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Exercise Bike

June 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Perhaps one of the best selling pieces of exercise equipment ever invented is the exercise bike. These were some of the first things ever offered to the public that actually did the body some good. They have been around for a long time, and will probably always be around in some from or another. Though they started out very simple, they now come in many forms with many different advances and new technologies. Some are large, some are compact, and some don’t even look much like a bike.

There are many exercise bikes sitting in people’s attics or basements. Everyone buys one with the best of intentions but they end up pushing them aside after a while. This happens with a lot of pieces of equipment, and is often a running joke within families. My dad has an exercise bike that went from his living room to his bedroom. It then went into his office, out to his porch and is now back in his living room. I’m glad at least that no matter how many times he has moved it that he is, as least, still using it to some degree.

You can get a simple exercise bike that lets you pedal away. It may offer you various tension settings and perhaps an odometer. You may find many of the older models have this, and this is all you really need to get a good workout. Some new versions of exercise bike come with a digital readout that will tell you how far you have gone and even might help you determine how many calories you have burned or what your heart rate might be. These can be useful if you have gotten specific instructions from your doctor on getting your heart rate up to a certain point.

If you don’t want something fancy in an exercise bike, you might ask around to see if someone in your family has one you can use. You may be surprised to find that many of your relatives have an exercise bike hidden away that they once hoped to use on a daily basis. They may be sheepish when they admit they have one, but they may very well be happy to see it being put to good use. Remember that once you have the exercise bike in your hands that they best thing you can do for yourself is use it. Even if you don’t know to lose weight, this type of exercise is great to get you in a good mood and to relieve stress.

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Custom Bike

June 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

About 15 years ago, I helped my dad build a custom Harley Davidson. Back then, custom bikes meant only one thing: motorcycles. Custom chopper motorcycles were all the rage in the community we grew up in. most of the people we knew didn’t have a lot of money, but it didn’t matter because we had connections. We knew places to get the parts and could put together our own gear, father teaching son and older brother teaching younger.

When I helped my dad work on the custom bike, I was surprised that there was any chance of ever putting it together. After all, when we first started it was such an old rusted out piece of junk. Basically, we raided junkyards, police auctions, and any other sources we could find to get custom bike parts. It was not easy work, and we spent most of the summer on it, but soon we had a beautiful vehicle together.

When I first started to build custom bicycles years later, I was able to draw on the experience I had working with my dad. Putting together a custom bike is a lot easier than a customized motorcycle, but it applies a lot of the same principle. When you customize your bike, you fit it out for a particular purpose. Maybe you want to make your road racer meaner and leaner, or give your mountain bike a better high-performance smooth ride over those bumps.

Then again, some of the most popular custom bikes are the ones that are made purely for style. A lot of the custom bike work is done to build so-called “tall bikes”. These things tower over the crowd, and are getting to be pretty popular at street fairs and parades. One of the great things about running a custom bike shop is, not only do I get to build some fun and far-out projects, but I also get to help draw attention to some of the most pressing political issues of the day.

You see, when you get down to it, custom bike building is about more than good looks and high performance. It is about getting people to think about the kind of transportation that they use. Sure, cars are faster and more convenient, but they pollute the air and don’t give you any exercise. By helping people to build custom bikes, I get them to take pride in alternative transportation.

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Bike Safety

June 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

As children grow they become more and more daring. Though my daughter has not been over the top with her daredevil stunts, there are days when I wonder if she is going to live to see age ten. Most parents go through this, and we look back on our childhoods and wonder if we were ever so careless. I think we were, but we never had anyone breathing down our necks. Though I think parents hover over children too much these days, I can understand why it happens. The world is not what it was when we were growing up. One minor thing that we have to worry about is bike safety.

It actually might not be that minor. Bike safety means more than protecting your child if they were to fall off the bike, though that is important. I remember my brother hitting a rock and flying over the front of his bike when he was five years old. He survived, and the only thing we thought about in regards to bike safety was to watch out for traffic. We never would have dreamed of wearing helmets and pads, and if we had, our friends would have teased us unmercifully.

Traffic is probably the biggest issues I have with my daughter in regards to bike safety. There was little to no traffic where I grew up, and we would have plenty of warning to pull over when a car was coming. Even then, the speed limit was ten miles and hour and everyone obeyed because of the high concentration of kids in my neighborhood. I do have to worry about that aspect of bike safety with my daughter though, as we live in the middle of town.

Living in town makes bike safety a whole new issue. I do have to make sure she stays far from the street at her age, and I do have to warn her about idiots. I live in a good neighborhood, but there seem to be a lot of dimwits that drive through on a daily basis. Bike safety for us means teaching her to ride the bike first and foremost, and the secondly it will be teaching her to get off of her bike to cross the street, and teaching her how to cross safely. When it comes down to it she might not be doing a lot of bike riding anyway, as it seems there is no safe place to do so. We may have to save the rides for when we visit Grandma.

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