soap and non-scented deodorant for me.
INVEST IN MICROFIBER TOWELS
I have a full-size TekTowel by Sea to Summit. Kind of pricey at PhP1299, but there are alternative microfiber towels in Handyman for about PhP300. What’s good with the TekTowel is, it has a case and it folds into a compact 6″ x 4″ x 1.5″ package, plus it remains super-light even when wet. After taking a bath, I hang it at the back of my chair and it’s dry in 10 minutes. I then just pack it away and stash it in my bag.
MAKE IT A ROUTINE
No secret really, I just come to work earlier. I leave the house at 7:00am, and get to the office by 7:30am. When I get to the office, I park my bike, then head straight to the canteen for a cup of coffee and just cool down a bit. When coffee is done, I head straight to the shower (“tabo”) room and take a quick shower, get dressed, and that’s it.
LIGHTEN YOUR LOAD – DRESS, PACK AND EQUIP CORRECTLY
I usually just pack a cotton long/short sleeve shirt, change of boxers, socks and chino pants. When riding, I use all-black Chuck Taylors , I use them in the office as well. Or you can do what I used to do: just leave a pair of office shoes in the office. I swapped out my clipless pedals to standard platform pedals so I can just wear one pair of shoes all day.
For the sweaty clothes, we have provision for hanging clothes in the shower room so I also bring two collapsible clothes hangers, which cost PhP120 at National Bookstore. (Don’t ask why there are hangers sold there, I was surprised too.) Or, you can just hang them there as is. They’ll be dry to wear going home by 5pm, the end of my office day.
Of course, pack the bike commute necessities, such as a basic multi-tool for your bike.
I prefer to carry a spare tube rather than a patch kit, because it’s faster and easier to change the whole tube than patch one.
Don’t forget a GOOD hand pump. I also stash P100 in my toolkit, so I don’t have to pull out my stuff if I have to get a tube patched by someone else.
Don’t forget water, blinkers (especially if you ride up to night time), headlights, reflectors. I have a Hornit electronic bike horn as well, but most of the time, it’s easier to just shout “Bike! Bike! Bike!”
HOW FAR IS YOUR COMMUTE?
Think about this. I live in Novaliches and work in Valenzuela, about 10 kilometers away.
By car, it’s 60 to 90 minutes.
By motorbike, it’s about 45 to 60 minutes.
By bike, it takes 35 minutes, and I take the longer route to the office to steer clear of the trucks. It doesn’t even matter if I use my road bike, or my folding bike, or my mountain bike, it’s still 35 minutes maximum, maintaining an average speed of about 18 km/h.
See you on the road!
I picked up my Dahon Vitesse D7 from Glorious Ride Bike Shop in Quezon City back in June 2013. I dubbed it my “modern-day Motocompo,” taking inspiration from the little folding motorbike that partnered the signature Honda Today patrol car of the anime “Taiho Shichauzo!” or “You’re Under Arrest!” I figured the homage was appropriate, as my own car is a 2005 Honda Jazz – a larger descendant of the 1980s-vintage Today hatchback.
Pretty soon I was outfitting the Vitesse as a commuter bicycle. On went lights, a saddle bag, tools and a bottle cage. The farthest I want toward this direction was the fitment of panniers.
After riding the Vitesse for a while and gaining strength as a rider, I slowly took notice of things that could be improved, especially with regard to ability off flat terrain and city limits. The stock 14-28T gearing had even two-tooth jumps between most cogs and was fine for the commute, but even with more muscle in my legs it lacked the gearing for climbs. I took my time and made some missteps, but ultimately decided on upgrading the bicycle using purely road bike parts to avoid problems with mismatched cable pull. The bike’s drivetrain proved more challenging to upgrade than expected because it had a 7-speed freewheel as a starting point, instead of the cassette and freehub system found on 8-/9-/10-speed bikes.
After seven months with the stock parts and time spent slowly collecting the parts, I pushed through with the upgrade and had Rene of Tryon install them.
