Poppycock!

Was the Times piece simply an attempt to deride cyclists whose riding skills are largely undeveloped? I was one of them a year and a half ago when I started biking regularly. To me, these less able riders are just indicative of the newest wave of the liberated. They’ll improve with time. For now, their presence suggests the movement continues to grow.

Perhaps the purpose of the article was to question the intrinsic value of a transportation activity when some of its participants do not execute it well. I’d happily apply that standard to the use of motorized vehicles.

As to the “deleterious effect[s] on human exercise”, driving is much more like riding a horse than is cycling (assuming, of course, (1) horse rides that don’t involve incessant whipping, and (2) bike rides that involve more than coasting downhill).

One other possibility, I guess, is that the author is an extreme proponent of New Urbanist principles and figures if you can’t walk there easily enough it is simply too far away.

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Perhaps this was simply a very clever ploy to bring more cyclists to Stanford. I wonder what sort of graduate programs they offer…

As if there is something wrong with wanting either of these things!

“Make haste whilst pulling your cart past velocipedist. Such newfangled and treacherous devices are best left out of the city hustle and bustle. Close proximity to said scoundrels may result in the introduction of pederous particles to the vascular system! They subsit soley on the ill-concieved notion of long-life and the fascination of flirtatious women.”