LOL< best answer yet. Cheers

Hahaha, yeah I noticed that too. Although to be fair, her description of the club sounded more like it was "Let's discuss anarchy" club than Anarchist club.

Congrats on first post Bass playin biker! doesnt it feel good after the first post to see people respond.


Any way, 23 Miles is not short, unless yuo have showers that work and a change of clothes i would be pretty stinky and sweaty if i rode that much to school. I can understand your pain, there are places to lock up your bike, but the ****in no life *******s in my school will do something to my bike in some way. MY dad would kill me. (i live like a 5 min walk from my school) And my principal pretty much dismissed the topic pretty much. Do you live in a bad part of town? they may be woprried in that way. I doubt that is the problem. NAy way go back to your principal, or your guidance counseler, because my guidance counseler would help me find a way to figure out the bike problem.

If you read the whole thread, you'd realize it was a typo. he corrected it to 12.5 miles, which is still a lengthy commute, but still very possible in under an hour.

Taht part isnt the point of my thread but thanks anyway!

Everyone Stand clear there is a MERTON on the loose!

That was pretty random, its a friday and i have nothing to do.

His problem is that he can't lock it up outside the school grounds. He said it's in the "ghetto" or bad area, so it would disappear. lock or no lock.

I'm surprised that in the zeal to encourage this kid to ride through a 'ghetto' in the dark, nobody seems to have considered that his dad is in the hospital. Presumably his mom, or whoever is taking care of him, is probably just a little preoccupied with the hospitalized father and doesn't need the extra stress of worrying about whether the kid has safely made it to school or back home again every day. And since there appears to be nobody available to drive him to school now, if he has a bike problem, who is going to come to help?

I'm all for encouraging kids to ride bikes, but this is not a good situation for that. The last thing the kid needs to be doing right now is adding an additional complication to the rest of the family.

Read past the title. It is a club about peace. Anarchy means without government and when you consider what the US administration is not peaceful, the title makes sense. If you have forgotten, the US has started a war without provocation based on false pretenses. They also kidnapped a democratically elected president and then armed his opposition so that they could assassinate the president's supporters. And the list goes on.

Firstly he's not a "kid" he's a high school student, making him a teenager. Secondly he's in the midwest...there is no ghetto in the midwest as much as you may want to insist upon that. Thirdly I ride my bike through some rough and tough parts of LA at 3am and have found that no one is going to mess with you on a bike.

Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, even if it is seemingly more dangerous. Heck in your line of reasoning who's going to come help if there is car trouble? What if he gets in a car accident? I think fatal car accidents among teens are much more likely than a fatal cycling accident.

Point taken -- I was only attempting lame humor. I didn't get to ride today: I was all set for a long ride at Liberty Hills but frisbee ran long, so I missed it.

Kid, you are bad ass. You're the kind of kid most of us would like to have been, or look back on when we were, and smile. Good on ya!

When I was 12 I was out the door at 4AM delivering newspapers on My old Schwinn, single speed, spring fork. Got home about 6:30, had to be at school at 8AM. Rain or not, temp between 80F down to some occasional mid 20s. I had ridden 20 miles by the time I parked in the school basement. After school, back on the road collecting from customers, if they didn't pay, I had to. No one made Me do it, for sure. All for 10 or 12 bucks a week. Sundays were wild, papers about twice as big, 60+ lbs in a bag on the bars. I weighed maybe 65 lbs, so the Schwinn and papers outweighed Me by a lot.
What the hell is going on these days, don't We want Kids to grow up anymore? If it is not safe for decent Kids these days it is time to hang barbarians.
Sorry, having a Geezer attack, but DAMN!

Ahh! ....the good old days! ....those knee-action Schwinns were some kind of HEAVY bikes

Hey, Norton, I bet You can remember putting a boot in Your tire until You could save enough to replace it! Used to see bikes with friction tape wraps. My bike was My lifeline then. I reckon We were a little smelly sometimes, until We discovered girls.

Anytime you hear, "liability" as an excuse, be skeptical. It's generally an excuse for not doing something you didn't want to do in the first place. You can file a lawsuit for anything, the question is whether you can win and whether it would be frivolous.

Could the school be responsible for diabetes treatment if the kid got fat because he didn't get enough exercise? Could the school be responsible if the kid caught a cold on the bus (which the school made him take)? Maybe the school could be blamed for any contagious disease the kid gets because the school couldn't prove he did not get it on the bus.

These are silly examples, but the point is that it's easy to make up a liability excuse.

On the serious side, ask the principal what he bases his liability fear on. Ask for specific documents or a specific conversation with a school attorney. I suspect the principal is making his decision based solely on his own uninformed speculation. If your state public record law applies, ask your principal for all documents he has concerning the dangers of cycling to school. It would be interesting to see if the answer is "none."

On the practical side, if you are going to commute 23 miles round trip, you need to be able to do more than repair a flat. You need to be able to fix most anything that could go wrong. I strongly recommend Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance (or of Mountain Bike Mainenance, if that's what you have). You need to have a set of tools or a good multi-tool in your seat bag. The Zinn book has some good guidance on the necessary tools and skills.

Finally, you need more than one head light. Your batteries will frequently die during your 23 mile round trip. You need to have a plan to deal with your headlight burning out 1 mile into the round trip. If you are on a budget, I'd look at a NR Road Rat or some other 10-15w hallogen with a small NIMH battery that hangs from your top tube. You might want to get two of the batteries, so one will always be fully charged when you start your trip. At a minimum, have an LED back up to the 10-15w halogen.

If you can't afford to buy the equipment to make your commute safe and efficient, you should take the bus.

I don't care what others say, I love the machinations of the attorney mind!

On the other hand, if the principal comes up with a valid liability excuse, perhaps you could work with local bike groups and school district organizations to pass a law imminizing school districts from responsibility for traffic accidents students have on their way to school. It couldn't happen in time for you, but you would leave a mark.

what part of town do you live in?