Originally Posted by exas
how do you guys do it? thin tires + road bike (no suspension). all the bumps and cracks and the occasional pothole in the ground. surely you guys can't maneuver around everyone of them. so how do you put up with it? even if you get off the seat slightly for every bump, you ass will be free but the frame will still take the vibrations and you will feel part of it. would a mountain bike with some sort of suspension and slick tires be a better commuting bike instead of a road bike (which was designed to ride on smooth ground). or do you guys all commute on bike trails with road bikes so it is not a problem? or does your butt you enjoy the bumps?
Depends on surface, personal preference, etc. I commute 6.2 miles one way, on MUP/roads. The road is a bit rough and the MUP has horizontal seams almost constantly, and I'm not skilled enough to bunny hop them all. My ride of choice, however, is my road bike with 25mm tires and an aluminum frame. To prevent snakebites on those damned road seams, I keep the tires at 105 psi. You can imagine the resulting rough ride.
The coping mechanism is basically to go limp. Some really big bumps, sure, you get out of the saddle. But sometimes it's enough to shift your weight to get some weight off the saddle and more in your legs. Keeping the arms loose helps a lot too.
So if I'm going over a series of bumps I'll keep my elbows bent, won't deathgrip the bars, take some weight off my ass and put it in my legs, and just roll with the bump. Note this is probably the exact opposite most people instinctively do, which is to tense up. You do that, and you're right - every little bump goes straight through the road, up through the frame, through your arms/butt, and into your spine. My way, the bump goes into my muscles and gets damped. With my method I also roll around more than some people might feel comfortable with, but it's OK with me. I learned my style the hard way because I used to do some riding on really rough trails (tree roots and crap) with a rigid hybrid. If you value your spine, you learn coping mechanisms!
I don't want a non-road bike because I hate flat bars. I could get a mountain bike and put on drop bars and have people look at me like I'm completely insane. That would be cool.