3 White Ladies

I'm kind-of going back and forth between the Viva and the Linus. They're totally different animals that have different strengths and set-backs. One has the comfy upright posture I love, and one has sexy addictive speed.


I get on the Linus and I sigh, I'm home. I'm so comfortable! But I can only go so fast. The top speed is achieved quickly, and now I've tasted speed. But I enjoy looking around, being upright, laid-back and having so much cargo space.

The "boy bar"on the Dutchie is lower. Getting off the Viva wasn't so smooth for me on the first two days. I trained myself to do that dismount where you hike your leg backward over the saddle if that makes sense.

Viva gets me to work so quickly, and it's fun to ride like a hell cat in traffic. It's so light up and down the stairs.  A completely different demographic stops me to discuss this bike - Adult, athletic males. They see the internal rear hub and they know that's the hot shit.

Little girls point and scream out at my pink tires on the Linus. Adult, athletic males rarely ask me about my pink tire bike. The pay me no mind and that's just fine. I'm not sure I like these dudes talking to me. A construction worker was interviewing me about the Viva and made me miss a green light!



I'm living a double life.

Where is my Linus Dutchie?

I've gotten some questions online and in-person about Kate Middleton, the bicycle with pink tires and adorable panniers. She’s not gone forever, she’s just sitting on the bench until she decides to stop sabotaging me.

After being fed-up with her shenanigans, I tried to shame Linus on the internet with the video of how she tried to ruin me the other night. I want to be out with how crappy I think the Linus Dutchie 1 is, and warn people that she has a dangerous design flaw. I emailed them and got a pretty timely response, where they offered to mail me a fresh new chain guard.

When I get that new chain guard, and I’m not holding my breath, I will document changing it out myself because it could be a riot.

In the meantime, a bike distributor swooped in to save me with the Viva Urban de Luxe. I did not purchase this bike, and I don't think I get to keep her permanently.

For some time, I was quiet about how crappy I thought my Linus was. I wasn’t quiet in-person, but I was quiet on my blog. When my fresh out of the box Linus purchase had no touch-up paint, though it was supposed to come with, when she showed signs of rust after the first month while never being kept outside overnight, when her pedal fell apart at the 6-week mark when I was riding on a busy street, when spokes broke off her back wheel and I paid to get all the spokes replaced,  when her rear-hub got so worn-out after 8 months of daily riding that my wheel could not rotate what-so-ever... I was pretty quiet. But when I put that all together, it’s like, wow. I might need to tell the internets about all of this, instead of just telling bike girls I meet around town. The chain-guard thing bringing me to a broken-down halt at 10pm on a weeknight was kind-of the final straw in me being hushed about the quality of this bike.

I do still love her though. She may be ratty at the core, but I’m comfortable with her. She is so outfitted for carrying things around and she does look adorable. We get compliments wherever we go.

But now I’m riding this Viva bicycle and I’m becoming spoiled about things I didn’t even really know about, like a rear internal gear hub. Internal gear hub is so sexy!

It’s like, internal gear hub is an iPhone and external gears are a Razr or a bag-phone. You can’t go back. These girls are hanging in the bike room.
Viva on the left and Kate hanging on the right.

She's Trying to Kill Me

This video is safe for work - I don't curse or squeal.

The Linus Dutchie 1 may not be out to sabotage me, but her chain guard is trying to kill me.

I didn't know how to convey this in photos so I found last night's episode a good time to make a video explaining. Despite how I explain the problem in the video - this has happened to me a handful of times. It happened tonight around 10pm when I was riding home from seeing Gloria Steinem at 92Y, but that's for another post.

I was pretty pissed off that this happened to me, and I had to pull off to a desolate sidewalk to fix it anyway, so I whipped out my camera and made a video. No one will jump or rob you if you are making a video of yourself cursing out your bicycle.

-But my initial video has me saying some tangy curse words and it was pretty dark, so I went home where there was better light and made this clean edit video. 

The Linus Dutchie not only has a rust reputation online now, it's going to have a temperamental, sabotaging chain guard reputation too if this story gets out.

I don't explain it thoroughly, but I owned this bike the whole summer before I needed to wear ankle-covering or real shoes. This first happened in a pair of high-tops. The first few months I owned this bike, I just wore flats or skippies AKA keds.

I'm not giving up on this bike, yet, but I need to find a solution to this.

Cuz' she tryin' to Kill Me!