I was thinking of creating an anonymous ticketmaster account using public wifi since they block VPNs and just have them email me updates, but they required a phone number for the sign up so I scrapped that idea.
Edit: I decided to sign up for songkick as someone else here mentioned. It seems pretty polished and its entire purpose is concert discovery. It never asked for any unnecessary extra information either such as first and last name and phone number, just an email and a password and boom.
Free perhaps, not really local. I love an hour from the nearest city. Lol.
I do have a bike… but it’s more reserved for riding up and down my own road for weight loss purposes. My county is rural, and does not have side walks or bike lanes, and the nearest store to me 15 miles. I am not capable of making of that ride, even if it were safe to do so.
But in principle, I fully agree. Fuck cars, fuck car culture, and fuck the governments for not doing more to make bikes a feasible option.
Shitty bike infrastructure aside, depending on what your local geography is like (sorry if you’re in a very hilly area) you might be surprised how quickly you can build up to that if you make it your goal.
I’m fat, in my 30s, and until just about this time last year I had basically never ridden a bike (rode one a little bit as a kid, took the training wheels off, did a couple quick laps around an empty parking lot, then didn’t touch one again for 20-some years, I would not really have counted myself as someone who could ride a bike with those credentials) and I recently did my personal longest bike ride of over 17 miles. I haven’t been trying too hard, I get out maybe once or twice a week if I’m lucky, took basically the whole winter and a good chunk of the spring off from riding, and I just try (not always successfully) to push myself a little harder every time I get out.
I still have a long ways to go, that ride was mostly flat, if I come across any significant hill I’m still mostly getting off halfway and walking the rest of the way up, and I was definitely feeling pretty beat-up by the end, but I’m pretty impressed with the progress I made over the last year, especially since I don’t really feel like I had to put in a whole lot of effort to get here.
Doesn’t do much for being able to use your bike for actual transportation if the roads aren’t bike friendly (and I feel that, I’m in a semi-rural area myself, if it weren’t for the fact that I live very close to a decent bike trail that goes a long way in either direction and even links up with a few other trails, I wouldn’t feel comfortable riding more than about a half mile from my house with the way roads are near me) but it does still open up your options a bit. I’m starting to bring my bike places with me and using it to get around once I’m there and looking into bike sharing options for when I go on longer trips and can’t bring my bike with me.