Technically, it’s a misnomer to call my bike a “D7” as it now has 10 gears. Under Dahon and Tern’s naming scheme, my bike doesn’t quite fit into the stripped-down C- and D- trims, but is in no way a premium P-, S- or X- specification machine.
So…I’ve decided to call my bike a “Dahon Vitesse T10” going forward. “T” is an unused letter in the Dahon/Tern spec nomenclature, and it’s a quiet reference to the parts used from Shimano’s Tiagra groupset, as well as its use for touring.
As of this writing I’ve had only a few rides on the Vitesse T10, and I’m still getting used to the finer jumps between cogs on the cassette, as well as the mechanics of the shifter itself. I miss the grip shifter’s single-bound leap to the largest cog when coming to a stop at a red light. Shift quality is now undoubtedly better, crisper and snappier, though, and the LitePro hubs have better power transmission properties, with less of a dead spot while cranking away at the pedals.
Thanks for viewing!
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2013 DAHON VITESSE T10 SPECIFICATIONS
FRAME
DRIVETRAIN
ROLLING STOCK
BRAKES
COCKPIT
LIGHTING
OTHER
Here’s my daily commute, just so you’d get a feel how liberating it is to bike to your workplace (and back).
Sorry for the low video quality, this was originally at 720p HD taken from my Gear2Go Action Cam but had to drop the quality to upload to youtube.
11km – 35 minutes – 18kph average = happiness 🙂
My DIY Bike Commute Tool Kit.
1. Ledtec Flashlight
2. Victorinox Cybertool
3. Adjustable Wrench
4. MOB Bike Pump
5. Allen Wrench set
6. Tire Patch Kit.
Contained in an Oakley Microfiber pouch. I add a spare inner tube and first aid kit when going on long rides.
We have, for some reason, rightly or wrongly, adopted the American way of thinking that bicycles are either children’s playthings, or sporting hobbyists’ pricey obsessions.
We have also added to all that, the local Pinoy notion that bicycles are a poor person’s form of transportation because we are averse to physical effort. Many Filipinos would rather queue up to ride a crowded bus, jeepney or train, instead of riding a bike to our destinations, because “it’s more convenient,” “I don’t have the energy” and “I don’t arrive in a wet sweaty mess.”
By extension, some of us have the notion that people who ride bicycles have no place on the public road, where the automobile rules supreme. “People who bike-commute must have some sort of death wish,” they may say. And yes, they do get bullied on the street.
You gotta wonder. How long will we be able to keep up this kind of thinking? Will we cling to this mindset while we are struggling every day – paying rising transportation fares through the nose just to get around a ridiculously overpopulated, smog-smothered and congested metropolis?
You tell me. I tend to be very jaded when it comes to Pinoy culture and its ability to unlearn mistakes and ugly cultural traits. We would’ve gotten rid of corruption, laziness, bad drivers and mendicancy/beggar culture a long time ago if we were truly serious about them, in my opinion.
And yet, despite all of these odds, despite even being rich enough to buy a car or two, despite the classic Pinoy cultural stubbornness and obstinacy…you have somehow decided to become a bike commuter.
Congratulations.
Let’s be honest.
The spiffy bike lanes we see in other countries are a utopian ideal here. They’re non-existent in many of Metro Manila’s so-called “cities,” and those that do exist are terribly designed (red paint on a converted tiled sidewalk?! good luck in the rain) or abused by vehicular traffic. Nowadays I don’t even think about bike lanes any more, as they are the exception rather than the norm. Bike lanes or no, I think a Filipino bike commuter must learn how to behave like a responsible road user by keeping with the flow of traffic, being vigilant, practicing proper lane etiquette, and using hand signals.
Compared to almost any form of motorized transport, the safety of riders on two wheels rests more squarely on the “active” side of the equation rather than the “passive” side. Think of active safety as accident avoidance; riding in such a way that you don’t get into one in the first place. For most of us riders, the only bit of “passive” safety we have is our helmet – and body armor, if you ride that way.
