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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on December 18, 2011 at 11:25am

I find the gnostic savior-oriented religion/cult of the bike that some bicyclists seem to cling to as somewhat off-putting.  Riding a bicycle is more of a philosophy to me than a religion.  Religious people give me the willies.  They tend to push their beliefs on people at all costs because they feel they are the side of a just cause.  

The "Hey you are a fat slob behind the wheel" velo-evangelism is even more annoying.  Haven't we had enough of the Glamour Magazine and other big-media corporate shills shoving down impossible body-images down our throats?  Must so many bicyclists take up that cause too?

I don't think that velovangelism that follows these paths to be helpful to society in the long-term.

-that's my $.02

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Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on December 18, 2011 at 11:44am

The "consensus of the web" is that graphic was designed as link bait. Here's a good description of what happened:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2011/12/how_bike_portland_and_...

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on December 18, 2011 at 11:48am

+1 Steven!

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Permalink Reply by Juan 2-3 or more mi. on December 28, 2011 at 1:24pm

Chicago's flat gridlike physical layout would IMHO make it #1 in the world for bicycle commuting.

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Permalink Reply by S on December 28, 2011 at 2:36pm

I find the link between cycling rates and obesity to be inaccurate to the point of being a deliberate lie.   It makes the usual disclaimer about correlation and causation and then suggests the data is compelling.  Of course it ignores the effects of different cultures and diets to say the least in determining obesity rates. 

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on December 28, 2011 at 3:03pm

If only Chicago's grid were not totally chopped up with "dead end" one-way streets created to dissuade autos from cutting through residential neighborhoods and making it impossible to navigate off of the main aterials without constantly making long detours and getting lost trying to find another street going the right way once the one-way road you are riding on reverses direction the next block.

This would not be such an impediment to being a "bike friendly city" if the law was changed to specifically legalize contraflow bicycle riding down one-way streets to create so-called bike-boulevard routes that didn't require going 3 miles just to get 1 mile in any compass direction off of the main arterial roads.  

I often will travel contraflow to the marked automotive direction but get a lot of flack from self-appointed cops who think that us bikes must always "follow the same rules as the cars" -even though the rules are only there because cars can't seem to stop from killing/smooshing people without them and us bikes don't seem to have similar problems without them. 

Juan said:

Chicago's flat gridlike physical layout would IMHO make it #1 in the world for bicycle commuting.

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