Maelochs

Why would you have a problem with what I wear?
As it happens I never go just to the store—I take advantage of the time to go for a ride and end up at the store.
But pretty much every time I ride I ride in kit—the chamois makes the ride more comfortable, and the jersey has a pocket where I can carry my wallet where it isn’t in the way while I ride.
Your needs and feelings … should determine others’ actions? Wahoo, America. The land of the “Only I can be free” and the “Brave enough to say everyone should do it my way.”

I wear whatever I like. Sorry people might not like that.

I do have shoes with recessed cleats … but I have also done the duck-walk on occasion. Why should I be ashamed or embarrassed to wear a cycling jersey and bibs when … I am out cycling? Or … At Any Other Time?

Is ti that some people ‘s lives are so easy they need to invent problems, or is it that some people are so frustrated by their lives that they need to blame others? I don’t get it … but it is an ugly trait.

And people who don’t want to look at my fat butt … don’t have to. Imagine that. There is a whole world to look at, and if you choose to look at something you find unappealing that is Your choice. Deal with it.

As for the original premise fo this thread …. Because I drive my car maybe twice a year, and my wife’s car twice more ….(hard to pick up family at the airport on a bike, and expensive to get a cab … I could rent a car for a week for cab fare to and from the airport) yes, I Am a Cyclist. Sorry.

I am not sure the Netherlands really did build road safety around the notion of all users … I’d wager a person walking might find things a little sketchy in some areas—and mixing pedestrians and cars is dangerous or inefficient.

It’s like MUPs … great ideas but really, in practice, often not good , let alone great, for people looking to cycle, and really useless for commuters in many places. Designing a multi-modal travel system involves major compromise.

If …. City design were just starting now, with plenty of room for whatever different forms of transport … then “infrastructure” (do you mean “roads, and sidewalks”?) could be designed to accommodate different modes of transport. Since most municipalities are already pretty densely developed …. AND since the Vast Majority of people want motorized transport …. Segregating pedestrians and cyclists is safer but can be tough.

Everyone looks at the Netherlands as some sort of paragon … great. But that is like designing codes and regulations for a building’s heating system based on the climate of Phoenix, Arizona.

There are other considerations. For instance, the whole country of Holland is about 75 miles wide at its widest. Some people commute 75 miles to work each day in the U.S.

If the culture is based on localized living, with smaller towns and villages and frequently occurring shops serving almost all a resident’s daily needs, great … it is easy to walk or bike a couple miles, and to shop frequently.

If a culture is more spread out, and if it is simply inefficient to shop three times a week (say, if you have a job requiring long hours on a varying schedule which often keeps you at work until it is too late to get to the store that day) then being a pedestrian or a cyclist … doesn’t put food on the table.

I Think the point of this thread was that roads should not be designed primarily to serve cars. However …. That is ridiculous. Even any form of mass transit which makes sense would need roadways designed for motor vehicles … unless pedal-powered buses are what is being proposed.

What makes more sense to me, is to very definitively divide people into classes based on transport mode and make sure Each Class is amply served---pedestrians, cyclists/scooter riders/ people taking mass transit, and people driving.

I don’t care how they do it in the Netherlands …. Because I don’t live there. I have a ton of friends in Alaska … should I be demanding access for dog sleds in Oklahoma because of them?

How a person describes himself …. Is not what makes cycling more or less safe and accessible to potential riders.

I-Like-To-Bike

No more problem than eyeballing any other adult who doesn't know how to dress or care how they appear in public.








Just do your thing, eh?

Maelochs

What some peple are just unwilling to unsderstand is that the people they think are so ugly and foolish-looking .... think they look cool. And ... So Do a Lot of Other People.

Look at all the various subcultures and their fashion trends ... some people saw one person wearing some sort of outfit---hippie garb, punk regalia, whatever ... and said "Wow that guy/girl looks Terrible."

That person ignored the fact that a lot other peopole then went out and bought identical outfiots.

Brace yourselves: A Basic Truth is incoming:

All "Taste" Is One Hundred Percent Subjective!!!!!!!!!!

There is no 'right" humor, music, apparel, attitude, language, religion, art style, literary style .... anything which can be chosen is Subjective in value. One man's trash is another man's awesome gear.

I know a lot of people simply cannot accept this because they are so weak and useless that if they cannot tell themselves over and over that they are "right," they would shrink into panicked immobility .... but the rest of us can simply accept that if it makes you thing swing, your thing is swinging.

genec

Apparently folks DO care in other areas... as schools, and businesses all have dress codes... and some places actually require uniform wear.

