the planet doesn't need saving. never did, never will. long after humans die off nature will consume our garbage and repurpose it, imo. biking for exercise is great, though!
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How about making sure it doesn't suck too much for the people that'll be around after us but before our species dies out entirely?
Not to mention the other species who suffer due to our mismanagement of our own environment...
I love bicycling and used it nearly exclusively for commuting in upstate NY year-round for several years, but in this country of insulin and cholesterol overloaded potted plants masquerading as humans, it is the accordion of transportation and the DAW of transport is autopilot cars.
@two fingers @Fishheadjoe it sucks that a few bad apples have given you hate-boners for cycling-as-transportation, and likeley turned you yourselves into bad apples whom cyclists and other car pilots talk about ruining their commute. You have brake and accelleration pedals which are unlikely to require more than a tenth of the effort used to walk four steps and a steering wheel which likely takes less effort to turn lock to lock at 5mph than making a ham sandwich: when approaching a cyclist- turn the steering wheel counter-clockwise ~5-10 degrees, turn the steering wheel clockwise ~10-20 degrees, return the wheel to guiding the car parallel to the yellow line(s). Congratulations! You have just successfully burned less than .00009 calories and safely passed another human using the same roadway as you! Until this becomes, as it is for 99% of other drivers, as rote as holding the door for someone three steps behind you or refraining from taking candy from children so that you don't even have to take a deep breath during the minor function, celebrate with a Snickers bar and a Pepsi upon sweat-free arrival at your destination!
@two fingers @Fishheadjoe it sucks that a few bad apples have given you hate-boners for cycling-as-transportation, and likeley turned you yourselves into bad apples whom cyclists and other car pilots talk about ruining their commute. You have brake and accelleration pedals which are unlikely to require more than a tenth of the effort used to walk four steps and a steering wheel which likely takes less effort to turn lock to lock at 5mph than making a ham sandwich: when approaching a cyclist- turn the steering wheel counter-clockwise ~5-10 degrees, turn the steering wheel clockwise ~10-20 degrees, return the wheel to guiding the car parallel to the yellow line(s). Congratulations! You have just successfully burned less than .00009 calories and safely passed another human using the same roadway as you! Until this becomes, as it is for 99% of other drivers, as rote as holding the door for someone three steps behind you or refraining from taking candy from children so that you don't even have to take a deep breath during the minor function, celebrate with a Snickers bar and a Pepsi upon sweat-free arrival at your destination!
Getting to work is overrated.Actually, I have a pretty nicePunta in bike....which I ride on trails.....nowhere near people trying to get to work.....in cars.
And my kid bike back in 1977 or 78 was chrome with a Pittsburgh Steelers logo on it.
I bet you have the fancy pants, shirt, hat and goggles. You have the attitude of being holier than thou because you choose to ride a bike. Thanks for the driving lesson. Now get out of my way.
Fishheadjoe
That's a neat theory. It would probably work great when there's NO ONCOMING TRAFFIC which is exactly... never. Biking in towns that are designed for it, or CAN design for it, is great. My town doesn't have an extra 6 feet to expand lanes to allow for bikes. So when they are in commuter traffic, they are, in fact, in the way of the MAJORITY OF people trying to get to work. If they are on country roads where oncoming traffic is common going 25 in a 55, they are, in fact, in the way.
I get plenty of exercise. Being a non-cyclist doesn't make me a fat slob. I am 6'2" and have a 33 inch waste. My weight fluctuates from a buck eighty to 200 pounds. You make a lot of assumptions. You pretty much implied that anyone who doesn't cycle is a blob of fat who gets winded on the way to the couch.
Not all cyclists are jerks. But nearly all of them are in the way around where I live. That's not great or awful. It is what it is.
I guess to you it's OK TO take up a when lane during rich hour doing about 20mph in a 45 mph zone? "I pay my taxes so I can cycle where I want to" kind of thing? It is OK on a curvy back road with constant oncoming traffic and rare passing zones to ride side-by-side at 25mph in a 55mph zone? They are taking the moral high ground by holding everyone up? And I'm a jersey for wanting to get where I'm going in a car on a highway or during rush hour? Seems like a sketchy moral argument....not that you argued those exact points. But your holier than thou attitude implied them.
