Road Cycling - living on the edge.....

http://www.drunkcyclist.com/vid/red-web.mpeg

its big, and may have been posted before, but worth the wait, good stuff between 4:30 and 5:30 or so.

LOL talk about crazy, I love it

THANK YOU so much for the vid! That was great! I have it on my desktop. Rush hour in downtown Cleveland is one of my favorite time & places to ride. Others riders I know say that's nuts or to each his own, what a drag....; I have to go solo........would be more fun with a couple others.

that's it. as soon as i can afford it, i'm buying an 853 harry havnoonian track frame and taking my old, beat up lotus track out of service...yeah, i've got two trackies already, and only one roadie, but crap, i LOVE riding fixed.

that's the third or fourth time i've seen that video and it's still friggen incredible. the guy at the beginning is one of the best mess'ers in boston. he wears headphones all the time, and is just so damn smooth all the time. he rides an IF road bike with record on it. it's damn sexy.

granted the riding is nuts. what i'm most impressed by is the filming. how do they film all of that? can't be a motorcycle. must be a head mounted camera? in which case, that filmer is amazing.

anyone know anything about this?

dan

i'm pretty sure it's a helmet-cam.

Yeah, he looks down a few times, and you can see the handlebars and brake hoods. Plus there is nothing but wind noise, no motor.

Someone here posted a link to a site that has this and a few other videos of reckless, self-centered riders with more guts than brains.

Here it is:

http://www.digave.com/videos/

Whatever you think about it, you gotta give these guys some props for having some skills. Even though the film looks sped up, it is pretty impressive.


Someone here posted a link to a site that has this and a few other videos of reckless, self-centered riders with more guts than brains.

Their bike handling skills and courage is impressive.

The tape isn't sped up.

ahhh, spreading good will between drivers and cyclists. videos like that make me realize why we're hated as a group by drivers.

ahhh, spreading good will between drivers and cyclists. videos like that make me realize why we're hated as a group by drivers.

we're hated because we're freer. because we can get away with things like riding between lines and going straight to the front of the line of cars at a light. no way in hell i'm gonna sit behind 20 cars at a light if i'm on my bike. if i see a way through the gridlock, i'm gonna take it.

thing is, it's their JOB to ride their bikes and not get hit, whereas for everyone who isn't them, and isn't racing for a living, it's a hobby (and racers aren't usually riding in weekend traffic through times square). i think you'd be pretty surly too after riding in downtown traffic 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and having to deal with the crap they have to deal with...and i didn't really see any seriously assholic offenses. nobody in the video smacks a car, or yells at a driver, and no drivers flip out and try to kill them. what freaks me out the most is when they weave between the peds in the crosswalks...and near the end where all the riders are turning around and the cameraman almost gets whacked by the guy on the white bike...and when they're riding between the buses. oh, and the cameraman picked some really stupid, stupid lines through intersections...mostly when he goes IN FRONT of the oncoming cab instead of behind it like pretty much everyone else in the video did.

it's a chicken and the egg thing really, because not all riders act that way, and they still get crap from drivers, and i don't think it's always because the drivers have had a run-in with an a-hole on a bike. i think the problem on both sides of it is an over-inflated sense of entitlement. drivers think they're more entitled to use the roads than cyclists because they're in big cars. cyclists feel like they're more entitled to the road because they're risking more by being there and not being shielded by 2000lbs of metal and plastic. personally i tend to lean more toward the cyclist side of things, because a lot of times, drivers don't even realise when they're too close as they whiz by at 45. a lot of them don't even see us out there. if i notice that a lot of cars are coming too close to me, and forcing me to ride too close to the parked cars where i could get doored, i take the lane for my own safety, especially if there's more than one lane.

i have the sudden urge to go play in downtown SF right now. but i think i'll have to settle for downtown oakland instead.

oh man! what a RUSH!

