Hola from Argentina all! It´s been a while so i thought i´d drop some bike-related observations here because i have no one to share them with here. first off let me say that my desicion to not bring a bike was, i think, a wise one as i would probably be dead and buries if i tried to ride a bike in Buenos Aires. i have never in my life seen people as insane on the roads as the drivers here. firstly, there are no stop signs so crossing an intersection involves looking both ways and sprinting if you see a car. they also don´t pay attention to the lane divisions so you´ll typically see a cab lane splitting between a bus and another car then stop diagonally to get a fare. there are bikes here, yes. most of them are fat tired cruiser types with coaster brakes and super wide handle bars, or cargo bike with a front wheel smaller than the back and a sort of funky front kickstand the supports a heavy duty front rack. most of these bikes are used for deliveries, so it´s not unusal to see a bike like this with a basket the size of small desk filled with break, market bound on a weekend morning. also most of the city´s pizza (of which there is lots) is delivered in the same manner.
i haven´t seen many bike messengers, but there are a few that use the aforementioned style bike for small deliveries but most of this type of work is done on motorbikes as it never snows here. so far i´ve only seen one or two ¨road¨bikes, a coulple of carbon framed ones out in the country side but mostly they´re old steel frames with mid level parts and those crappy old SIS rear mechs which seems to be all people car get down here. anyone with money to buy a bike it seems buys a mountain bike, even to ride on the street. sadly, no fixies here either.
i´m looking forward to getting home and back on the bike. i´ll post when i get back and i´ll need to go out for some hard rides to get into some sort of shape again. five weeks of red meat, wine and pastries does not do a body good (although the wine is cheap which is good. a very nice table wine can be had for the equivalent of $2 canadian and a nice ¨vintage¨bottle starting at about $10). i´m freezing my ass off here; i hope you´re all warm and toasty!