Bikes: They'll Never Catch On

(Spotted by a reader at Target.)

Good morning!

It's another hot day out there--so hot my Omata analog Fred gauge is melting:

One minute you're climbing, next minute your computer is draped over your handlebars like a damp crêpe.

Totally surreal.

Anyway, I'm once again scampering out for a ride before it gets too hot (which, judging from the amount of sweat I've already lost taking my elder human child to camp on the WorkCycles this morning, it already is) so you should probably brace yourself for another post later today which should be a good one because I'll be deep in the throes of dehydration by then:

(Me by this afternoon.)

In the meantime, the Tour de France is also heating up, and if you haven't been following it this should bring you thoroughly up to date:



"Pee-wee's Big Adventure" totally pioneered the high-cadence pedaling technique Lance Armstrong would later use as a flimsy excuse for his sudden preternatural climbing ability.

As for his erstwhile teammate Floyd Landis, he's still using the Twitter account of his weed business to troll the various sports governing bodies and anti-doping agencies:

Special thank you to the US Anti Doping Agency @usantidoping for validating our products as performance enhancing.

— Floyd (@FloydLeadville) July 7, 2016

Funny, though his most exquisitely crafted work of humor remains his autobiography:

Also, further to yesterday's post concerning eMTBs, I should clarify that my contempt for assisted bikes does not extend to commuting or other practical applications, where I believe they have the potential to encourage people to ride who otherwise wouldn't.  Even I, when schlepping my children o'er hill and dale, have occasionally (or more than occasionally) pined for a little bit of an electronic tailwind.  And when you consider that even I, a highly trained and staggeringly fit cyclist, have a hard time on these hills then you have to acknowledge that the chances of your average schmuck using a bike instead of an SUV to tote the brats around the neighborhood are virtually nil.

In light of all this, I read the following story with interest:

Yep, it turns out that if you take a bunch of sedentary schlubs and put them on eBikes they not only get fitter, but also have lots of fun:

Perhaps most important, the riders were healthier and more fit now, with significantly greater aerobic fitness, better blood sugar control, and, as a group, a trend toward less body fat.

They also reported finding the riding to “be a blast,” said William Byrnes, the study’s senior author and director of the university’s Applied Exercise Science Laboratory. “It’s exercise that is fun.”

Unfortunately, the article cites price as a prohibiting factor:

Electric bikes are unlikely to be a solution for everyone who is pressed for time or reluctant to exercise, though. The bikes are pricey, typically retailing for thousands of dollars.

Really?  You know what else is pricey and typically retails for thousands of dollars?

A FUCKING HYUNDAI:

Yet I never see articles about how normcore sedans for office drones are too expensive.

Of course, over in Holland they've got the opposite problem, and now the media would have you believe Dutch society is about to collapse under the weight of its own huge bicycles:

The Dutch have bicycles with crates in front of the handlebars, child seats behind the saddle – and even wheelbarrow-sized boxes for assorted bags, deliveries or infants.

But the multitude of ways of getting the best out of the humble bicycle are causing more and more problems. Almost 40 per cent of Dutch bikes have outgrown the standard size - and many are too big for standard cycling racks.

Uh-oh!  Not only that, but apparently cargo bike-riding mothers are "self-centred" and cargo bike-riding fathers are "not real men:"

In a country with more bicycles than people, the Dutch are already angered by cyclists who take up too much space. Women who load up their bicycles with children are already called “self-centred”; fathers who do the same are “not real men”.

“Before, there were a few exceptions like cargo bikes and tandem bikes that wouldn’t fit in the bike sheds. Now there are more smaller types that don’t fit, due to bags, crates and child seats,” said Otto van Boggelen, from CROW-Fietsberaad the organisation which has charted the growth of the Dutch bicycle.

Oh please, you Dutchies don't know the first thing about being "self-centred."  And you've especially got to love the idea of one bike-riding Dutchman taunting another for not being a "real man" when in America even the Dutchman doing the taunting doesn't qualify as a human being (much less a "man") to anybody behind the wheel of one of these:

Fifty grand, 16mpg in the city, and the size of a combination Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins franchise.

And the bikes in Holland are getting too big?

We should be so lucky.