slydacious

I only really learned how to ride a bike two months ago, and now I find myself cruising around my neighborhood on my new road bike (Fuji Sportif). I feel comfortable with gently stopping and starting my bike, but I know I also need to learn at least the following:

- Ride one-handed (for signaling)
- Quick stop (for stopping fast)

What other essential handling skills/tricks should I work on? And if they're of a level-changing nature, should I get another bike to practice them on?

- Hopping up a curb
- Riding off a curb
- Bunny hopping/Jumping
- Trackstand

no1mad 

Removing a wheel to fix a flat.

slydacious

Agreed. I should've been more specific and said Functional Handling Skills and Tricks.

Anyway, as far as maintenance and repair are concerned, I'm already working my way through this: https://www.amazon.com/Bicycling-Comp...le+maintenance

Are there any other resources you would recommend?

Homebrew01

Parktool.com has a good repair section.

wahoonc

+1

And learn to follow traffic laws... like stop signs!

Aaron

CbadRider

- Looking over your shoulder for traffic without jerking the handlebars.
- Putting your water bottle back in the holder while still looking at the road.

The water bottle might seem a bit basic, but if there's a sudden hazard in the road you don't want to be looking down and fumbling with the bottle.

johnny99

Accelerating quickly from a standing start (eg at a stop sign when cross traffic does not stop)

tigerteeuwen

You definetly need to learn to 360 off the curbs, your commute just wont be the same without it.

Jim Kukula

Traffic skills are important. One basic trick is to watch the front wheel of a vehicle that is passing you. The front wheel will turn before the rest of the vehicle, so that is the first signal you can get that the vehicle is turning.

When to take the lane, that is a big subject. I routinely take the lane through my little village before a curve after which I make a left turn - across on-coming traffic.

Another tricky traffic situation is when there is a right turn lane or a merge lane or both. You don't want to get caught being shunted into a right turn when you want to go straight. You need to get out in the straight ahead lane as soon as possible.

The other day on a ride I was going straight but a cement truck was pulling along on the right to merge. Was he going to zoom ahead to get in front of me before his lane ended, or should he stop and wait for me to go by... losing his momentum so it would be harder for him to merge. I caught his eye and signaled that I would just get over to his right so he could merge without me in the way. It was then easy for me to merge back over behind him.

There is a nice book Cyclecraft that goes through a lot of this. It's British so for us right siders everything has to get flipped. Forester's Effective Cycling is another good resource for this stuff.

Basically, stay alive, that is the key!

Another tricky business is e.g. crossing railroad tracks or any funny sort of run that runs more or less along your direction of travel. Those things are treacherous!

wphamilton

Cornering, making yourself light over humps, flicking the bike to the side, riding on slick surfaces. I don't think that bunny hopping and track stands are essential skills. Useful maybe but we can do without.

dpeters11

Taking a hand off to signal needs to be mastered before attempting to use the bottle while riding.

Personally, the curb stuff isn't a thing to concentrate on. You should ride predictably and not go between sidewalk and road, if the sidewalk is even legal. Hops can help with obstacles that you can't avoid like metal plates etc.

martianone

Get a mirror, wear some eye protection from road/traffic grit and get comfortable riding as part of the traffic flow. Don't jump curbs, ride on sidewalks or blow off traffic signals; if you expect respect in traffic - act like traffic, not a kid on a bike.

Machka 

+1

Machka 

Riding in a straight line ... not wobbling or hopping all over the place.

Riding in a straight line when doing things like ... signalling, extracting and putting away your water bottle, stretching, eating ...

rdtompki

I think there are some good takeaways from the X games as well.

tigerteeuwen

But in all seriousness, if you are using toe clips, learn track stands.... makes your ride a lot funner.

Well for me anyways.

Dudelsack 

Depends what kind of cycling you do.

If you mountain bike, that stuff comes in handy.

If you road bike, you don't need any off it.

If you ride on the road, you need to learn to be predictable and courteous.

Simple mechanical skills are also needed. Everyone should know how to fix a flat or what to do with a barrel adjuster.

If you get into racing: that's different. God help you.

MichaelW

I find that bike handling skills are really useful.
You need to differentiate the several skills that you need:
Bike handling.
Hazard awareness
Roadcraft.

Bike handling is the type of thing you are asking about, signalling, looking behind, drinking, riding small obstacles such as curbs and pneumatic hoses, taking difficult corners, eg steep camber, reverse camber, >90 degree, trackstands, emergency stops, pothole recovery.
Curb jumping is an essential skill, many bike facilities don't have dropped curbs and you need to hop. Many dropped curbs are still too high and angled wrongly.

Hazard awareness is a really useful skill to acquire. You need a library of common hazards and some occasional or seasonal ones. This library works on autopilot, leaving you to deal with the traffic.

Roadcraft is the craft of handling your bicycle like a vehicle in traffic, knowing where to be, when to move, when to look and signal and how to communicate.

My local police force took up cycling and one officer rode from a bike lane off a curb onto a cambered road and splatted.
A group of policemen wrote a manual on how to ride a bike and became the laughing stock of the right-wing press, because everybody knows how to ride a bike.

fietsbob

Learning to look behind yourself without changing course .. and running into stuff..

going around stuff that punctures tires.

