Denis sent me an e-mail this week:
These days were quite cold on The Black Sea and I should admit that people still have not used to cycle at any weather. People in Sevastopol prefer to ride on mountain bikes, though these bikes can`t be called mountain in pure understanding of the term as they only have strong rims and frames of similar design. Other parts are not produced for hard driving conditions at all.
This is good, but makes bikes look - probably, not so elegant as Dutch city ones :-) The choice for “mountain” bikes is obvious, `cause the city doesn`t have quality bike lanes at all and we have to drive along the pavements with poor quality surface. This is the main reason for most of us to choose strengthened rims.
During the last years, the situation became to change to better.. More bikes appear on roads, more people cycle on a daily basis and not only for sport reasons. This brings hope and joy to our hearts :-) The center of the city is quite comfortable for driving a bike in sense of surface quality, though we still do not have special segragated bike lanes :-( and some helpful infrastructure. We think the city doesn`t have it yet :-) At least, we hope .. :-)
I took some photos of how it looks like in Sevastopol. We`ll send more after finishing some vital things :-)
Thank you so much, Denis! Mountain bikes or not, Sevastopolitans seem very practical in their attire to me. Of course you have all of our support, begging for more pictures! ;-p
WHAT TO DO NOW?