BobbyG

My daily bike commute takes me by some homeless camps and through hardscrabble neighborhoods where many people don't have bus fare to get to work or social services. You see them riding their old, abused bikes with their impossibly out-of-true-wheels, dangling brake cables, disconnected shifters often rolling on a flat or two. Seats askew riding too low for human comfort, foam padding exposed through worn vinyl. They wear somebody elses cast-off clothing wearing backpacks, or carying bedrolls and duffels on a rack, sometimes carrying a baby trailer full of belongings bungeed to a rear rack or just the seatpost. No helmet, no lights no gloves, not even in the rain or snow, wearing too much in the summer and too little in the winter, they press on at slightly bettere than walking speed, determined to get to that job, that shelter, that other place, whatever it is; they pedal with a drive and determination that rivals the titans of the tour. Those people to whom a bike is an essential lifeline...THEY are the serious cyclists.

The rest of us are hobbyists.