Originally Posted by
CrankyOne
I think we do. If I had a lot of huge hills to climb I'd likely use a road bike or e-bike.
Then drama to the contrary? I seem to recall someone saying something about short trips all being "flat".
Originally Posted by
CrankyOne
What gets me though is all of the people who live in places where that's not the case but all that they see in local LBS's is road, mountain, and cruisers so they pick one of those, usually a hybrid, thinking these are their only options. They use it once a month for a recreational ride along a flat rail trail and that's it.
What gets me is that some people can't respect other people's choices. You could force people to buy only the kind of bike
you deem appropriate but that would only insure that people don't even do the once a month recreational ride. But this is the commuter forum where people have other needs than just "short flat rides".
Originally Posted by
CrankyOne
When it's time to go to dinner or the store they don't think about riding because it's a pain to do so. They think they need to wear a helmet and they don't have anything handy to lash their pants leg with and even then they think they'll get grease on them. They think they'll get sweaty since they always do on recreational rides (and are indeed much more likely to if they lean forward at all) and don't have any place to carry anything. And so they hop in their car for the 1/2 mile trip to the grocery.
Leaning forward isn't going to make some one sweaty. Riding a bicycle is going to make them sweaty.
People use their cars to go grocery shopping in the US because of the way we shop for groceries. We don't shop every day. Carrying a weeks worth of groceries for a family of 4 is more than most people have the capacity to carry on a bicycle.
Originally Posted by
CrankyOne
This is vastly different from Europe where they are much more likely to see good upright city bikes (not cruisers or leisure) in bike shops and are much more likely to purchase one and end up with something that is much better for their needs—great and more comfortable for recreational rides as well as 1/2 mile trips to dinner.
And Europe is more compact that most of the US. For many in the US, it's much further to dinner than 1/2 mile. For many, it's further than 1/2 mile to the grocery store. Even within a city like Denver, there are many places where a trip to dinner or to a grocery store is a 5 mile round trip. In the suburbs, the round trip can be 10 miles or more.