I haven't gone car-free, but I commute by bike to work, year-round in Madison WI, and I also use my bike for errands, getting around town, etc. When I drive a car, it's usually for transporting multiple passengers, musical instruments, or for hauling groceries home from the big discount supermarket every few weeks. On most days, our cars don't leave the house. It helps that I actually enjoy cycling.
People can choose to live in proximity with their jobs, but their choices can be fairly limited, involving some pretty severe tradeoffs, espcially if they live in a household with other people. If you can't find favorable jobs / school / activities for everybody in the family, within biking distance, then somebody's going to be hopping into a car. But I do think that most of us could greatly reduce our car use, we'd be healthier, and it would be better ecologically. The fact that a few people can go car-free doesn't mean that everybody can do it.
About the hate-boners, what I've noticed is that the clash between cyclists and car drivers tends to be a sign of a community at an early stage of developing bike transportation, in terms of both infrastructure and popularity. As cycling gets more popular in an area, traffic patterns adapt, and both cyclists and car drivers modify their behavior to coexist. In my town, you rarely see cyclists on the busy trunk roads. I avoid roads with high speeds and heavy traffic.
People can choose to live in proximity with their jobs, but their choices can be fairly limited, involving some pretty severe tradeoffs, espcially if they live in a household with other people. If you can't find favorable jobs / school / activities for everybody in the family, within biking distance, then somebody's going to be hopping into a car. But I do think that most of us could greatly reduce our car use, we'd be healthier, and it would be better ecologically. The fact that a few people can go car-free doesn't mean that everybody can do it.
About the hate-boners, what I've noticed is that the clash between cyclists and car drivers tends to be a sign of a community at an early stage of developing bike transportation, in terms of both infrastructure and popularity. As cycling gets more popular in an area, traffic patterns adapt, and both cyclists and car drivers modify their behavior to coexist. In my town, you rarely see cyclists on the busy trunk roads. I avoid roads with high speeds and heavy traffic.
Do you really think that is where cyclists want to ride?
(if they do, then they are idiots)
Exactly, in countries where cycling lanes have been built (correctly) these issues don't exist. In fact, there many countries where the bicycle lane is actually a lot shorter and means that you can get there a lot faster by bike than car (and I am talking about from town to town, not just city centers.
However, the only reason that these have been built is because cyclists had to go out into the big bad car world and cause issues for others before anyone took them seriously.
Roland GR 88
Commercial User
Nothing like a bicycle thread to pull the poison out of people. One can sit for HOURS in traffic because of the volume of cars on the road but get held up for 30sec. by a cyclist and y'all lose your lunch.
Gotta go, it's sunny, the roads are clean and there's some pissin' off to do.....
Gotta go, it's sunny, the roads are clean and there's some pissin' off to do.....
No, but a hell of a lot of them are!!
I hate to see car drivers not respecting the laws regarding cyclists (for example, minimum of 9 feet while overtaking here in Spain), but I also hate the cylcists who think they do not need to respect the law like everyone else, like the ones who jump red lights, sale through pedestrian crossings etc.
I live in a scenic area that bike clubs like to ride. My only problem with them is when you have 50 or more cyclist riding together, they have a nasty mob mentality. Last summer, I was at a 4 way stop intersection. It was my turn to go. Then the leading cyclist blew thru the stop sign and everyone else follows. I honked my horn in anger and 10 guys or so flip me off. I rarely feel rage when driving but afterwards my wife had to calm me down. Just my 2 cents.
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Where I live, stop signs are merely a suggestion to cyclists, regardless of age or skill.
Fishheadjoe
Fishheadjoe
Bikes are great, but sadly in my area the guy in this video is not just a Stereotype. Also not everybody, but is a large part.
It is an illusion that electric cars are any better for the planet. The electricity you use is probably produced using fossil fuels. Then there is the line loss of transmitting the electricity to your house. And, there is the creation of the battery and the disposal of the toxic old battery that are both horrible for the environment.
I'm not saying it is any worse - it just isn't any better.
Yep. Had a group of those arrogant *******s actually trying to go around me. Some cut in front and I had to brake. One them hit me and decided it was time to educate me. He tried very hard to get me into a fight. He is this stupid - This is Texas and I drive a pickup. While he was ranting, I called to my wife and asked her to please had me my pistol. Rant over and they are on their way.I couldn't disagree more. Bikes make things much worse in my view. Most cities are not set up to allow for widening lanes to allow for the barely-a-trickle bike traffic. The few who do ride in my town cause more accidents than they prevent. One guy actually takes up a full lane riding a recumbent trike at about 20mph during rush hour on the three busiest to streets here. He has an awful attitude and flips off every third motorist by zooms past him.
