🎉 Welcome to this very plain and opinionated page about four-seasons biking in the city! 🎉
The TL;DR is that there can never be enough pages about biking! Besides, everyone who cycles has different opinions, strategies, experiences or preferred equipment. Sometimes people ask about various topics related to urban or winter biking, and it can be useful to consolidate my journey and what I find works well in a single place so that I can share those links with outsiders. Don't take it too seriously and treat it like one more data point!
This page covers all kinds of topics around cycling in an urban environment with important seasonal variations. The intention is to address themes such as winter cycling, safety, road sharing, equipement, maintenance, part selection and Montreal-specific issues, without being overly technical.
It is based on my personal experience from biking for over 25 years through my hometown. Lots of the information consolidated here has been collected through trial and (multiple) errors. The point of view is that of a "normal" person trying to ride hassle-free and safely from A to B, which is usually all I am trying to do!
Most people do not really care about how their car is designed and operates, and it should be the same thing with a bike. It will not document each and every possible aspect of cycling. There are no exhaustive comparison charts between different products.
So if you are looking for the ISO size of your nominally 26 inches tire on your 70s Schwinn bike, this might not be exactly the right place for you. Nevertheless, I hope you will find it enjoyable :)
I am located in Montreal, Canada, which gets its fair amount of snow every year. A lot of what you are going to read is based on years of riding in this specific city. It may not necessarily apply to a location with different weather, infrastructure or bike culture!
As much as I would love to contribute regularly, I am maintaining this in my free time and one should not expect frequent updates. The web page is barebone on purpose and this should not change in the near term.
Feedback is a gift! Please reach out to to share stories, make suggestions, flag typos or just to say "hi"!