Here's my current commute machine, a Giant Contend AR. It's a very capable gravel and all-road bike that happily carries panniers, and I'd have fenders on but I live in a dry climate.

my two commuters

Images are not showing up for me.

hmmmmmm, this work?

Yep, that worked

I am not commuting, but I do ride around all the time, local coffee shop, thrifts (Where I get my bikes, and everything else I can) Grocery......So this find from the thrift the other day will be an official keeper. Need a celeste seat, which will be a Selle SMP, but otherwise I see no need to do anything else. Current seat works fine for now.

I don't have a dedicated commuter and just use what I feel like for the day. My Orro Terra C gets the most use for commuting I guess. Below is it set-up for wet weather/winter riding with 32mm pirelli cinturato velos, mudguards, and my bar mitts. I use a 6 litre saddlebag for my work clothes and shoes and a hip pack for keys, lunch, and other bits.



Here it is in summer mode, with 40mm Hutchinson Touregs and a full frame bag, which has a 3 litre hydration bladder in it. In the summer, I will quite often extend the ride home with a 25 mile+ gravel route.

Sometimes, I take the summer road bike if the weather is nice (50-50 split between this and the Orro during nice weather). I can even fit my coffee in a bottle cage. Sometimes I use a small backpack, and other times I will use my 6 litre saddlebag for my change of clothes/shoes.


And a couple of times a month during TT season, this is used to commute on. It is not the most practical commuting in a skinsuit and aero helmet, but it can be quick. I either take my clothes in a small backpack, or take double the day before and leave a set at work.

My commuter, I use a backpack for anything I need to carry or pick up.

chose my fighter dropbar vs flat

Main Ride, day off.

My Bridgestone 300, I love this bike, especially since it was $10 and in rough shape when I got it! I kind of dig the odometer even though it's hard to read the numbers (I think 500 miles).

Nice! What university is that?

My Bridgestone MB-5 is both my daily commuter to work and play. 'Coffee Outside' - Every Sunday morning in and around NE Mpls. Recovery Bike Shop organises it. An informal gathering of winter bicyclists and bicyclists in general.

University of Delaware

This is my newest addition for use in commuting. It is a bikes direct gravity avenue flat bar road bike with a rock bros trunk bag that has side panniers. I am happily surprised at how useful the trunk bag is. Also surprised at how light the bike is.

It's been a long time since I logged or posted here. I've lost my wife at way too young an age (still picking up the pieces of my life from that), moved cross country (UT --> FL) to start a new job, and am now part time caring for my mother (she is in a care home nearby).

I've updated the livery on my Velo (vinyl wrap). This is my main commuter here.

Before and after:

Love it ^

I discovered that the travel coffee cup I have fits perfectly in one of my bottle cages. This is gonna be a game-changer

So a couple weeks ago I lost my mind and bought a set of panniers to match my older handlebar and saddle bag. Unfortunately to get that big handlebar bag to fit right I had to swap the stem and flit it but everything fits and lies up nicely.

Notso_fastLane sorry to hear about your circumstances but good to see you. The livery is cool with the prewar Flying Tiger mouth and the Normandy stripes

Here’s my MTB next to a deep new hole along the commute

Found this Schwinn Criss Cross on CL a few months back and finally got it together a couple weeks ago. It's a tank! I'm guessing it weighs about 30 pounds without the pannier. It has a stupid-long top tube; someting like 24". Totally goofy geomertry, but it's partially tamed with a dirt drop stem and having the bars and seat level. Great rain bike! No land speed records for this one, but with the lugged frame with vertical dropouts, a Velocity Dyad 36 spoke wheelset and Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires, you WILL get there.

Lots of excellent bikes in this thread!

Great build!

I'm a bit - no, very late to this thread, but here's my "commutocruiser". Even though I stopped commuting regularly 6 years ago tomorrow, it's still my "commuting bike".

Here's the story behind it: It's a Ross "Mt. Cruiser" sold in the mid-1990s - swingset tubing, threaded BB, stock 5 speed freewheel. I got a pair of them brand new for me and my new girlfriend for about $300 for both in August 1995 (the same week we bought a Santana tandem). And I've upgraded both of them steadily through the years - hers is an 18-speed city bike.

One thing I quickly noticed about the bike - it fit me better than any other bike I'd owned. Its handling isn't fast at all, but rock-solid predictable and dependable - just the thing for demonstrating emergency maneuvers when teaching skills classes. And with the proper saddle and high-pressure tires it's efficient and very comfortable. It was my primary bike from 1995 until 2010, and I put many miles on it.

15 years later in 2010, I finally built up a several-pounds-lighter version of this cruiser with an aluminum Nashbar frame, and this one became my "backup primary" bike. We took it on the back of our pickup our Big 2010 Road Trip to Chicago and upper Michigan, and it worked great with my son's trailercycle. But then disaster struck - somewhere in the South Dakota Badlands, an arm on our ancient hitch rack finally fatigued and snapped, and the bike tumbled to the pavement unseen by me in the truck cab, and secured by a stout chain lock, was dragged behind the truck at 65 mph.

For several miles.

When others finally alerted us to the problem, the bike was in sorry shape indeed - wheels tacoed, components and handlebars ground into stubs, and paint missing from a good chunk of one side. We tossed the wreckage onto the shell roof, drowned our sorrows in Wall, and plodded back to AZ.

Back home, I stripped the bike and assessed the damage. The fork was completely bent and the rear triangle was bent inward, but the main tubes were still in plane and didn't have too much abrasion damage. I resigned myself to making it a wall decoration, but something deep within me said: "can we resuscitate an old friend?"

And I pondered the issue for a while. And realized: We have the technology. We have the spare parts. We can rebuild it. We can make it better, stronger, and... no, not faster. And I acquired a replacement fork, took a broom handle to the frame until the strings looked identical on both sides, grabbed several rolls of 3M Super 33 colored electricians tape off the shelf, and began wrapping. And wrapping, And wrapping. And then rebuilding.

The result: a reborn buddy who now has nearly 21,000 miles under the wheels, many enjoyable commutes and other rides, and still the "#1 backup" to the other bikes.

The current component mix is "eclectic mixed with thrifty" - 26" wheels salvaged from a doomed Giant, a Suntour short-cage rear derailleur held on by a hex bolt, a 40-24 Deore crank I painted to hide the blotchies, a 13-25 7-speed freewheel shifted either by Suntour friction thumbies or whatever salvaged index-7 shifter I'm testing, a comfy double-sprung saddle, a side basket repurposed as a front basket (with water bottle and cup holders inside), a $6 Costco flashlight set up as a decent headlight, a kluged-together super-bright rear lighting system, front n' rear racks, and of course a bell. All set up in a manner to offend anyone's sensibilities to the point where they wouldn't dare steal it.

Behold the beloved mess:


As for the "new girlfriend" I bought the bike with: We'll celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary next month.