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Comment by scottious | Hacker News Reader

I had a bike, I love riding bikes. These days, I bike everywhere all the time (I don't drive) but I also live in a bike-able place now

The roads where I grew up had no shoulder and people frequently whipped around the windy roads at 35 mph. The only bikers I ever saw were fully lycra-clad race cyclist type of people. I never saw a mother biking with her kid, for example. I was afraid to be on a bike on the streets. At least with walking I could take a step or two off the road when a fast moving car was coming.

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Go with the flow! Since about 10 to 11 years of age I could do 30mph easily.

I discovered this on a crappy folding bike with 2-speed duo-matic, while being in a hurry and thus angrily overtook a slow Citroen 2CV :-)

Looking at the speedometer from the outside. Showed 50kph, so I must have been faster, or the speedometer slightly wrong.

Whatever, that experience has shown me that I could do that, and from there on it was in my 'muscle memory', ready to be used at will.

Which then went up to 40/41 on road bikes on flat grounds with no headwinds, for about an hour sustained. But I often did 44 to 47, always trying to push the needle of my speedometer as long as possible to the right.

Downhill easily 50 to 55. Highest speed ever(downhill OFC) was 95kph, which is about 59mph. Still doing that sometimes, but less often nowadays. Need to be in the Rockies for loong descents, weather has to be good, streets mostly empty, which they aren't when weather is good, and so on.

So, limited yourself?

I guarantee you that you'd never let your kids ride a bike on the streets where I grew up. I have three kids and it would be downright irresponsible to let them ride on streets designed solely for fast moving car traffic with absolutely no space anything but cars. Virtually nobody cycled and nobody walked on these streets. Even adults were too afraid to do it. There was not a single sidewalk in my town. The culture around where I grew up was that if you wanted to take a walk you DROVE YOUR CAR to a park and then walked there. Nobody and I mean NOBODY just walked on the street. Even the track team didn't run on the streets because parents were concerned about safety

This isn't an issue of limiting myself. This is just an issue of safety.

> I guarantee you that you'd never let your kids ride a bike on the streets where I grew up.

Fair, but my gut reaction was ‘yeah I would’ so I think we just aren’t on the same page. Take care!

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