Humongous

Seems that all this talk of Freds infiltrating the cycling scene is due to the increase in popularity of cycling in general. With more competition, and the fleeting sense of being part of the unique few, seems like some people are latching on to anything that can possibly be construed as newbish.

So does it bother you? I don't even know if there's any data that supports the increase in cycling popularity, its just a hypothesis. Anyone care to corroborate or disprove?

chipcom 

'infiltrating the cycling scene'? WTF are you talking about?

Arkansan07

I am a newb, but not a poser, I know that I know very little about this sport. Im glad to be learning from everyone on hear.

mugatu

It starts with irresponsible parenting.
Some negligent enabling parent buys their child a gateway bike for their birthday or Christmas and before you can say fred they're matching their spokey dokes to their neon coiled elastic shoe laces.

furiousferret

I think its not as popular as the Lance days but its still fairly popular. With that popularity comes segmentation; people want to seperate themselves into the 'cool' group. Just like High School.

Of course the nice thing about cycling is it doesn't matter how cool you look if you get dropped.

LawnChair

I wouldn't worry about cyclists taking over the world any time soon. You can take a group as obscure as adult bed wetters and they would out number cyclists 100 to 1. I live in a fairly popular cycling area and I have never been overwelmed by the number of cyclists on the road.

NYJayhawk

Get over it.

Been down this road before. Something "unique" that you "discovered" now becomes uncool because too many people have caught on to it. Trying to fight it is a waste of time and effort. Just do your thing, and a lot of the newbies will quit to do the next fad that comes along. The ones that stick around probably aren't that horrible anyway.

Tulex

Maybe the "Freds" are just taking back what was once rightly theirs.

vw addict

I think more men just dig tight spandex and shaved legs these days.

Walter

A longer view would consider the Bike Boom of the 70s-mid80s to be a time of more cycling "popularity" than today. I can remember anything with drop bars selling like crazy in the mid-70s as everyone "needed" a 10 speed. So many of those bikes were sold they are still a sizable percentage of the bikes on the road today (if you look beyond your group rides). Greg LeMond's success at the end of that period kind of capped it off but the "new" innovation of mountain bikes suppressed roadbike sales at about this time. Armstrong brought roadbikes back into a more popular position but I don't think this current wave matches the 70s-80s one.

Of course a real long view would include the 1880s- about 1920 or so. Bike racing as a pari-mutual sport on indoor velodromes was very popular. The fact that you could gamble trackside had alot to do with it.

Chris R.

...don't think that road cycling is new but i do think that there are more road bikes on the road and that they are more popular then some years ago. When I was racing MTB's and working at a local shop, the shop was about 80% mountain bikes and 20% road bikes. The same shop now is about 50/50 now...maybe a bit more on the road side. They have a special fitting room and lots of road specific staff. Obviously this is not much of a test but it's something I have noticed there and other shops in my area.
Personally, I think road bikes are more popular because I ride them now.

StanSeven

I can look cool getting dropped. I just act like I don't care and not wasting my time doing anything with this easy pace.

Chris R.

Is that not the time to break out the "im doing a recovery ride...did a metric double century before lunch ya see..."

grimace308

if my "freds" you mean people, including myself, that have dropped far too much money on nice equipment, that wont make them noticeably faster, but will look very good going very slow, then my answer is yes.

what amazes me is that if people, including myself, spent as much time on their bike as they did debating what encompasses "fredhood", wed all be domestic pros.

benajah

I think its mostly a shift from mountain biking to road biking. I will probably shift towards track riding or back to mountain biking or touring or something in the future. I don't think cycling itself has changed much in popularity, just the type of cycling.

benajah

IT will shift, I meant. Not me shifting.

riot2003

We'll I've just picked up road cycling in the past year (along with my roommate and a few more friends), and its not been by buying the top of the line nice looking gear and dressing the part to feel fast. Its been wearing whatever clothes we can get at thrift stores and buying up old craigslist bikes so we have something to ride instead of our cars. We're driven by taking cars off the road and finding comradery in the activity, not by lookin and feelin cool.

I hope that the increase in popularity is for good reasons.

Humongous

But didn't the bike boom of the 70's kick off because of the gas crisis? We just had a gas crisis, plus a lot of people are paranoid about the environment, too. Not only that, but people are more scared about dying because they are overweight slobs. And now we have all these new rails-to-trails MUP's, etc. for a more cycling friendly lifestyle.. Personally, I don't see why bicycle manufacturers aren't taking full advantage of this climate.

Paul Y.

Check out Beijing. Now there's alot of bikes!

thirdin77

As the baby boomer generation ages, there will be more road cyclists because many of those people won't be able to do running or high-impact sports but their doctors will suggest they try cycling and then they'll be spending some of their ample disposable income on road bikes and all the accessories.

I live on the working class side of the Silicon Valley and I just haven't noticed an increase in road cyclists but working class usually means an aversion to road cycling. On the middle and upper class side fo the Valley, though, it may be different.

TRaffic Jammer

It's the new golf for the midishlife set, welcome one and all.

cyccommute 

Is cycling more popular than in the late 70s? No. Are Freds infiltrating cycling? No. We've been here since long before you discovered the sport, Sport We 'invented' modern bicycling. Before us Freds, it was all balloon tires or English three speeds which you bought from the local hardware store. Crappy bikes all.

We're the Dave Stoller to your Napoleon Dynamite. But we are Pee Wee Herman to the Antonio Ricci's or Thomas Stevens' before us. There's always someone who has come before and there will always be others after. Get use to it. It's a newbie mistake to think you discovered something that's been around for nearly 200 years

caloso

It's getting very popular. Since 2004 there's been 200% increase in riders living at my address.

TRaffic Jammer

Is latching on to newbish-ness really desirable? I smell lemming!!!
Between co-opting messenger culture and the doctor/lawyer driven CF dream machines we've seen alot more bikes out there. I see more families out on the weekends too. Come on Down!

SushiJoe

Really?? Well I'm eff'd then...