Motorcyclists have the benefit of motorized boost – twist open the throttle, a butterfly valve opens, and a motorcycle rider gets additional speed. By comparison, us bike commuters earn our speed. If active safety were measured by the amount of time we can maintain motion, momentum would be our gold standard currency. Our acceleration when in motion is not nearly as instantaneous. We usually need to grab a gear and raise our cadence by 20 RPM for a meaningful increase in speed, and whatever amount of speed we can carry on a bike takes effort to build back up after a standstill or an uphill slope.
Lastly, air pollution is an ever present danger. Then again, it will hunt you down whether you are a bike commuter, pedestrian, or vehicle driver, anyway. For a few years I ran a jerry-rigged, DIY air conditioner filter in my car made out of a sheet of 3M’s Filtrete material. You would not believe how dirty it got after just a month of urban driving, and just how fine the particulates it picks up are. Just rubbing your fingers against a darkened area will rub very fine soot and dust onto them.
In return for all of these hard truths as a Filipino bicycle commuter, there is hope.
No matter how truly small and space-efficient my car is, at least by today’s standards, it’s still designed to accommodate five people and a bit of grocery shopping. (Or two people and a boatload of boxes, as that’s just what a Honda Jazz can do – really well, I might add.) The many times I drive it all by myself, it can be a waste of road space. Granted, it’s half the space hog a typical SUV is, but I bet you could fit at least six of my Dahon Vitesse bike, unfolded, fitted with panniers, in the same amount of space.
And let’s not get into close-quarters maneuvering. My car was reputed to have a gloriously tight and small turning circle of around 10 meters. Impressive for low-speed maneuvers, and shoehorning into a tight parallel parking slot nobody else will dare want, but also nowhere close to what a small-wheeled bike can do in an urban gridlock.
Local news presenter and anchorman Paolo Abrera, of the departed sports show “GamePlan,” has embraced the very subject matter he used to report on as an athlete. Since then he has had his own half-hour show on ANC called “Green Living,” showcasing tips and ventures on the eponymous subject matter.
Not many people may be aware, however, that Mr. Abrera lives out both his reportage subjects as a bike commuter. I had read somewhere that due to a busy schedule, he usually doesn’t have time for gym, so his bike commute from Parañaque to Quezon City – and vice-versa – nicely fills in as an efficient use of his time, striking two birds with one stone.
Well, if he can do it, so can you. And before you say that you don’t have the energy to pedal on city streets, one great paradox of the human body is that the more exercise you engage in, the more energy you gradually have.
To me this is the least interesting reason to ride a bike and commute with one, simply because it’s the first thing that pops into most people’s minds so often that it’s become a bit of a cliche. As an amateur racing driver, I am not exactly a tree-hugging environmentalist saint.
That said, there’s something remarkable about a mode of transportation that can get you around at 18 km/h average speed without a single puff of hydrocarbon emissions…well, other than the methane in farts, I suppose.
I am lucky enough to have been able to drive since college, and I’ve been paying for maintenance and fuel from an early age. It can be a little appalling how much of your money goes into the cost of fuel, insurance, maintenance, parking and toll fees – the latter, a fact of life for people from the south of Metro Manila. Let’s not get started with the other, usually unmonetized costs: time, congestion, and a low average speed of travel…especially on Saturdays.
A bicycle does away with almost all of that. Your fuel is the cost of food and water. Your insurance policy, your bike locks (and I hope you have at least two different ones). The cost of maintenance: a degrease-and-lube job on the chain, cassette and chain rings – and perhaps a brand new chain every year as the links inevitably stretch out. Bicycle tires last a pretty long time when kept properly inflated.
Parking? Toll fees? Do you have to pay for those? There’s only one location I know of that charges for bike parking (yes, I know right?), and even then it costs chump change.