Now I really miss biking in Chicago.

we're hated because we're freer. because we can get away with things like riding between lines and going straight to the front of the line of cars at a light. no way in hell i'm gonna sit behind 20 cars at a light if i'm on my bike. if i see a way through the gridlock, i'm gonna take it.

thing is, it's their JOB to ride their bikes and not get hit, whereas for everyone who isn't them, and isn't racing for a living, it's a hobby (and racers aren't usually riding in weekend traffic through times square). i think you'd be pretty surly too after riding in downtown traffic 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and having to deal with the crap they have to deal with...and i didn't really see any seriously assholic offenses. nobody in the video smacks a car, or yells at a driver, and no drivers flip out and try to kill them. what freaks me out the most is when they weave between the peds in the crosswalks...and near the end where all the riders are turning around and the cameraman almost gets whacked by the guy on the white bike...and when they're riding between the buses. oh, and the cameraman picked some really stupid, stupid lines through intersections...mostly when he goes IN FRONT of the oncoming cab instead of behind it like pretty much everyone else in the video did.

it's a chicken and the egg thing really, because not all riders act that way, and they still get crap from drivers, and i don't think it's always because the drivers have had a run-in with an a-hole on a bike. i think the problem on both sides of it is an over-inflated sense of entitlement. drivers think they're more entitled to use the roads than cyclists because they're in big cars. cyclists feel like they're more entitled to the road because they're risking more by being there and not being shielded by 2000lbs of metal and plastic. personally i tend to lean more toward the cyclist side of things, because a lot of times, drivers don't even realise when they're too close as they whiz by at 45. a lot of them don't even see us out there. if i notice that a lot of cars are coming too close to me, and forcing me to ride too close to the parked cars where i could get doored, i take the lane for my own safety, especially if there's more than one lane.

i have the sudden urge to go play in downtown SF right now. but i think i'll have to settle for downtown oakland instead.

I don't think, after looking at the "Boston's Deadliest Messinger" video, that cyclists are hated because they're "freer." It's because too many, but certainly not all, cyclists see themselves as some sort of two-wheeled anarchists. This guy was running traffic lights and disobeying other traffic control devices, swerving in and out of traffic, riding towards opposing traffic, etc. The accompanying background music says it all, "Breaking the Law, Breaking the Law..." I agree that taking the lane is a perfectly legal, safe and acceptable thing to do in a downtown area, where a bike can move as fast or faster than a car. But traffic needs to flow in predictable patterns in order to be safe for all...motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

we're hated because we're freer. because we can get away with things like riding between lines and going straight to the front of the line of cars at a light. no way in hell i'm gonna sit behind 20 cars at a light if i'm on my bike. if i see a way through the gridlock, i'm gonna take it...

i guess the way i see it, for those of us who ride on less crowded roads spend every ride trying to convince cars that we are vehicles too. all i hear in the south is (edited)complaining (who knew the synonym for complaining rooted on another word for a female dog would be asterisked) because bikes don't pay taxes, they shouldn't use the roads, etc... so we try to act like vehicles in keeping with our 'the law allows us use of the roads just like cars' argument. we obey traffic signals. we acknowledge the fact that people are uncomfortable around cyclists when they're in their cars, and try to put them at ease by riding conservatively around cars.

a video like that, those guys run every red light, cut cars off, even held onto one at one point. i'd wager dollars to donuts that 90% of the drivers of the cars cussed them when they went by. that's not how you get people in cars to respect the rights of cyclists, imo.

yeah, that part where he grabs onto the black car is nuts. do many people do that? i'd be afraid i'd mess up and die.

yeah, that part where he grabs onto the black car is nuts. do many people do that? i'd be afraid i'd mess up and die.

i'd be more afraid that the car wouldn't know i was there and swerve.

i've done it on my bmx a couple times. it's kinda fun, but yeah...scary and stupid. one time it was really late at night and a friend and i had just finished riding...it was like, 3am, and we were out at his shop which was about an hour ride from where i was living at the time, and it was looking like rain...so he hopped on his motorcycle and i hopped on my bike and i just hung onto his arm the whole way. 30mph on a road bike is pretty fast, but it feels a whole lot faster on a 20"er.

i'd bet dollars to donuts that half the people in the cars didn't even care. it's NYC, crap like that happens all the time.

i think the biggest difference between us and them, and the biggest reason why messengers ride the way they ride is because it's their job. they need to be able to get from point A to point B as fast as possible in order for them to make a living. and one thing about that job is that if you're not pulling your weight, you get fired. and because of this, some of them are wreckless sometimes.


It's because too many, but certainly not all, cyclists see themselves as some sort of two-wheeled anarchists.

you say that like it's a bad thing...