But having said that... those are the FEW places where what you wear really matters... everywhere else, it matters very little... as you note.

genec

That infrastructure didn't just pop up overnight... the Dutch worked to build it in the manner they wanted... to support cycling, vice just giving way to the automobile... LA and America chose the automobile.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-heal...infrastructure

Yup, in the '70s, the Netherlands rejected the automobile, and decided to make their land more people and bike friendly. Yup, this was about the same time John Forester came out with his book "Effective Cycling" and tried to convince America that vehicular cycling was the right route. (first published in 1975)

So just where is cycling "more effective" per capita? Sure ain't America.

Stadjer

The car was never rejected, the Dutch fell madly in love with the car when they became affordable after the war rebuild was about done. Cars are still very popular, they are just not allowed to dominate everything, especially not the cause of death-statistics.

The turning point in the seventies started with vehicular cycling and now after decades of specific cycling infrastructure the cycling the success brings more vehicular cycling, and in cities cycle lanes often become more of a car traffic flow serving infrastructure. So it might not have been the idea of vehicular cycling itself where it went wrong.

Maelochs

Again, it is not just the love of the car .... though in the U.S. the car took over before the first World War, and was ubiquitous between wars.

Still it is distance that makes the difference ... the U.S. was suburb-oriented and those suburbs were seen as bedroom communities, not self-supported urban units. The jobs were in the cities or just outside the cities (for really large factories.)

The other dynamic, was also distance----farming communities in the U.S. and farms, were huge by comparison with the whole nation of the Netherlands. To the best of my knowledge, Holland does not and cannot feed itself ... . bread and meat take too much space. Nations in the old Common Market being like states in the U.S. it was easy enough to ship in what a nation needed by rail to the two dozen major cities in a nation .... In the U.S., particularly in the Midwest and Great Plains, or Texas, a "farming community" might be as big as the whole nation of Holland, with farmhouses in the middle of giant farms, miles from the nearest other house.

Also ... Cities tend to be further apart, particularly west of the Mississippi, so there was room .... and stubbornly individualistic Americans liked space around them. Room for sprawl,

Basically, the size of the land and the layout of the population centers made the car important or necessary or very attractive ... add to that the ad companies who saw the benefits to convincing everyone they wanted and needed a car (an easy sell) and the car was firmly ensconced as the primary transport mode across the nation before the second World War.

Climate is also a consideration. Average Winter temps in the Netherlands tend to be about 40 degrees F. Snow won't last long, so roads would be passable for cyclists. Look at how much of the U.S. has enough snow and cold enough temps that winter cycling is an adventure sport .... and in most communities snow accumulation makes winter cycling extremely dangerous.

In a small, higher-density nation with more village economies, a car was a luxury, where in the U.S., except in cities, a car was a necessity.

One book, written in the 1970s, had little to no affect on the popularity of the bicycle as a serious form of transportation in the U.S.

wphamilton

They all look stupid, but why would I care? At least they are signalling it to the world up front and you don't accidentally find out by talking to them or some other interaction. So in a way, they're doing us all a favor by displaying it that way.

I-Like-To-Bike

What favor does a cyclist do for "us" when he is walking in mincing steps in his clicky hard sole shoes, wearing what appears to be a spandex clad cod piece, and a Styrofoam hat while grocery shopping?

Yes "we" all know such a cycling primadonna doesn't give a darn about his "stupid" appearance or what anybody else thinks about it.

I-Like-To-Bike

The referenced book had very little, if anything, to say about the use of a bicycle as a serious form of transportation.

The book was written for bicycling-as-sport enthusiasts and almost entirely about recreational/competition riding as typically done by bicycling club members and similar so-called "Serious Cyclists" who display little or no interest in bicycle use for "serious" transportation.

wphamilton

It was your example of something equivalent, not mine.

Perhaps he's doing you a favor by signalling that he doesn't want to talk to anyone, and something tells me that's generally golden with you.

I-Like-To-Bike

That does sound about right.

Stadjer

Actually the Netherlands it's the second biggest agricultural exporter in the world, fish not even included. But that also has to do with an entirely different idea and perception of space and distances and how to deal with it. That's not just a matter of knowledge, it's the imagination that fails. I know how big America is, but if someone would ask me to estimate the distance between two cities I would still underestimate it looking at the map. I'm sure it works the other way round too, the density of at least many parts of Europe is difficult to imagine for Americans.