As for the unmonetized costs – how much longer does it take to bike to your destination compared to driving there? Even while plying the same routes that vehicular traffic does, you may be surprised to learn that riding a bicycle is actually the fastest way around the city, even for a trip from Monumento to Baclaran. We’ve already established that on a small-wheeled bicycle, congestion is usually a non-issue, and because of that you can actually keep a higher overall average speed of travel.
No more long queues, no more waiting, no more pushing – no more of the victim mentality many commuters get on a daily basis. I bet you’d earn a lot of jealous stares when you break out your folding bike, unfold it, and pedal off in front of a long snaking queue up the stairs to the MRT ticket booth. And even if you don’t get jealous stares, well, you’d still have an undeniable head start.
Many folding bike riders use them in a bimodal commute (bike + public transport), but having the bike with them means that as long as they have a good route in mind, they could just as easily pedal some more of the distance if the queue for the bus, MRT or LRT is especially bad. The way I see it, Metro Manila isn’t actually all that big in terms of land area – it’s the traffic and congestion that give the illusion of taking more time to traverse the city from north to south, and/or east to west, than is actually needed.
And for those commuters out there who’ve helplessly hailed a taxi and gotten snubbed by chauffeurs – don’t you love having a mechanism of payback?
You’ve gotten over the hang-up of treating a bicycle as “only” either a children’s plaything or an expensive hobby piece.
You’ve also looked past the “poor person” notion of bike commuting, and identified it as a ridiculously smart, sensible and simple solution to the age-old question of urban mobility in a suffocated Metro Manila.
You’ve also graduated into the realization that automobiles are not kings and queens of the road – that other forms of transport, motorized or human-powered, have an equal right to be on the road – as long as they abide by its rules – and claim the space they need to travel safely.
Being a bike commuter has its downsides, but it’s got quite the slug of benefits as well.
Stay safe and ride on.
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This post basically concludes my little “project” called TypeVertigo Style, as I have accomplished what I had originally set out to do. My thoughts go back to the middle-aged Chinese-Filipino couple I met at Junni Industries a couple weeks ago shopping for their folding bicycle(s). I wasn’t able to get their names or properly introduce myself to them, but I am grateful to them for giving me the impetus to start writing.
If you enjoyed reading my series of ramblings, and/or want to see ramble on more, please leave a comment and let me know what you think.
Thank you for reading.
000: Prologue
001: Bike tools for the commute
002: Light up and be seen
003: Saddle height, starting and stopping on a commuter bike
004: Safe from harm
005: The eleven principles
006: Refinements and tweaks
I can’t recall when my love affair with bikes began.
I have vague memories of a yellow tricycle I rode when I was 6 or 7, around the dining table. The family easy rider with its curved frame and curly handlebars. Most of the memories I treasure involved a bike of some sort.
I learned to ride in Baguio’s famed Burnham Park, back in the day when it was actually a park and not SM Baguio’s front yard. My dad hired someone for P20 to teach me how to ride and I was riding in 30 minutes, haven’t stopped ever since. I started with BMX in my early teens, executing bunny hops and cherry pickers. Single speed was all you need, my legs were my gears, I was invincible.
Then you have your first spill and realize that you’re not immortal. went home with a gash running from my wrist down to my ankles, stopped racing for about a week and then it was back on the tracks, but it was never the same, caution and care started to creep in, dang I was maturing.
A few years pass and the BMX is replaced with another acronym, MTB, which meant climbs, trails, mud, ruts, downhills and heart. I conquered every mountain around my region, Antipolo, Pilillia, Tanay and finally Sierra Madre. It was fulfilling, it was tough and made me feel like I’m grown up.
All that disappeared when a road bike zipped past me at about 60kph, no matter what I did there was no way I was going to catch up with him or it for that matter, there was something magical about the roadie, almost angelic.
Fast forward to today and I have hit mid-life with my Roadie, my MTB and a Folding bike. Cycling is still a huge part of my life.
