Synopses & Reviews
Cyclists are everywhere, the cautionary bumper stickers tell you. More than ever before, bicycle culture is everywhere, too: from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, city planners are making big changes to city infrastructure for the increasing numbers of people who are leaving their cars at home (or deep-sixing them altogether) and upgrading to two wheels. Biking in the city is no longer just for bike messengers with a death wish.
Biking's benefits are myriad: better fitness, smaller environmental footprint, quiet and low profile, cheaper, greater accessibility. For each new, non-competitive cyclist in the consumer marketplace, there is at least one bicycle that needs to be fixed, maintained, and customized. Cyclists are looking for communities of like-minded people to learn the basics of repair and maintenance, the tricks of the trade, and get some super inspiring ideas for making their bike reflect their lifestyle choices.
Quarry's The Urban Biking Handbook: The DIY Guide to Building, Rebuilding, Tinkering with, and Repairing Your Bicycle for City Living is a hardworking, illustrated guide to the cycling lifestyle. Not only does it teach tons of repair and maintenance techniques, it shows such popular skills as converting a multiple-gear bike into a fixed-gear bike (or fixie), building your own wheels, and how to build a Frankenbike from parts scavenged from several bikes. All the techniques and projects are framed by spotlights on urban bike culture worldwide: profiles of bike mechanics, bike builders, bike artists, and more.
Synopsis
Here is a hardworking, illustrated guide to the cycling lifestyle. It teaches tons of repair and maintenance techniques and skills, framed by spotlights on urban bike culture worldwide.
Synopsis
Ever wanted to take a bicycle vacation? Go on a bike date? Convert your beater into a fixie? Or are you just curious about the anthropology of urban cycling culture?
The Urban Biking Handbook teaches you the anatomy of your bike, how to dismantle it, how to reassemble it, how to make it pretty, how to make it ugly... and most importantly, how to make it yours. Bike your way through car-jammed cities, under overpasses, and over the hills and far away to a cyclist’s paradise.
- Learn to repair a flat, modify your handlebars, true your wheel, and fix your bike on the fly.
- Not just for gearheads: Learn about what to wear, what to eat, how to pack, and how not to get doored.
- Want to build your own bike? Get started with fully photographed tutorials and inspiration from the bike lovers profiled inside.
Get your bike on with The Urban Biking Handbook!
About the Author
Charles Haine has been a bicycle mechanic for over a decade. He learned to fix bikes at a bicycle co-operative at Oberlin College, followed by stints at several bicycle shops in his hometown of Washington, DC, including Blazing Saddles and Citybikes, and time at both the Bike Spot and Bikecology in Los Angeles. He is currently the chairman of the Bicycle Kitchen, a non-profit bicycle education space in Los Angeles, California, where he has also been a volunteer for 7 years. He has taught beginning and advanced bicycle mechanics to countless numbers of both the general public and also other volunteers at the Bicycle Kitchen to help them hone their mechanic skills and better serve the community. In his spare time he gets into arguments about how to properly address brake squeak. Visit him online at www.bicyclekitchen.com.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Ride Bikes?
Part I: the Ride
1. Choosing your Ride
How-to: New Bike vs. Used Bike
Building a Bike from a Bare Frame
2. City Riding
Security
Parking
The Things They Carry:
Choosing a Bag
Choosing Your Footwear
Fenders
Riding in Traffic
How-to: Hop a Curb
Riding with a Group
Getting Doored
Scrapes and Crashes
3. Urban Outfitting
Bike Clothing
Tools
Safety
4. Customization
Getting in the Saddle
How-to: Set Your Seat Height and Angle
Handlebars
How-to: Hack Your Bars
How-to: Change Your Drop Bars for Flat Bars
How-to: Citify a Mountain Bike
Painting Your Bike
Painted and Customized: An Idea Gallery
5. The Car-Free Lifestyle
Starting Small: A Car-Free Week
How-to: Go on a Bicycle Date
Taking a Cycling Vacation
Part II: The Bicycle
6. Bicycle Anatomy
Frame
Thread and Thread Direction
Cable Actuation
Bearings
The Locknut
Drive Train
Braking
How-to: Adjust Your Brakes
How-to: Get Rid of Brake Squeak
Steering
Sizing
7. Frames
Frame Materials
Frame Construction
Geometry
Suspension
Framework: An Idea Gallery
8. Tires, Tubes, and Wheels
Tire Components
Evaluating Tires
Clinchers vs. Tubulars vs. Tubeless
Inner Tubes
Tire Pressure
How-to: Fix a Flat
Wheel Components
How-to: True a Wheel
9. Bearings and Drive Train
Hubs
Gear Clusters: Freehub vs. Freewheel
How-to: Repack Loose
Ball Bearings
How-to: Adjust the Cones
Headsets and Bottom Brackets
Drive Train
Chain
How-to: Lube Your Chain
How-to: Break Your Chain
Shifters
How-to: Adjust Your Shifters on the Go
How-to: Set Up Your Shifters for the First Time
10. Fixed-Gear Fixation
Building a Fixie: An Overview
The Track Hub
How-to: Convert a Geared Bike to a Fixie
Fixie Dust
Part III: The Community 168
11. Bicycle Education Space
Do-It-Together
How-to: Start a Shop
Finding a Space
Finances
Recruiting, Training, and Keeping Volunteers
Building a Community
How-to: Organize a Group Ride
12. Bike Hack Profiles and Gallery
Scraper Bikes
Glowing Bike
Choppers
Lowriders and Tall Bikes
Bike Hack Profiles
Glossary
Recommended Reading
Index
About the Author and Co-photographer