wease's blog

Vancouver, BC - There has been a lot of ongoing mud slinging against cyclists in the mainstream media, especially in regards to rules of the road. A lot of this I believe was sparked by a single lane on Burrard street bridge being reallocated to cycling as part of a cycling and pedestrian trial. This was further exacerbated when the media realized that despite their best effort at naysaying (among other lame attempts), the Burrard street bridge trial was turning out to be a success. Desperate for some more antivelo coverage, the main stream media pulled out the Critical Mass and milked the anti-cycling sentiment for all the paper sales they could muster. Of course none of the impending disaster panned out when Critical Mass actually arrived.

All this FUD popularized once again velohate. The effect and message to the general populous is pretty hard to ignore. If you believed the hype, cyclists are a burgeoning menace in our modern utopia, running red lights and stop signs, forcing unwitting motorists to impale these two-wheeled vagabonds with their beautiful economy friendly vehicles.

As warm and fuzzy as this sentiment is, no one however bothered to do any math before getting on their soap box and started to point fingers. Well thankfully, Dr. Chris Cavacuiti, a professor in the department of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto, sat down and *actually* did some number crunching.

I was cruising the treehugger.com bike feed when I came across an article entitled "Is My Electric Bicycle Lame?". In it Trevor Reichman laments about being judged by other "Cyclists" - capitalization is for effect - as being lazy and wasting resources by riding an e-bike:

"I’ll always remember the time that I was riding my electric bicycle home from work, when at a red light, a cyclist on a traditional road bike pulled up next to me and asked me how fast I could go on “that thing”. I told him that it maxes out at about 18 miles an hour. He scoffed, “Geez, I could ride faster than that without a motor!”, as he then took off through the red light riding as fast as he could…definitely more than 20 miles an hour to his credit.

I have had similar responses from other cyclists as they implied laziness on my part. It is true that their choice of transit was more earth friendly and provided better exercise than mine, however, I was not too far behind in efficiency..."

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/electric-bicycle-lame.php

Trevor goes on to describe his situation and how an e-bike works for him (he was riding to work in a suit, uphill with no shower facilities), as well as other similar bike snobbery experiences he received in bike shops. Being a roadie (the snobbiest and most anal of all bike cultures) and recently crowned Masters Road Race Provincial champion (ahh... I can feel my head expanding even as I type) I just wanted to set the bike world straight on electric bikes.

A while ago I wrote an article for the Momentum print magazine, arguing for the use of cyclo-cross (CX) bikes  as sporty city bikes:

http://www.momentumplanet.com/node/326

After the article was published, I had a number of bicycle geeks personally comment to me on how CX bikes may seem appropriate on the surface, but that their choice is way off due to issues like bottom bracket height (CX bikes are higher for the clearance needed for off-road riding).  I personally felt this was a great point in theory, but of limited practicality in reality.  I ride a variety of bikes on a daily basis, from twitchy race road bikes,  CX bikes (my commuter), to trail bikes and quite frankly I don't particularly notice the geometry differences in CX bikes on day-to-day riding.  I would if I was trying to push the bike to the limits of its handling, but for commuting, bit of touring and running erands I think the isue is silly.

Anyway, most of these were just my thoughts that I wasn't about to articulate in a public forum, until I received this email:

In Momentum No. 36, I wrote a short article on disc brakes as an information piece for people who might not otherwise know much about the technology. Personally, I have found disc brakes to be quite handy, especially in the winter (I ride down a mountain everyday - rain, snow, and shine), but my experience may be different from everyone else.

Case-in-point, at Momentum's recent launch party one of the editor and I got into a discussion of how disc brakes work well when set up but can be expensive to fix. My personal experience is that they have been nearly zero maintenance, but he had had major problems.

Since many more of you may have had similar experiences, I was curious what the general consensus would be. Therefore I decided to create three quick polls on bicycle brakes and disc brakes so that I might start to assimilate everyone's experiences.

I hope you might take a second or two and consider answering them.

Well its official... Spring has sprung!

And how do I know you might ask? Well, I am not one of those factonistas, you know those cultural elites who read about things in books. Nope, when I want know when spring is I don't check a book, I check my gut.

Spring happens when my gut tells me its time to shave my legs.

I heard it said before that I am a glutton for punishment. Many friends question my sanity for the numerous hours of riding I do each week in the pouring rain here in Vancouver.

Just the other day at the Departmental tea (a tradition every Thursday morning in our department) I had ridden up to SFU in the pouring rain. Had a shower then showed up to tea time. Upon arrival my hair was still wet and I was asked if I rode up in this insane weather. I nodded of course and I got the usual incredulous look, followed by the expected eye roll then the all too familiar comments on how I must be freezing, wet and mildly insane.

Normally, they would be right (especially about the insanity), but this time things were different, this time I stayed toasty warm as I rode up in my brand spanking new cold weather cycling shoes from Exustar.

One of cycling's greatest strengths and beauties lies in its its diversity, yet lately I have been noticing a disturbing undercurrent of bike snobbery emerging. Against who you might ask? Believe, it or not, it's against roadies.