I don't agree entirely. Of course it's very different, but it's also a matter of coincedence, things happening at the right time. It's not that the car hadn't caught on before the war here, but the war caused delay first, to have an explosion of car use later. This meant that is was more of change in one's life, and a lot of people could remember how it was without the car dominance, it's also easier to imagine change if there has just been a big change. I don't agree the car was a luxury, if it's there it soon becomes a necessity because it made everybody's world bigger if they wanted it or not, and people have to deal with that bigger world. The bike got people out of their villages and the gar got them out of the regions, if you didn't join in you became backward. Most villages and cities were and are too far apart to bike, it was the car that made the difference. Air travel is a luxury here, not the car. I don't agree with the climate argument either, Florida seems much nicer to ride a bike to me. Average temperatures in an unpredictable climate don't mean it's doesn't get cold, there is no snow and ice on the roads. It's very windy and very rainy here every year, that's predictable, and it's isn't flat everywhere. There were/are a lot of cultural matters weighing in too.

I don't believe it's entirely irrelevant to America. Getting people and businesses close to eachother is what all cities are about, and bigger cities tend to get denser in the middle, so there must be simular density in the US. In the West of the Netherlands, the four big cities and the villages and towns in between are growing together. Geographically or demographically it's fair to see it as one urban area, the distances there can't be that different from an American city. It's easy to explain why it happened in the Netherlands and didn't anywhere else (but Denmark), that doesn't mean that it's down to uncheangable differences. GB was a cycling country until the car boomed too, history just took a different course there.

CliffordK

People like to categorize others...

In Star Trek, you have all the "Red Shirt" people (plus Scotty).



No doubt, enough people have seen me on the roads around the neighborhood that I'm known as the bicycle commuter.

But, truthfully, a pedestrian might walk across the block. Perhaps park their car in the nearest parking lot to a store, then walk into the store. And, there are a lot of them that do that.

A backpacker, on the other hand, might walk 50 miles in a week. In a sense, a pedestrian, but a little different.

I'm now averaging 100 to 200 miles a week on my bike of mostly bike commuting, errands, and utility riding. It really does put one in a different class than the average pedestrian walking from their car to the store.

And, the bike commuting shows in a number of things. Leg strength, backpack, helmet, clothing, bike lock... whatever.

JoeyBike

It's the "Look at ME! I'm a CYCLIST" crowd that offends me with their crotch exposure in a public place. I would dare suggest the rule of thumb: If you wouldn't want the shopper next to you wearing a Speedo, don't wear your glorified Speedo to that place either. I know a guy who wore his full kit to the office Christmas party every year. "LOOK! I'm a CYCLIST!" Disgusting.

Maelochs

Netherlansds is a huge exporter ... of flowers .... "fresh flowers, plants, nursery products and flower bulbs." Not so much wheat, eh. Obviously one can grow a lot mor e flowers in a small space ... but I hadn't heard about a lot of bread being made from flowers.

In any case ... I am not sure why this keeps coming up Why does everyone view the Netherlands and some sort of cycling Nirvana?

And how exactly, short of razing most cities and rebuilding from scratch, does anyone plan to remake the U.S. into a cycling-friendly nation? How are people planning to deal with one-hour commutes by car ... with bicycles? And how are you going to get Americans interested in riding?

Rollfast

What do you call me with a flat tire?

Mighty sad.

Maelochs

Are you saying we all should call you if we get flat tires? I flatted last night ... then got rained on (out of a clear sky,) then had one crank loosen, then had my bars loosen .. . then i got lost, then my computer died.

Would it all have been different if I had called you when i got a flat?

(True fact: An older couple (folks about my age) did a U-turn and asked me if I needed help when they saw me changing my tube. I guess there are good people out there .... to repay their kindness, I told them never to come here. i think they got the better deal, oh well. )

daihard 

Exactly my feeling, too. Riding a bike is often portrayed as a special activity in North America. It's not to me. I ride a bike just like I walk, take transit or drive.

gregf83 

Stadjer

Potatoes, corn, meat, cheese, babymilk for China, fish and shell fish for Spain, tomato's for Germany and lots and lots of other greenhouse veggies. Personally I believe it's ridiculous and not sustainable in more than one way, but it shows an entirely different attitude towards space.

Probably because in international comparison, it is?

Because it shows there are a lot of benefits of cycling for transportation, and not just for the cyclists. It wouldn't work everywhere in America, but it doesn't need to. When it comes to the practical implementation it's often probably better to look to some German cities that are more simular and have only decent cycling, but if you want to know what cycling can do for cities and a society, there is no better example than the Netherlands.

Maelochs

@Stadjer: Good answers. Thanks.

jon c. 

It's not that I don't care what anybody thinks of my attire. I just don't care what you think.

Rollfast

My little radio with membrane speakers was dead too. You need the oldies that late at night/

Anyway, I haven't been able to afford liners and good Slime yet, first world puctureweeds.

KraneXL

The real world.
Good taste. But its not foolish to expect the attire to fit the venue.