Wait, WA is working on a bike tax that could add around $350 to the price of an e-bike and absolutely destroy local bike shops bottom lines when selling e-bikes.

What the actual fuck are they smoking down in Olympia. What, the fuck?

https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2025/04/01/listen-i-went-on-kuow-to-defend-wa-bike-shops-from-the-proposed-e-bike-tax/

@seabikeblog

More from David Schmalz, re: his #MontereyCountyWeekly cover story on the Moss Landing battery fires:

"I’d like to talk more about our society’s insatiable demand for #energy, and how easy it is to become detached from its costs—not on the pocketbook, but the planet. You don’t think much, if at all, about energy when you drive your car up a hill, but you’d think about it plenty on a #bike or on foot.
…
“Energy demand keeps ticking up, especially now with the advent of #AI.

"Throw a question into a Google search, for example, and the answer—now that it’s AI-assisted—consumes 10 times more energy than it did before AI.”
https://www.montereycountynow.com/blogs/opinion_blog/there-may-be-lessons-to-be-learned-by-looking-back-on-the-history-of-vistra/article_3662d3d6-c5c4-40db-ab81-f7afc8619675.html#tncms-source=mosaic

NOTE: That’s one reason we choose to check “never" AI in our searches. https://duckduckgo.com/settings#aifeatures And we very, very rarely turn to Google. Duck Duck Go has been our default search engine since 2015. We first used the Duck in 2011 and have experienced its improvements every year. Our family is used to us saying "Ask the Duck" not "Google it.”

So here are a few things I tried:

1. Thread the pedal in from the other side. The pedal went in halfway before it got stuck and I think I damaged more threads removing the pedal now.

2. Bought a set of socket wrenches (since I didn't know all I needed was a 15mm one) and tried to take off the crankarm. If I could take it off, I could order a replacement crankarm. Why would you buy a new crankarm if you couldn't replace it, right? Well, the socket wrench set, the second cheapest on Amazon, sucked ass. They were made of soft metal and the 15mm size was more like 15.2mm. The wrench rounded out after a few tries...

3. Took it to the LBS. The shop owner said he won't fix it because he didn't want to take responsibility of what happened to the bike. Told us to return and refund the bike instead. My partner loves the bike, so no can do.

4. I bought what looked like a decent crank removal tool. I could tell it was better because it was heavier, so properly denser, harder metal. Plus, it came with it's own wrench, which socketed in on all 6 sides of the hex-shaped tool. This did the trick, since I now had enough grip, leverage and stability to undo that crankarm nut and remove the crankarm. It wasn't easy though and took me 15 minutes of wrenching with all the strength I could muster whilst half-kneeling.

tldr: I removed the left crankarm of my partner's city bike.