Bikes are for losers (Bikes in general)

Member Name: Cammij

Product:	Bikes in general
Date:	19/09/05 (397 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap transportation, don't need gas

Disadvantages: they get stolen all the time, people kill you in traffic, cool people laugh at you

I always thought that bicycles were for dorks. I live in a semi rural area in Ohio, USA and everyone here has a car. We can start driving and get ourselves killed at age 16 and at that part bicycling is horribly stigmatized in that the only people riding bikes are children or too poor to have their own car. In the past 8 years we have had a huge influx of foreign students that come to our city in the summer to work at the hotels and amusement parks and they all ride bikes and we make fun of them.

About two years ago I got a bit drunk and started riding one of their bikes through my yard and doing jumps and stuff and thought to myself, hey this is kinda fun. Then my country started a war for oil and politically I thought it would be kind of cool to ride a bike when possible as a form of protest against gasoline. The problem is I am all covered in tattoos and have tattoos on my bald head and a beard that I haven't cut in 2 years so if I ride a bicycle people would laugh at me and yell "get a Harley", So a few months back I went and got me a fly ass V-Rod that totally rocks which for a mere $19,000 enables me to finally ride a bicycle without feeling self concious.

When the kids go back to Russia, Slovakia and Romania each year they sell me their bicycles for $10 or something and I throw them in the back room of my house until the next summer when I give them to a new batch of students. I have a whole mess of broken bikes laying in my back yard that we use for parts. Sometimes Belorussian guys come over to talk to the girls who stay with me and they try to look cool on their bikes. I like to ask them a bunch of questions about their bikes and ask how many speeds they have and then I mock them by roaring out of my garage on my V-rod and burning out and doing tricks and then I say, "man, I wish I had 20 speeds like yours" Sad enough mine only has 5 speeds which means I have a 2005 not 2006 since the new hogs have 6 speed transmissions, and I feel sad about this.

I really need to teach all these students how to ride in formation. But they don't seem to grasp the need for having a road captain.

Anyways I took a bunch of womens to the store the other day to buy luggage. At this store, one of the more famous giant chains in America that sells low quality goods to low quality people the luggage is considered to be under the auspices of sporting goods. So while all these girls are standing there babbling in their incomprehensible obsolete language I got bored and started looking at the bikes. They have these really cool chopper bikes inspired by Jesse James of West Coast Choppers and on licensed by OCC. They were like $129 and $169. I looked at the bikes awhile and the next thing I know I am flying all over the store on it. The West Coast Chopper handled like a dream. It has a very thick rear tyre and an awesome saddle that supported me well and I weigh 230 pounds. I really enjoyed riding the bike around the store and i even felt comfortable riding through cosmetics one handed since I stopped in toys to pick up some polly pocket dolls for my kid and if you slip in cosmetics you could get cut up pretty bad by the display cases. The most enjoyable part of my run was how the other customers would look at me and how the employees pretended not to see me. Everyone gets a mild smirk on their face then looks away, apparently a 34 year old man with tattoos all over him, a massive beard and immaculate casual clothing is amusing to people. So I am getting a kick out of the fact that I am too intimidating for anyone to stop my activity and I am riding harder and harder. But then they start putting up obstacles for me, like a pallet of diapers in my best straightaway that ran from baby clothes all the way down to seasonal one (in case you know about this store, which, will remain namesless, layout. I decided to try out the OCC bike and as I went to get it off the rack some punk comes out of the stock room and grabs the bike and tells me "you can't ride bikes in here". I see that the store manager is standing there watching so I start yelling, "What the *#@!!!" I yell, "Why don't you take out the fitting rooms so a man can't try on a pair of pants before he buys them too" and the manager jumps in a says, "it isn't the same thing". So I stare them down a minute and then I dart over and grab a razor scooter and took off on that. I didn't know how to ride that very good. After awhile some security guard comes and tells me that I have to leave the store and gets confrontational. I ask him, "You really want to try me out for $6 an hour?". He responds that he is going to call the cops and get me taken away for disorderly conduct and trespassing, so I say, "oooh what a big man you are" but I got in line and paid for my stuff. I did mix up all the magazines in line to get even and started eating some pistacios and threw the shells on the floor. I don't like being told what I can do.

Anyways yesterday I did go to another store that values my trade and bought the OCC bike. Don't think I am a sissy or anything. Bikes are kinda cool-if you have a harley and a car.

I think everyone should have a bike just think about how much cleaner and safer the city could be if everyone rode bikes on nice days instead of wasting irreplacable fossil fuels. I just wish that some cool people like maybe the singer from maroon 5 or that Seaman guy who plays goalie for Real Madrid would do public service announcements showing them with bikes with baskets and headlights. Think about it, you really do need a basket on your bike if it is going to be any use. If just 5 people would quit driving their cars and ride bikes 6 km to work each day for a week 3,000 acres of rainforest would be saved, 4 species of frogs would not go extinct, 23 barrels of petropleum would be saved and they would each lose 11 pounds of fat. If everyone would be like Lance Armstrong, and mind you he is riding Cheryl Crow when he is not riding his bike, Saudi Arabia would go out of business, Terrorists would loose all their funding, gasoline would cost 7 pence per liter, the boys would come home from Iraq, and we would all be able to breathe fresh air even in Chester. I challenge everyone to just try it. Dig that old bike out of the shed and pedal around your town and remember how fun it is. Ask yourself why someone would drive to a fitness center and get on a staionary bicycle? Get real people, it is about saving our planet. Bikes are cool. Robbie Williams owns 73 bikes, Celine Dion has a bike she rides in Switzerland that has 32,212 carats of precious stones on the handle bars. Rod Stewart bought a new Mongoose mountain bike last week. The new bass Player from the Scorpions rides a bike to the studio. Please people ride bikes so that the amount of ridicule and derision motorists have for cyclists is diffused over more of us cyclists. Please. Please


UPDATE: I don't read the newspaper because it makes me so sad but when I get fish and chips I sometimes see the articles looking at me and I read in the paper today that only 2% of Londoners cycle to work compared to 20% of people in Kobnhavn, 28% in Amsterdamn, London has 273 miles of bike routes. One wanker says he saves over 100 pounds per month on transportation and lost 7 pounds. Why are you not riding bikes? You want to pay 8 pounds per day to drive downtown?

Summary: Bikes are actually kind of cool for some people