As you can see in this photo, this bike has a 3 speed hub, fenders, chainguard, and 700 x 47 “city” tires. The women’s step through model comes with the front basket; the men’s model has a rear rack and comes with small panniers.

The Aerostream kind of has the beach cruiser look, but the relatively stiff and lightweight aluminum frame gives this bike a much nicer ride than most beach cruisers I’ve tried. It doesn’t feel like I’m pulling a boat anchor when I ride this bike.

One of the more interesting features, though: The GT Aerostream uses the Gates carbon belt drive instead of a chain.

Overall a very nice ride and a nice looking bike.

The Oregon legislature is considering a similar law for their state. Portland, OR resident Spencer Boomhower created this video to illustrate how this proposed law would work in Oregon.

If you spend time outdoors this seems like an obvious tip, but a weather front can come in during the work day and change conditions pretty quickly. Several times I’ve seen cyclists on a pleasant morning who are completely unprepared for the rainy weather that will arrive in the afternoon.

I’m guilty of this myself — living in California, it’s easy to get lulled into complacency since the weather is so consistently nice most of the time.

When you drive, it’s usually not too big of a deal — you turn the dial from A/C to Heat on the dashboard and you’re good to go. When you bike, however, you’re exposed to the elements, and lack of preperation can make your ride miserable.

How about you? Have you been surprised by sudden downpours, blizzards, or wind storms?

Like most seat packs, the Trek Side Loader features a strap for holding a tail light.  Like most seat packs, this strap is basically useless. I’ve never seen one of these straps that actually works well for this purpose.  As shown here, it allows the light to point down too far for my tastes, even if I angle the pack up a bit. This is, by proxy, a complaint about the equally useless and ubiquitous “belt clips” seen on bicycle tail lights.

My complaints end there. As you can see above, it mounts to the seat rails with a quick-release cleat, and is braced to the seatpost by a velcro strap. The rear zipper offers a shallow pocket that’s just perfect for a road tube. There’s a little mesh area in there to hold your small items such as tire patches or a contact lens carrier.

Given the product’s name, it should come as no surprise that the real space in the Side Loader comes into play when you unzip the side flaps.

You can access the contents of the Side Loader from either side, and I’ve even opened it and closed it while riding. It’s just one giant pocket in there.  One flap has a mesh pocket, the other side sports some elastic straps and a snap-on neoprene pouch that I keep my tire levers and some spare cash in. This is my usual haul:

A pack like this might seem a bit hefty for some, but it’s managed to carry my bike essentials for the past 6 months.

Gary Fisher lives in San Francisco, where he’s a big supporter of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. He uses a bicycle get around. “I made myself a promise: I’m going to ride no matter what the weather condition and I’m going to pick everything up on a bike.” It’s great to hear about industry leaders like Fisher who use a bike for transportation, because that means they encounter and think about the practical issues that transportation cyclists face.

Visit Quickrelease.TV for listening options.

That’s how columnist Michael Dresser begins his column today in the Baltimore Sun in which he encourages legislators to vote for a proposed three foot law in Maryland.

Some other colorful words he uses describing people on bikes: infesting, freakish, Spandex (of course), dweeby, smug, elitist, irksome.

But he’s being clever, I think, because he then turns around and writes Maryland state legislators should pass the three foot passing law like some 20 other states have.

Read more in the Sun.

On the topic of cyclist bad behavior, Traffic author Tom Vanderbilt weighs in on the perception and reality of how we ride our bikes.

What do you think? Are we as badly behaved as some people think? Or are people just people: with some jerks out there no matter if they’re on foot, on bike, or in car?

More info -> CPSC.