Cycling has set me free.
Sharing a great anecdote from Gilbert Serrano of the United Folding Bikers.
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Sometimes people ask me…
“Why do you ride a bike to work? You got a car. You even have a motorbike. The company pays for your gasoline consumption. You’re not really out of shape and you’re in the pink of health.”
Is it because of the thrill of riding? The exercise i can squeeze in my schedule? Because it releases happy hormones that uplifts my spirit everyday? Because it saves Mother Earth?
I look them in the eye and smile.
“You wanna know why I ride? Because I can.“
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How about you, dear reader – why do YOU ride?
From The Guardian:
At long last, cycling is being supported by American business – not out of environmentalism but because it’s delivering profit
Cities are driving the US economic recovery, and as they do, Americans are getting on their bikes. In 85 of the 100 largest metro areas cycling is increasing. All part of a deeply healthy – and profitable – reshaping of urban economies.
“Cities that invest in biking infrastructure are going to win,” predicts Jeff Judge, a Chicago-based digital marketing entrepreneur, who said the presence of on-street protected bike lanes was his number-one factor in assessing a city to locate in. “It’s better for business, planning, infrastructure. It’s better all round.”
After years of battling “the business community” for every inch of road space, many cycling advocates seem disoriented by the idea they might now be on the same side. But from Denver to Memphis, some of the loudest voices for a move toward Danish-style protected cycling infrastructure are those who sign the paychecks. In last month’s report (PDF) for US non-profit People For Bikes, which I co-authored with Mary Lauran Hall of the Alliance for Biking and Walking, we outlined four reasons why:
Now that you’ve seen the eleven principles of the TypeVertigo Style of bike commuting, here are a few more tips and tricks. These are basically refinements, hard examples and applications of the style.
Contrary to what you may believe, on a bicycle, the front brake is your friend. It is the stronger, more effective brake in terms of pure deceleration. The important thing to master is how to modulate your squeezing effort on the brake lever so that you avoid getting thrown over the handlebars on clumsy front brake use…so don’t fight it.
People say half-jokingly that if you know how to drive in Metro Manila you can manage to drive anywhere. Such is the level of chaos that happens every day on our streets. As much as TypeVertigo Style is all about anticipation of hazards, sometimes you just can’t account for everything that threatens to take you off the bike in a painful way. So, let’s reduce the anticipation to a specific and very simple technique: have your fingers always resting on the brakes, so they are ready to squeeze them at a moment’s notice.
I already mentioned just how reassuring having a firm brake pedal or brake lever can be. With your fingers always at the ready on the brake levers, you have part of the solution for “expecting the unexpected” down pat. The other part is…
In car racing, the concept of “threshold braking” means applying the brake hard enough so that the car is approaching the point where it locks up its wheels, but doesn’t. This is the strongest possible braking you can squeeze out of your braking system and tires.
Past this point, once you add more force on the brake pedal and your tires do lock up, they will skid and slide across the road surface helplessly and a longer distance is needed to stop. Essentially it’s a balancing act.
I consider threshold braking the most important skill to learn. At the same time, it’s one of the hardest. There’s a counterpart for it on a bicycle, and the front brake is its foundation.
For this technique, pull on both levers while braking in a straight line. When you use the front brake hard, the weight of the bike and rider tends to transfer to the front, and the rear tire tends to rise off the ground. Counteract this by leaning your butt over the tail of the saddle. At the same time, while using the rear brake, take note of when your rear tire locks up and skids as it becomes unweighted due to the front brake action. This is the maximum amount of braking a bicycle and its tires can give you.
This is very useful in a pinch, and worth practicing every once in a while on a quiet road, especially if your bicycle has rim brakes. Get used to it, and it can become a life-saving skill.
So you’ve signaled that you are making a left turn. You can make this more effective by positioning your bike toward the dotted lines on the left of the travel lane you are on, to further signify your intention to make a left turn. The same is true for signaling and preparing for right turns.