Dudelsack 

So if the Guardian had published it, it would have been OK?

MichaelW

The Guardian did cover the story here in a fairly neutral tone and the reader response was pretty reasonable, not at all like the Daily Mail hatefest.
DM readers detest cyclists and do everything to make it seems like a child's activity. "My 5 year old child can ride a bike so why do the police need training" type of thing.

cyccommute 

-Riding down hill without having to brake the whole way
-Cornering at high speed
-Starting on an uphill
-Riding up hill without wobbling
-Learning how to ride slowly (like a trackstand but without the stopping)
-Learning how to ride lightly in the saddle
-Learning how to ride while standing
-Climbing while standing
-Learning how to negotiate sharp turns (180 degree hairpins)


I'm going to hunker down in my foxhole as soon as I say this but stopping quickly is one of those things that many people don't understand even when they have lots of experience with riding. A bike is a short wheel base, high center of gravity vehicle. You provide most of the weight and you sit a fair distance from the ground. Because of that, the bike wants to rotate around the center of gravity when you apply the brakes. If you sit in a "normal" position on a bike and apply the brakes, the bike will develop ~0.6g of deceleration before it throws you over the bars. That's not a lot of braking power. If you push your body back and down, you move the center of gravity slightly lower...a 4" back and 2" down change in the CG is about enough...you just about double that deceleration to 0.9g before being thrown over the bars. That's significantly more.

You can actually play with the CG shift and get some interesting results. For example, if you want to skid the rear tire, get up a good speed, slide forward towards the bars and apply the rear brake. The rear wheel will stop spinning and slide. If you move your hips back and forth, you can 'fishtail' the bike. For best effect, do it on gravel.

You may hear someone tell you that you shouldn't use your front brake or you'll go over the bars. This is ignorance of how bike brakes work. You'll probably see someone post that you "should only use your front brake". This is a different kind of ignorance. Both are wrong but one is more wrong than the other. Most of your braking power is going to come from the front brake. You should use it. If you practice the CG shifting technique, you'll get more deceleration before the bike pitches over which is what the "don't use the front brake" crowd is afraid of.

The problem with the "use only the front brake" crowd is a misunderstanding of the physics of braking and where the maximum possible deceleration point occurs. There are mathematical equations that allow you to calculate the maximum possible deceleration that a bike can develop based on the center of gravity of the system. One of the quirks of the equation is that by setting certain values to zero, you can ascertain when the maximum deceleration is reached. That occurs when just before the bike is about to rotate around the CG and throw the rider to the ground. You are in what is called a nose wheelie with the CG directly above the contact patch of the wheel. From the rider's perspective, you are going to be looking down at the ground and any forward movement is going to plant you on your face, which is not good. While this is the maximum possible deceleration, it's not the maximum practical braking technique for rather obvious reasons.

Many people assume, incorrectly, that the maximum deceleration occurs when the rear wheel just lifts off the ground. This is a more practical limit...you don't really gain much by risking your teeth in a nose wheelie...but you have to transition from the rear wheel on the ground to just lifted off the ground. During this transition, the contribution from the rear wheel isn't zero. Failing to use the rear brake means that you are throwing away some deceleration. This is especially important when you use the CG shifting because you get more out of the brakes before the rear wheel lifts.

There is also a control aspect to braking that the "front brake only" crowd doesn't necessarily understand. If you are going to do a full nose wheelie or even the mini "lift the rear tire" version, you are throwing the bike up on a wheel that can rotate around the hub but can also rotate around the headset. You are riding a unicycle without any real control of the wheel. Both wheels provide stability throw their gyroscopic motion and their contact with the ground. Remove that gyroscopic motion (through as skid) and/or contact (nose wheelie) and you've lost 1/2 of your control. If you are up on the front wheel and the rear wheel has no contact with the ground, it's hard to steer. In mountain biking, if your rear wheel skids, you release pressure on the front brake to put the rear wheel back on the ground and get back in control. Control off-road is critical unless you really like kissing the dirt.

That's a lot of verbiage but it boils down to shift your weight when you brake, use both brakes and try to keep the wheels on the ground.

PlanoFuji

None of these are essential skills or frankly even a generally good idea. From the other posts here are some mentions of such essential skills.

The only other I would add is learning how to perform an emergency (sharp and quick) stop properly. ie, you need to use the front brake mostly (as well as the rear) and shift your weight back on the bike.

StephenH

I've ridden a little over 50,000 miles in the last few years, and NEVER hop up a curb, ride off one, or bunny hop. Of course it helps that I don't ride on sidewalks, but still, those are not really essential skills for an average rider.
I can't trackstand, and right offhand, not sure if many or any of the people I ride with can, either. At least I've never seen anybody do it at a traffic light or something like that. Slow-riding skills can be helpful, but tend to develop themselves when you ride slow, too.

zvez

so I'm getting into riding now, after a false and all too brief try ten or so years ago. I'm starting again now at 53. I find it incredibly tough to take one hand off the bars. Are there any drills to do to improve this or is it something I just need seat time to develop?

I wouldn't have thought it'd be so hard, I've been riding motorcycles for years and years and average 20k miles a year. One handed riding on an mc is dead easy.

This is a great thread.