About

The Short Version

My Other Bike is a Bike is a project I started to document my love of all things biking. In the autumn of 2024, I got a fancy little pocket camera and decided to start documenting my adventures on my bike - both riding and fixing bikes. The phrase "My Other Bike is a Bike" popped into my head well over a year ago - just a little thought that made me laugh. I didn't know it would become a YouTube channel, or this site. At that time, I had accumulated four bikes, and I was just beginning to realize that what had once been a tool for getting myself from point A to point B was now so much more.

I have a lot of strong beliefs about bikes, and I believe that municipalities should leverage cycling for the numerous positive benefits they offer. While I won't enumerate what might be immediately obvious, I would encourage you to check out my posts to see the stories of where bikes take me, my friends and family, how they facilitate community, a healthier environment, and, importantly, a general happiness.

Thanks for coming by. Safe riding,

xoxo

Ty

The Long Version

One of my earliest memories is learning to ride a bike. My older brother was helping me learn. I recall accelerating down a slope in our neighborhood, not being able to stop, and my brother yelling at me to put my head down (with my helmet on), as I was just about to crash into a stop sign.

It's been great ever since.

A bike enabled me to get around the suburbia I grew up in. But bikes remained mysterious and difficult for me to comprehend mechanically. For a long time, if my chain fell off, I had to go get Dad, or just stop riding and walk home.

I realized the impact a bike could have on my life in my second summer of university. I was working a job that required me to bike 12km one way, work outside for 8 hours, and then bike 12km home. I remember people telling me that I wouldn't have any energy that summer. For better or worse, I take statements like that as a challenge, and I soon became a proud cyclist. I realized, with my increasing fitness, that I could go most anywhere in the city I lived, by bike. It was free, and it felt great. I even got three stitches in the back of my leg that summer from falling off my bike (I may have been doing something stupid, for example, riding with no hands, drinking from a water bottle, and cross-hand shifting my brakes). But I kept going.

At the time, I didn't know anything about bikes. I got my first nice bike from my brother's roommate: a single-speed Milwaukee Cycle. A beautiful bike that I didn't appreciate until after it was gone. But I won't get into specifics of bikes here and now. All I will say is that the Milwaukee marked a transition for me - a moment where I realized what a good (non-department store) bike felt like. It felt like flying. It felt effortless (except going up big hills on that single cog). It felt amazing. That bike was light as hell and fast.

Fast forward to 2019, when I bought my first new bike for myself: a Jamis Aurora Elite. A touring bike. I had great ambitions to set out and ride multi-day tours. It took me about 5 years before that happened; the best I was able to do on my own was one overnighter. I was too scared! Not having any experience with touring, I would instead sit and read stories of people doing it online. Instead, my Aurora was just my around-town bike - and while it was a great one, I didn't quite know what I was looking for from a bike.

Everything changed again when I started volunteering with bike-related organizations in Toronto. First, it was the Bike Brigade - a group of kind-hearted volunteers who ran logistics to help deliver food bank items and other necessities to people during the pandemic (and they're still running to this day).

Then I started helping cook for a group called Charlie's Free Wheels in the east end of Toronto - an amazing organization that helps youth learn how to build their own bikes. I had joined hoping to pick up some mechanical skills, but I ended up working on my culinary skills, learning how to feed eight to twelve hungry youths.

While I did that, I got more involved in the Bike Brigade. I met some of the people who built it and was able to contribute some of my software knowledge to help improve the platform used to dispatch riders for deliveries. Everyone at the Bike Brigade was and is so kind. Through them, I was able to reconnect with my community, go for rides, and start to think about mutual aid and how I could give back to my community. I don't do as much for the Bike Brigade in the present moment, but I hope to remedy that soon.

Some more time passed, and I started to wonder about improving my repair skills with bikes. By now, around 2023-2024, I had accumulated a few bikes, often second-hand, through the people I'd met in the community. In 2024, I decided to start going to a local bike co-op called Bike Pirates, where kind volunteers helped me learn more about bikes and community, further reinforcing values that had been planted and were just waiting for a watering can to bring them to life.

Now, looking back, I'm amazed at the overlap and confluence of different organizations in my city, and how bikes play a central tenet in all of this. Writing this here now and looking forward, I'm striking out to share my love of cycling, how happy it makes me, and the belief that bikes can make the world a little better of a place, pedal by pedal.