It followed me home; please help me give it a name.

[flexagon]

I can't say I'm too surprised... today I walked to that Dutch bicycle store I just posted about, and I talked a bit with a nice man and some other customers, and then I rode home.

My bike is heavy and long. It lets me ride sitting up, with all my weight where it is accustomed to being.

My bike has three gears and five neutral colors: black and brown and white and tan and gray. It has a giant mudflap on the front tire to protect me from ick, and a fully enclosed chain to protect me from chain-nom, and on the back tire there's a skirt guard so that I can ride wearing long flowing skirts if I so choose. (And since I can, maybe I will so choose! Who's to say?)

It is a Dutch grandma-bike with lots of small touches that scream Quality. The basic model has been in continous production since 1880. It is so intensely Euro-frumpy that it goes out clear out the other side of frump, causes a frump-overflow exception and becomes, in my opinion, awesome.



Here it is with its kickstand up, siting stably and waiting to be loaded with groceries from the neighborhood market:



Here's a good article about this exact bike.

To all the Bike People who had reasons I should not get this kind of thing, I can only say that I never wanted a biker's bike. I wanted a bike that would get me around town, pleasantly, both now and twenty years from now. Your words made me agonize, but in the end soong was right: I obviously didn't want the kind of bike that I didn't want, so it was basically one of these or nothing.

And, silentq, I did get a helmet. :-) A skateboard helmet, because it seemed much more old-school. I couldn't see wearing a bright, newfangled aerodynamic helmet with my frump-overflow bike, and I thought this was rather WWII fighter ace:



So, now it just needs a name. I was thinking of Rainbow or Neon because of its plethora of neutral, forgettable, bike-colored colors, but I'm open to suggestions.

Comments

[flexagon]

That is a great question; do you have opinions on what I should do? (what do you have?)

The bike guy said I should ride it around for a while to see what my storage needs really are, but I'm pretty sure I prefer something centered because sometimes my needs will be mostly a laptop, which is a Single Heavy Item that I wouldn't want on just one side.

Thanks for the props on getting pictures up fast. I was kind of excited about it... and nothing is really real until it's documented online, right?

[nevers.livejournal.com]

i had a folding metal wire side-basket for a long time. it was good. my backpack (which i use daily) fit in it perfectly, so i could put it in and not worry about forgetting anything, and not worry that it would fall out or fall off. i also liked that the basked had a flat bottom into which i could put my laptop lunchbox. and flat sides for when i carried massive amounts of zine copies home from work (as opposed to fabric saddlebags). the basket was also a perfect size for groceries.

it was kind of a pain to fold up (it has a little metal hook to hold itself closed, but the basket has to be compressed to max for the hook to make it over the far side).

all this is past tense because i lost the metal hardware it came with for attaching it to your bike when i got my new bike. i tried attaching it with plastic zip ties. on my first day out with it, i tried to squeeze through a too-tight space and the basket got sheared off my bike. the zip ties broke and the basket itself was too mangled to salvage.

that said, i never had a problem with having weight only on one side. my cargo could get pretty heavy (like a full load of groceries) and i would notice but not be thrown off by it. the usual load -- backpack of a change of clothes, lunch, water bottle -- was not even noticeable.

i have put off replacing it cause i'm wondering if there's not a better option. but it did serve me very well. until then, i use a bungee to strap my backpack or a box of groceries to my rack. this works okay but it means EVERYTHING has to fit in my backpack, no throwing in lunch + water bottle + towel + change of clothes separately in the basket, and it makes me perpetually nervous about my cargo falling off.

[nevers.livejournal.com]

you might also wanna check ask.metafilter.
like
http://ask.metafilter.com/94784/How-should-I-tote-my-stuff-including-a-laptop-on-my-bike