Five bicycle tips for a better ride

Here are five ideas to ensure that your bike, your route, and you are ready for every ride.

2. Bike maintenance

Melinda Martinez/The Daily Town Talk/AP
New Orleans artist Katrina Brees and her assistant Allison Hilder ride Brees' art bike creations near the amphitheater in downtown Alexandria, La., Saturday, May 10.

The League of American Bicyclists suggests performing an "ABC Quick Check" on your bike before you ride. The acronym ABC Quick Check reminds riders to check for air in the tires, brakes that work, cranks and chains in place, quick release systems that release properly, and to check the overall bike before riding.

Bicycling magazine offers a three-point tutorial on bike maintenance, giving how-to tips for cleaning out a bike chain, adjusting brakes, and smoothing out the shifting on a bike.

When it comes to on-the-go maintenance and repairs, it is always helpful to bring the following with you on a ride: a spare tire tube, a flat-tire patch kit, tire lever, and a multi-tool with assorted screwdrivers.

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Dear Reader,

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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