This in-lane movement becomes important when cycling along a wider road with multiple lanes going in one direction.
Let’s say you’re riding on the rightmost lane of a road with three lanes going in one direction. You intend to go straight, but there is an upcoming pocket for vehicles making a right turn. There is always the risk of faster vehicular traffic trying to enter that right-turn pocket at the last second and cutting across you.
You can counteract this by riding closer to the lines on the left, effectively distancing yourself away from the right-turn pocket but without leaving your current lane. As always, maintain a steady, predictable pace, hand-signal for your movement first if possible, and watch for cars on your left side. This sends a more obvious sign of intent to road users behind you that “I’m going straight ahead and not turning right.”
If you’re approaching an intersection where cars or other vehicles have already signaled their intention to turn, instead of riding through, it’s better to make a “slowing down” signal for the traffic behind you, wave the turning cars through, and yield your position until they complete their maneuvers or enough space is left in between. The longer these cars are held up from turning, the longer the cars behind them have to wait – and that disrupts the traffic flow.
The above is one simple example, but there are so many other instances of situations where it is actually better and more considerate for more road users if you yielded your position and let others pass first. It’s all about maintaining a steady flow – keep thinking of traffic as a liquid, fluid medium, and challenge yourself to keep it flowing for everybody. Personally, the more I bike-commute, the more I am conscious of keeping traffic flowing, because trying to conserve momentum just comes naturally with riding a small-wheeled bike.
In the dry, a bicycle usually enjoys a surfeit of grip. In the wet, this can change suddenly. Generally speaking, wet asphalt or concrete is still quite grippy for bicycle tires, but there are a few surfaces that are guaranteed to get very slick and slippery once wet.
These are
If you brake or turn too much while riding these, your tires are definitely slipping off and you will fall off the bike – this is especially true of any road surface feature made of metal. If you have no choice but to cross, your best bet is to slow down and roll straight across these with no movement on the handlebars.
Much better to avoid them altogether, I’d say.
For other metal road features such as the grates for drainage or railroad tracks submerged in asphalt, these are best taken as perpendicular as possible to avoid your wheels falling into them. As with manhole covers and the like, keep a straight path and don’t brake when passing over them – do any braking beforehand.
Some streets and roads just don’t lend themselves well to the concept of bicycle commuting. For instance, I think it takes a special kind of crazy to pedal along the length of EDSA or Quezon Avenue. I know cyclists who can tame these beasts, but the mental workload required of bike commuters just to ensure safe passage might be a little too much for some.
Fortunately for us, we have modern mapping tools and apps available online. Learn to use these for route planning. With bicycles, extending your total travel distance can be worth it if it means a safer, less mentally demanding route overall. Consult with other riders with more experience on those routes for potential hazards and things to look out for. As of this writing, Google Street View is also reportedly coming to Metro Manila, which will greatly expand a bike commuter’s toolbox.
You can go one step further and scope out your planned route on foot as a pedestrian or typical commuter. You can check out the road surface for any hazards, potholes or potential slick spots in the wet. Take a few minutes to study typical traffic flow patterns. Look at the bigger picture and carefully study how intersections are connected or chained. Observe what I call “points of interference,” such as U-turn slots and bridge/flyover on-ramps and off-ramps, and how vehicles jostle for position. Do they tend to cut across multiple lanes within a short distance, or do they usually travel in more predictable and efficient “straight shots” along the road?
Take all of these into consideration and you will end up with a much better bike commute route.
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Don’t agree with me? Take what works for you, remove what doesn’t. It’s that simple. That’s essentially what I did, anyway.
In the next installment, I take one for the bike commuting team and get on my soapbox. Cheers, and happy riding.
000: Prologue
001: Bike tools for the commute
002: Light up and be seen
003: Saddle height, starting and stopping on a commuter bike
004: Safe from harm
005: The eleven principles
Let's Bike, Philippines! 
