Despite having just pontificated about various forms of cycling (in the Meterologist comic thread) I agree about certain "bicyclists", "bikers" and "men (or women) on bikes". I've cycled since I was old enough to ride my own (very small) bike, and also technically before that (tandem, bike seat, bike-towed trailer, though never a Rann Trailer, these days more commonly known as a trailer-bike), but I've never been
evangelical about it.
Also, I grew up knowing how to ride on the road, while 'Born Again bikers' seem to be the weird antithesis of the motorists who clearly haven't read their highway code and presume that bikes aren't allowed on the highway, in that they have become support for those incorrect assumptions by assuming that
they can ride everywhere
especially the footway (and ignoring traffic signals and road markings at whim when they
do deign to ostensibly adopt their rightful place as road vehicles).
Makes me annoyed. But
silently elitist about it, for the most part. I'll mostly discuss the merits (or not) of a bike-riders' illegal footway-use only when I'm a pedestrian (fully knowing that it gives me less credence than if.I were visibally proven to be a fellow propellor of the pedals, and might also let me keep pace with them if I was so inclined). I don't think I've ever told a perambulating person that they need a bike as I sprint past.
It's good to ride a bike (it
may even make some drivers appreciate their responsibilties on the road if they pick up the habit of the cycling 'fad' (though I think the
Mr Walker/Mr Wheeler thing often just picks up a third alter-ego), but it's no longer the
great social leveller. It's often more a temporary 'brag-tag' one might apply to onself until the novelty of the often less than fair-weathered activity hastens the day their marvelously over-expensive bike just gathers cobwebs in the shed or bids upon eBay.
(I know nothing about freedom from gluten. I have no apparent medical need to do so, as with much of the population. I do avoid peanuts, as an equivalent, but that's just because I don't like their flavour. I'd probably avoid gluten if I didn't like it, but I'm not sure there's a flavour issue there. Going further than that seems rather superficial. And overly restrictive to be a valid
voluntary choice. Though I suppose mainstream (unneccessary) take-up of gluten-free products, like the increase of the less irresponsible forms of cycling, does increase the availability of glutenless things and second-hand cycle equipment for those people who
do need them to fulfill one additional level or other of Maslow's hierarchical pyramid.)
PPE: Yeah, Orthogon, thinking the same myself, about myself, but I think we've still not been quite so much as pushy as the kind of person we know was being referred to there. In that aspect, we remain superior to them all!!!111oneoneone