The morning check
Coffee in hand, wondering if today is a bike day or a car day. That's literally what this is for.
About this site
I ride. I also write code. This is both.
ShouldYouRide isn't a startup pitch. It's a tool I wanted for myself, then kept improving because other riders kept asking about it.
Why I made it
On a car, bad weather is annoying. On a bike, it changes whether you stay upright, whether your hands go numb, whether you enjoy the ride at all.
I don't need a 10-day forecast with pollen counts. I need to know: is it going to rain in the next few hours, how hard is the wind blowing, and is it cold enough that I'll regret leaving in just a hoodie.
So I built a single page that answers that. The ride score is my best guess at weighting the factors that actually matter on two wheels. It's not gospel. Use your own judgment. But it beats doing the math in your head while half asleep.
When I open it
A few real situations, not marketing bullets.
Cold or windy days
Thermometer says 45° but you're doing 70 on the highway. The wind chill chart is there for exactly that.
Timing the ride
Looks fine now, but rain at 3pm? The hourly view helps you leave at 11 instead of getting soaked.
Traffic sanity check
Sometimes the weather is perfect and the interstate is a parking lot. Peek at traffic before you commit.
What's on the ride page
Ride score
0 to 100, based on temp, rain, wind, and feels-like. Sunny doesn't always mean good. I've had 75° days score badly because of gusting wind.
Hourly forecast
The next 12 hours in a row you can actually scan. Helpful when the morning looks fine and the afternoon doesn't.
Wind chill chart
Copied from v1 because people kept asking for it. Shows what speed does to cold air when you're not behind a windshield.
How it got here
Years ago
Started as a learning project
I was teaching myself web dev and wanted something real to build. I ride whenever I can, and I kept opening three different apps before every ride. So I made one page that had the stuff I actually cared about.
v1
Node, Express, Pug
The first version lived on GitHub for a long time. Weather, 12-hour forecast, a traffic map, wind chill table. Clunky by today's standards, but it worked, and I used it.
Now
Rewrote the whole thing
This is v2. Same idea, rebuilt cleaner, with a ride score and a traffic map you open when you need it.