padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
anything is prolly better than LA for cyclists...

oh god LA is a nightmare for bikes, tho the one thing that can be said is the rest of Socal - Inland Empire, Orange County, etc. is even worse.

I'll tell you one thing that pisses me right off - drivers honking at me when I'm riding along as close to the curb as humanly possible. and/or telling me to "get off the road". like, do I yell at you to get off the road?

on the other side of things - fu**ing bike snobs. I mean the kinds of dudes who hang out in "cool" bike shops (which unlike cool record shops, are still going strong) and talk super fancy bike gear and sniff in disdain at customers. I hate these dudes, mainly cos they discourage people who aren't already super into bike culture from riding bikes & make the whole thing seem haughty & elitist. which it isn't, or at least doesn't have to be.
 

hucks

Your Message Here
London is full of these fuckers. I was talking to a Russian mate of mine who cycles in London (as do I) and he was like - in Amsterdam, Paris, plenty of places in mainland Europe, people cycle far more than in England. It's kind of normal, and has no strings attached. But in London, there's so much politics, these brakes, those tyres, your bike as an extension of your personality. Fuck all that. It's quicker and less humid than the tube. That should be enough.
 
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D

droid

Guest
If there's a heaven for cyclists - it's a lot like Holland. It's a completely bizarre experience cycling there... cycle lanes physically separated from the road, special traffic lights for bikes, right of way everywhere, totally flat.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
@hucks - let me add tho that it's not very hard to avoid bike snobs - they're like scenesters, they make up a small but disproportionately influential segment of the population. the act of riding a bike shouldn't be tainted by a few elitist jerks (same goes for "health" food, physical fitness, etc etc - & goes w/o saying for music I should think;)) & I fully fully fully encourage people to ride bikes & not worry about the cool points. plus a lot of bike nerds are really nice people who just love & nerd out on bikes - again, same as music.

@droid - that sounds bizarre. nice, yeh - tho I have to admit that after so many years of the daily grind in city traffic I think I'd really miss it - the adrenalin, the challenges, even the stupid skirmishes w/drivers, as irritating as those can be.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
People who don't listen to what you are saying so you have to try to explain it to them about half a dozen different ways. And then shout at them.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
If there's a heaven for cyclists - it's a lot like Holland. It's a completely bizarre experience cycling there... cycle lanes physically separated from the road, special traffic lights for bikes, right of way everywhere, totally flat.

We've done cycling holidays in Holland. True bliss for cyclists. Although there are some hills in the south, which whilst not big, are a bit of a shock after 10 days of flatness. Head winds are a different matter, mind.

Everyone has their everyday tredder, zero snobbery- in fact London biking types would be made to look stupid as 3 people on a knackered bike relentlessly kept up with them over a journey.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"also, once I've had to print out an email and fax it to someone"
Where I work they've introduced a fancy new fax system that links to the email. So to send a fax you have to scan the paper you wanted to fax, save it to a special directory, then go back to your computer and find that file and then send it by email after which it comes out the other end as a fax. Seems a bit round the houses to me - especially if what you want to fax was originally an email.
 

BareBones

wheezy
air conditioning turned up to a million making it feel like i'm at 50,000 feet and the air is really thin and i'm slowly suffocating
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
air conditioning turned up to a million making it feel like i'm at 50,000 feet and the air is really thin and i'm slowly suffocating

The basketball player Gilbert Arenas has actually done something similar to this in his home. He has some air conditioning system that simulates high altitude so that his lung capacity increases or something.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
The basketball player Gilbert Arenas has actually done something similar to this in his home. He has some air conditioning system that simulates high altitude so that his lung capacity increases or something.

a hyperbaric chamber

it's not air conditioning - actually oxygen at higher pressure than normal atm. it's supposed to increase the flow of oxygen in the blood & so on. it seems to make sense but I dunno how effective it actually is (& I imagine the bloody things are, as the thread says, risibly expensive). Arenas isn't the only athlete who's cottoned on to it - can't remember any names but I feel like I read about Kobe having one, seems like the kind of weirdness he'd be too.
 

alex

Do not read this.
People who call tippex snowflake???

what

the

fuck

seriously, i hate people who try & do that patronising, intelligence thing, to overcompensate for there intense hatability..FUCK OFF
 

john eden

male pale and stale
People who call tippex snowflake???

what

the

fuck

seriously, i hate people who try & do that patronising, intelligence thing, to overcompensate for there intense hatability..FUCK OFF

isn't it "snowpake" which was a rival brand to tippex, back in the day?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I like the phrase "liquid paper" - it makes me think of a block of ruled A4 that can deform itself into any shape and was sent back in time by Skynet to assassinate the young John Connor.
 
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