I’ve been wondering why it is that the current rage for “useful” bicycles, which in itself is a marvelously Good Thing, is centred around bikes which, while being made of new materials, are shaped like very old bicycles. Hundred-year-old bicycles, in fact. When it’s been well-known (at least among cycle engineers) that the most efficient shapes for two-wheels-in-line transport are somewhat different. 

The unpopularity of recumbents is somewhat understandable, if unfair. They don’t “look right” and they can be harder to ride at first. And when people buy bikes after riding them around the bike-store’s block for ten minutes, that makes recumbents a really hard sell, I suspect. 

But small-wheeled upright bikes don’t suffer from this problem. They ride like a “normal” bike and you can tell that as soon as you start to turn the pedals. It’s also reasonbaly well-known by bike engineers that a little bit of suspension at both of those small wheels makes for the most efficient bike of them all. (I know I’m biased. I’ve got an old Moulton.) Still, I don’t really know the answer to my question: why don’t the regular (and nicely outfitted, I might add) Dahons, have suspension? I’m puzzled buy this.

And I’m also puzzled that there aren’t more companies marketing a wider range of bike shapes (small wheels, spar frames, etc.) to capture the audience of new utility cyclists?

After a Sunday afternoon lull sitting reading our books in JJ Bean’s on 14th & Main we were driving along past Main & Kingsway and I remarked to the wife: where did people hang out on Sundays in the winter when we were 20-somethings?

It occurred to us that there was almost nowhere to go: I remember once or twice going to the SoftRock Cafe and once going to the old Vienna tea house on Robson. K remembers going to Beanos. Ugh. I can’t deny I went there too. But it got me thinking.
I realize now that I spent a lot of time visiting friends. At their houses. And that reminded me of what people used to say: Vancouver was a very difficult place to break into the regular social life. There were no ubiquitous coffee shops. No hip hangouts. There were bars, a few nightclubs. And during the day there was Beanos. So almost everybody visited their friends at someone’s house and that meant that if you didn’t know anybody in town, you didn’t meet any locals. And if you didn’t like your friends, it was very hard to meet new ones.
(My perpective is limited, I know. I grew up with a very close set of friends who I still see. I realize now that we didn’t admit newcomers easily. Although I don’t think that was on purpose as much as it was a function of having known each other from such an early age. But that’s another story….)
I hate to admit it (because people are probably sick by now of hearing about the “before Expo/after Expo”story) but this *was* something that changed after Expo 86. For one thing, before Expo, very few places were open on Sunday. Certainly bars weren’t. Most stores weren’t. And I seem to recall that many many cafes were not either. That’s compounded by the fact that there weren’t many cafes in the first place.
I guess this is something we can be thankful for now that we have a grownup-like city. Traffic may be a constant hassle. Rent may be insanely expensive. But at least there’s somewhere to go and something to see on any given day. It sure wasn’t like this when I was growing up.

I have to admit: even though the Mother of all Funk Chords has been all over the web (posted in places as disparate as Slashdot and Virtual Dave…Real Blog), I still think it’s the coolest thing I ‘ve seen in ages.

It’s all done by this guy.

So I became one of those guys who rode in the snow today. Not on purpose. In fact, I headed west on a training ride and it was all blue skies in front of me. Unfortunately, it was all grey skies when I turned back east and the snow started some where around Kent & Cambie. Then it got cold & blowy, let me show ya.