Originally Posted by
bragi
I ride in street clothes (khakis, button-down shirts) and have a bike I purchased used for $75. I've used that bike to ride 60-100 mi/wk for the past four years, and have never had any problems with it. (Of course, I make sure I maintain it.) You don't need to spend a lot of money to have a usable bike, as long as you don't care about image too much If you do care about image a lot, well, you're doomed anyway; you might as well just go ahead and buy a BMW and hire a personal trainer.
That is my vision of a commuter. I commuted for years on a Raleigh 3 speed. It was my only form of transportation for about 4 years. I even dragged the thing back and forth between a couple of cities on Greyhound (those were the days
) Unfortunately in many places it is an uphill battle to be able to just ride a bike. So much of our retail and other facilities have been moved to the outskirts of town and are accessible only by high speed arterials. IMHO it would only take a tiny bit of extra effort to include cycle/pedestrian access in the planning and execution, but the cycling advocacy is so fragmented and full of misinformation that it seldom happens much past the planning stage if it happens at all.
Aaron