On the secondary roads just outside of town groups of cyclists ride side by side taking up whole lanes at 25 mph in a 55mph zone. Same entitled attitude. I was behind a group once and the "leader" actually slowed down and got beside my car and threatened me with my children in the back seat. After I passed them I pulled over and had my wife drive away with the kids. Needless to say he didn't want to stop and talk then.
Don't be a jerk and hinder the rest of us. Get your exercise at home or at the gym and out of our way. We need to get kids to school and get to work without playing chicken with slow two wheelers.
Thanks.
Glad I could clear that up. Go save some body else's planet.
you would lose that bet, and unless you live deep in the woods or in an old european city, the lanes are wide enough that only cyclists who are d-bags 24/7 with or without their bike are in your way. Biking doesn't make me holier than anyone, nor does eating a real breakfast in lieu of coffee and a pop tart or any other physically healthy choice I make for myself. It must suck to be in whatever place you're in in life to feel so less holy than anyone as to get consumed with rage at the mere inconvenience of arriving at your destination less than a minute later than you'd hoped due, not to a traffic light, not to a busted water main, nor to many other common things we deal with in daily modern life, but to another person making use of public roadways in a slower form than you. Seriously, how much later do they make you? Did you miss your father's funeral because of a cyclist slashing your tires? I doubt it, but as I say below, I don't know your town, I don't know the d-bags in your town, maybe they are acting way outside of how cyclists in my community behave as a matter of common decency.
@two fingers, I know you've seen my likes on hundreds of your posts, you know I respect you. You read a lot more between my lines than was there, I'll start a blogspot upon request, maybe next autumn, to elaborate and articulate if you like. I'm definitely not a cyclosupremist, I'm certain that the number of non-potted-plants who nearly never touch a bike greatly outnumbers the population of would-be and actual cyclists combined. I'm not in your town to know if there's shoulders on the roads and the cyclists are being dillholes and refusing to use them, nor am I there to see if it's, as you seem to wish to imply, that an entire queue of 40-200 cars are lined up behind one cyclist as in Jeremy Clarksons demo of his P48 nano car all the way up till s/he arrives at a red light and deigns to scootch to the right. I've ridden the East coast pretty extensively and found that roads that shouldn't be biked are pretty obvious, but almost all towns are able to be biked politely (without being suicidally obstructive). (Truly being respectfully lighthearted here) You're a jersey in the same way as FZ said "broken hearts are for [jerseys]" for saying in the same post "it is what it is", still getting to work on time, but implying that anyone at all is failing to get to work on time due exclusively to the cyclists.
"It is what it is", just like red lights, potholes, and stop signs. This should be a non-issue. You, unlike trillions of humans living concurrently and before us, are travelling seated with radio and a/c at speeds faster than a f!#/ing panther is capable of! Dude, you gotta slow down for how long behind the assholiestasshole pedaller for how long? What? Ten, twenty whole mississippi counts? You've got a f$!#ing radio! There's still people walking barefoot to find work.
The only thing I'm ever holier-than-thou about anything in life it's this: whether you get to work by car, service truck, bicycle, bus, foot, or helicopter, get the f!@$ out of bed early enough to get solid food prepared for your day and leave for work early enough to be there fifteen minutes early, then leave for work early enough to get to work as early as fifteen minutes early, regardless of when you arrive relative to when you'd hoped to arrive at work, live your amazing 21st century life with all of its absurd and minor bumps and turns to the f$!#ing max!
Read on, I think I've topped it.Ha! Welp, at least I'm the best at something.
I live in a winter climate where -35 is "normal". There is no way in hell I'm riding a bike to get around.
By the way...most developed countries have a negative birth rate, and most developing countries have a high birth rate. Less people is better, so if all countries became modern and advanced, the world's population would reduce naturally. Most modern societies also are cleaner than developing countries. Bikes are not the solution...21st century living is the solution.
By the way...most developed countries have a negative birth rate, and most developing countries have a high birth rate. Less people is better, so if all countries became modern and advanced, the world's population would reduce naturally. Most modern societies also are cleaner than developing countries. Bikes are not the solution...21st century living is the solution.
