After an exotic cycling trip, returning to your usual rides feels like putting the same underwear back on right after a shower: at first you’re like, “Eeew,” but before long you forget all about it and just get on with your day.
My initial plan was at least to mitigate the dirty underwear feeling somewhat by taking the Platypus onto some trails in an attempt to replicate the past weekend’s adventure, albeit on a smaller scale:
However, conditions were dampish and rain was imminent, and so I decided to stick to the road instead:
By the time I was heading back home the rain had begin in earnest, but at least it’s only supposed to continue forever:
Speaking of my recent trip, I’m holding some commentary in reserve for the time being as I’ll be ultimately be incorporating them into something I’m working on for a certain outdoor lifestyle publication. However, one or two of you have asked how the Clem did, and the answer is “Very, very well:”
In fact it would be hard to imagine a better bicycle for the terrain we were riding, right down to the step-through that greatly facilitated the odd unplanned dismount. (And no, the unplanned dismounts had nothing to do with the bike, those were all me.) Now granted, I’m a simple man, but I’d even go so far as to say that I could easily spend the rest of my life there with nothing more than a Clem and a budget of several million for a house, which really doesn’t seem like much to ask for, now does it? Okay, maybe also a guaranteed passive revenue stream as well as free health care.
Hey, wait a minute! I think I just figured out how they trick people into becoming Democrats!
Meanwhile, closer to (my) home, I recently found myself in Central Park, which is of course the home of the barefoot cycling movement:
As you’ll see, the roadway has been freshly re-paved, and when they finally get around to painting it in 19 years the new lane configuration will resolve the conflict between walkers and cyclists once and for all:
Sadly, all you have to do is read this to know there’s no chance it will work:
There is absolutely nothing you’re less likely to witness in Central Park than a cyclist obeying a signal or yielding to a pedestrian. It would surprise me less to see a chimpanzee riding a pennyfarthing–that is unless the chimpanzee slowed to let someone cross the roadway, in which case fine, then it would be more surprising…but even the chip wouldn’t slow, because a cyclist has not yielded to a pedestrian in Central Park since the invention of the velocipede, which is why they were banned almost immediately:
By no means am I saying that bicycle should be banned from Central Park, but I am saying that painting new lanes and moving the stoplights isn’t going to do shit.
As for keeping e-bikes out of the park once the pilot program ends, good luck with that:
If they ban e-bikes in Central Park absolutely nothing will change, except once in awhile they’ll stop someone and give them a ticket, and then the victim will pen a long screed for Streetsblog about how they’ve been persecuted unfairly because their Yuba e-cargo bike means they no longer have to use an Uber to take their kid to ballet class.
Speaking of e-bikes, I got excited when I read this, because I thought maybe Yamaha was re-inventing the regular pedal-powered bike:
Yes, it’s only a matter of time before some enterprising new company figures out bicycles don’t need batteries and motors…but it hasn’t happened yet. No, the workaround here is battery swap stations:
The one undeniable advantage the bicycle always had over the car was that it didn’t require a dense network of fueling stations, but I guess those days are over. I can’t wait until there are battery swap stations everywhere, including at the local mountain bike trailhead. Maybe they’ll even put them trailside! I’d like to think more battery swap stations means more e-bike trips and fewer car trips, but even if that does happen I think the decreased likelihood of your getting hit by a car is offset by the increased likelihood of your getting hit by an e-bike battery truck.
I mean someone has to balance the battery swap stations, right?
