Columbus Bike Fancy: Amy Spears

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Amy Spears fancies bikes.


 When Amy Spears rides her bike, Amy Spears doesn’t always gear up with a small rugby player* upon her front tire.
    In fact, many of you may know Amy from her other pursuit (Amy fancies Roller skates.).  I met Amy on the Yay Bikes March ride in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and snapped this photo later during a stop at a consecutive bike ride. She was awesome enough to reply to my interrogations about her bicycle riding practices.



What kind of bike are you riding? Where did you get it?
This particular day I was on my mid 1980s Nishiki road bike.  I bought it off craigslist last year once I determined it was a perfect fit and have been slowly spiffing it up, but it’s almost entirely as it was in 1985. 
(I have a love of old road bikes, I think mostly because of my grandfather’s collector tendencies – he worked at a screw machine shop that made parts for Huffy & Schwinn when I was little, and still has a garage full of old bikes. My basement is beginning to look much the same.)
Does he or she have a name?
Not yet. I’ve actually never been one for naming cars or anything, but I have started naming my bikes. This one is still unnamed though, because I haven’t quite found the right fit yet.
Bike accessory you can’t live without?
I tend to switch back and forth amongst a couple different bikes, so I love those Knog lights that are easy to switch from bike to bike.  And my Seagull bag.  I call it my “trunk” when it’s all loaded up for adventuring.
Where do you ride? What’s your favorite route?
My commute to work is ridiculously short, but I do ride every day for most of the year. Pretty much the only place I don’t ride in nice weather is to roller derby practice because it’s not a really bikeable route, and my gear doesn’t quite fit in my bag.  I love riding in city streets, and biking late at night up High Street when the lights are timed right and there’s not much traffic is my favorite.  When I need to get out for a hard training ride for racing, I tend to hit up the trails out of Three Creeks Metropark, because they are less crowded than the more centrally located trails.

What’s the most exotic/interesting/strange ride you’ve experienced?
Actually, the evening at the end of the ride this photo was taken on got kind of surreal. We had about 20 of us biking through campus neighborhoods after dark, and with it being unseasonably warm and the beginning of OSU’s spring break, a lot of people were out on their front porches.  Just about every place we passed people started yelling (gleefully) “Look, a Bike Gang!” which I thought was just odd and funny.
What does Columbus NEED in reference to bikes, in your opinion?
Education – not just for cyclists, but for drivers and pedestrians too. I bike mostly near campus and it kills me to see adults riding on the sidewalk and ignoring traffic laws. But I’ve also seen drivers squeezing cyclists out of lanes, and once had a pedestrian hurl herself in front of me in the middle of the street while screaming at me to follow traffic laws.  So everyone could use a good dose of how this is all supposed to work, for safety’s sake.


*Do anyone know our rugby player friend? His identity is a mystery to us. His team was celebrating at Local Bar on St Patrick’s day.

Comments

  1. The fact that that guy got his hips in between my handle bars still amazes me! :)

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