I had a quiet route, evenings picked up Sci-Fi & mystery novel readings ..

if doing the trip, now, I would have eliminated stopping & flipping the tape over..

Flipping the tape over? Wat chu ridin', a High Wheeler? Do yourself a favor and get an mp3 player for your non-stop audio listening pleasure and convenience.

Finished No Easy Day and am now listening to Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era .

You listened to No Easy Day? Did you shoot any cars or call in air strikes on intersections?

Yes, No. And I haven't scored 100 points in an NBA game.

Listening to a book while riding would never work for me. I would be too quick to place myself into the book, instead of paying attention to what is around me. Sounds like it works for several of you, which is great. Hope you don't end up 6 feet under or bouncing off the side of a vehicle because of it though, does not seem worth it to me.

Humans don't multitask,even though they think they do.

I'm on the sixth book from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series

I have an 8-hour each way weekend commute, so I have an Audible subscription and I also listen to podcasts, especially Freakanomics and Car Talk. About 400 of my 450 miles is on interstates where I can turn my brain off. I can't imagine listening to anything in city traffic, and my bike time is fairly limited (Tu, We, Th, sometimes M), so I don't want to interrupt it!

The 3 months when I listened to the Girl With The Dragon Tatoo books had lots of white-knuckle, full-bladder, can't-stop driving. No good for biking.

Sure they were. Surprised it took 3 months with 16 hours of listening each weekend. The unabridged trilogy was about 55 hours long and took me a just a little over a month listening on my bike while commuting.

What did you think of "hydrogen Sonata " From Iain M. Banks ?

Alastair Reynolds revelation space is good .

And all of the Gridlinked series by Neal Asher .


I think i maybe one of the few people who doesn't like Game of Thrones and the Enders series.

One book series if you ever see it,
[h=3]The Winter of the World by Michael Scott Rohan[/h]

• The Anvil of Ice (1986)
• The Forge in the Forest (1987)
• The Hammer of the Sun (1988)
• The Castle of the Winds (1998)
• The Singer and the Sea (1999)
• Shadow of the Seer (2001)

There is a kindle edition but i dont think a Audio book yet

As my little boy said when he first learned about playing make-believe - "I can take a trip in my mind!" I travel too easily in that way if I am listening to music or a podcast. Never really cared for it when I used to run, either. Just me, I suppose - it kinda makes me nervous to think about a distraction added to my ride, but then in the mornings I get a lot of silence since I ride in before the auto commuters get going much. Different strokes...

Regarding hearing traffic, yes, no problem. I actually find that what works best for me is to use a noise blocking earbud, but only one, in my right ear (away from traffic). If I use an open earbud, the wind noise forces me to crank the volume up to an almost painful level in order to hear what's being said, and that actually makes it harder to hear traffic than if i just block that ear and have the volume much lower.

With one ear open, I've found that I can hear traffic exactly as well as I can with no earphone at all. I can easily hear traffic FAR before it gets to me.

Also, use a mirror. I check my mirror probably every 5 seconds when in town, every 15 when out on open road. Maybe more than that even.

Oh yeah, for bluetooth, the one I've found to work well is the LG HBS-700. The separate earbud allows me to easily fit it under helmet straps, or when mowing the lawn in the summer I can easily wear it with hearing protection muffs over the top. With the lawn mower I can choose to use both earbuds.

+1 to all, and it's certainly different strokes for different folks. Another option for bluetooth is Jabra Clipper, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ms_ohs_product. This little clip can be used with any set of headphones (throw away the ones that come with it, they're garbage).

I'm the same way, David - I'm sure I could hear things just fine using the one-earbud technique and a reasonable volume, but I get too engrossed in the book. Heck, I tried to knit lace once while listening to an audiobook (knitting is where I do most of my book-listening) and it got all screwed up. I'd probably end up in a tree if I tried to listen to anything on a ride. More power to those who have the ability, though.

finished No Easy Day yesterday - brilliant book! I wouldn't have thought to listen, thanks!

Most of my commute is wide enough that I don't ride in traffic or in the door zone - the rest is empty enough I don't have to worry about much traffic, especially at 6:00 AM.

More to the point, I discovered Audible when I drove 45 minutes each way to work. Among my favorites are the entire Ian Fleming James Bond series (except for "The Spy Who Loved Me"), as well as a lot of Dean Koontz novels - Odd Thomas and the Frankenstein series are especially good. I also like stuff like "Unholy Night" by Seth Graeme-Smith. Good stuff! Right now I'm listening to Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore - I don't want to go inside when I get to work!

I get into the story quite a bit, but as I said previously, I don't have a busy or dangerous commute, and, I get into ANYTHING I'm listening to, whether biking or driving, so I don't really consider it to be worse than rocking out to something or listening to an audiobook in the car.

I sometimes listen to podcasts when I do extended rides, audio books might be a bit too much.

Headphones at reasonable volumes shouldn't get in the way of hearing traffic, but I still suggest you just get handlebar speaker bags. They can get plenty loud, double as noisemakers to alert peds/other riders in your route, and you'll probably have a much lesser issue than wearing headphones should you ever get in a collision.

Just finished Koontz's A Good Man. Brilliant and terrifying. Wasn't great pick for riding book!