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Riding a bike - I would worry about flat tires.
A motorcycle is noisey and will run out of gas.
A horse will whinney when it senses someone around. Not always a good idea.
A mule rider must be smarter than the mule.
what ever dude, your mind won't be changed like mine was 30 years ago, your absolutley right, a modern mountain bike is way better than a horse. and you'll have a raft in your back pack too...
Both have merits, and some of us have experiance with both and are open minded enough to chage our minds some aren't...
Don't forget the excavation equipment he's carrying to bury his bike "quickly."
This entire horse versus mountain bike scenario has become so ridiculous that it’s pointless to even debate it any further. If the proponent of mountain bikes cannot see the obvious inherent superiority of a horse versus bicycle while going cross country, through rough terrain, while packing gear and a rider, no amount of words will convince him otherwise.
One thing that shocks me about all this bicycle talk, would be the number of people that continuously talk about flat tires and bicycles.
I sometimes go through bouts of only mountain biking. I am really a road biker. I like to go fast, and mountain bikes are just too slow, so I always lean towards road bikes. I do get on my mountain cycling kicks from time to time, and they can last for months. While mountain cycling 180 miles a week on a trail that’s *unimproved*, I rarely get a flat.
If I had to guess, I’d say that I get one flat a month. One of my mountain bikes still has its original tubes. If I recall correctly, there’s one patch on the front tube, and about six on the rear. The bike has roughly 6,700 miles on it, so that’s a flat every 3,350 miles for the front, and about one every 1,100 miles for the rear. Flats aren’t that common, or at least for me they’re not.
I run racing slicks on my road bike. They are about ¾ of an inch wide and they take 140 lbs per square inch of air pressure. Despite my paper-thin racing tires, I recall flats about every 1,000 miles. My mountain bikes both have lightweight tires on them as well.
When I get a flat, it takes about ten minutes to find the hole, check the tire carcass for sharp foreign objects, patch the tire, remount, re-inflate, and I’m on my way. If you can afford to spend 100 – 600 dollars on a used mountain bike, you can afford 20 – 30 dollars on a small compact tool kit the size of a Swiss Army knife, patching kit, and pump. There are dozens of videos on youtube that will show you how to patch a tire if you already don’t know.
On the other hand, in the types of scenarios we’re talking about, there could well be debris all over the place. Broken glass and the like, so maybe your flat tire fears are well founded.
I just know I would personally not want to try to ride a bicycle to safety. I’d be and obvious target out in the open that’s slow and easily overtaken by motor vehicles. If I’m packing a lot of gear, I’m so slow that dogs and people become viable threats to my safety.
*Author’s note* By unimproved trail, I mean that it’s an old abandoned railroad bed. The tracks and ties were ripped up in the middle 1980s, and since that time, nothing’s been done to it. There’s also very little maintenance performed on the trail. The line dates back to the 1860s, and the section I ride on was closed in the 1960s. I’m riding on the original ballast, and there are all sorts of sharp objects. Even the ballast has coal cinders on it.
The last coal trains were used in America up till the late 1950s, and spur lines saw coal fired trains soldiering on well into the late 50s. Also, this line mostly hauled coal, so there’s a lot of coal dust, coal chunks, and burnt cinders from the engine’s boiler/sandbox all over the trail as well as normal debris a rail line accumulates. It’s very rough in sections where there are cut outs through the mountain. Some of the cut outs run for what seems like a mile. At places, the cut outs are deep, so freeze fractures along the cut outs have caused numerous rockslides, and quite often the rocks have sharp slivers on them just like a napped knife/arrowhead.
This is a pay attention trail that’s rarely traveled. It’s not uncommon to surprise black racer snakes, deer, and other fauna. Thus far I’ve been lucky. I’ve not yet encountered a copperhead or a timber rattler, but I’ve heard that they’re there. I do however run into people that either aren’t cautious or are ill equipped, and they’ve got flat tires, which I stop and fix due to the remote location. Pushing a bicycle five to ten miles on a trail isn’t a lot of fun…
Bicycles can suffer from mechanical failures, beasts of burdens can suffer from biological failures. Both have their pros/cons and specific circumstances where one could be preferable to the other. Neither is inherently better or worse than the other in all scenarios one would likely encounter post-SHTF.
However, I think we've answered the original question of the OP... it appears that, yes, many people would consider riding a horse (or other beast of burden) if the SHTF.
put Slime in each tire, never get a flat again. also, they make solid rubber tires, no flat issues, ever. Get with the times, guys, they've had this sort of stuff for 20 years or more.
I've got several "run flats" tires (solid and filled) and I can tell you, if you're riding on rough terrain, you're going to feel every single bump no matter how tiny... and if it's really cold, don't try to roll over anything more tan 1/2 inch high!
Moderator cut: Personal attack i've been rubbed RAW by riding horseback. Bikes don't run off, bite you, rub you off on a tree, roll over on your stuff, get sick, get hurt, kick you, make noise, don't need to be fed, watered, rubbed down, curried, etc, either.
Last edited by MissingAll4Seasons; 08-28-2011 at 10:26 PM..
Reason: personal attack
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