Danger! Danger! You will die!
Apr. 7th, 2010 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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bicyclesAmerican litigiousness meets American bike-o-phobia, a sardonic post by Mikael of Copenhagenize, riffing on a report from Chicago's Let's Go Ride a Bike.
If you join a group bike ride in the US, you may be asked to sign a waiver that, in the words of commenter and Portland Cycle Chic blogger Portlandize, "sounds like if you look at the bicycle funny, it will suddenly throw you 20 miles into the jaws of a waiting Indian tiger, to be chewed up and spit into a pit of boiling lava."
The photos of Copenhagen bike-riders in the post are a wonderful counterpoint to the American madness being reported on. The woman in the first one is older than me! A little better-dressed, too.
If you lean towards the Cycle Chic side of bicycling, and have never visited Dottie's Chicago Cycle Chic blog Let's Go Ride A Bike, I recommend it as a visual feast and a great source of inspiration.
Portlandize covers the Cycle Chic beat here in my hometown, and his occasional updates are what support me in my own slow-bike preferences when I'm surrounded on the bikeway by muscular athletes in barely-there spandex faux-team jerseys.
Copenhagenize is the sometimes-snotty, sometimes-amusing, tolerantly-anti-American blogfather of Cycle Chic. Proceed with caution: Mikael made his case based on photos of pretty schoolgirls in short plaid uniform skirts on bikes, but, that said, he has a good case to make for bikes as daily transport rather than as competitive sporting equipment.
If you join a group bike ride in the US, you may be asked to sign a waiver that, in the words of commenter and Portland Cycle Chic blogger Portlandize, "sounds like if you look at the bicycle funny, it will suddenly throw you 20 miles into the jaws of a waiting Indian tiger, to be chewed up and spit into a pit of boiling lava."
The photos of Copenhagen bike-riders in the post are a wonderful counterpoint to the American madness being reported on. The woman in the first one is older than me! A little better-dressed, too.
If you lean towards the Cycle Chic side of bicycling, and have never visited Dottie's Chicago Cycle Chic blog Let's Go Ride A Bike, I recommend it as a visual feast and a great source of inspiration.
Portlandize covers the Cycle Chic beat here in my hometown, and his occasional updates are what support me in my own slow-bike preferences when I'm surrounded on the bikeway by muscular athletes in barely-there spandex faux-team jerseys.
Copenhagenize is the sometimes-snotty, sometimes-amusing, tolerantly-anti-American blogfather of Cycle Chic. Proceed with caution: Mikael made his case based on photos of pretty schoolgirls in short plaid uniform skirts on bikes, but, that said, he has a good case to make for bikes as daily transport rather than as competitive sporting equipment.
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Date: 2010-04-07 09:51 pm (UTC)People certainly think that waivers are meaningful; what's funny, of course, is that they're usually not.
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Date: 2010-04-07 11:52 pm (UTC)But I'm not so keen on the anti-helmet sentiment expressed by Mikael and his readers. I live somewhere that helmets have been required by law for nearly 20 years, and you just get over any objections after awhile. Cars aren't the only danger to cyclists, so even if you have designated bike lanes, which we do, it still makes sense to wear a helmet.
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