Originally Posted by
billdsd
For those that don't know San Diego, in addition to the limited infrastructure and psycho motorists, the terrain is all mesas and valleys. This means that if you want to travel a significant distance from most places to most other places, you're going to be doing some climbing, which is probably not a good thing on a dutch commuter bike made for a city that's pan flat and probably weighs quite a bit and probably only has one gear, or three at most.
Agreed. She knew San Diego, but fell in love with the idea of riding a bike everywhere... until she got back. We live atop a mesa... everywhere is down hill. And every road out of our neighborhood is a high speed arterial road (you can go east or west for a short distance... but everywhere else is 45MPH or higher).
With the right gearing, anybody can get up and down the hills... but the psycho motorists and the "nobody walks in So Cal" mentality both work against cyclists and peds.
We have beautiful weather here, but everyone insists on
driving around in it. And cell phones... uggg... don't get me started.