Bicycles need to make the move from toy to truck. Truck in the most traditional sense is a vehicle used like a beast of burden. For my purposes, I am suggesting that Americans, in particular, become more accustomed to using bicycles for their everyday vehicles. Many other cultures worldwide already view their bikes as vehicles, not as toys. We, Americans, on the other hand regard them as toys or even trophies of sorts. When 250-pound-plus people pay hundreds of dollars to get upgrade their bikes with the lightest components, there's an example of projecting something onto the bike very different than that of utilitarian vehicle. When we pay $400 for a rack system to carry our bikes to the local trailhead that's less than 5 miles from our home, there's another issue with our thought-process toward the bike.
I rode in a Charity Event locally where we had a handful of training rides, sponsored by local bike shops. One complaint I heard more than a dozen times was "why do we have to park so far away from the shop to start the Ride?" The parking lot was two blocks away, and the ride we were embarking upon was a 40-mile ride. Seems a little problematic to me.
Before I start down a road of holier-than-thou, I will confess I do not currently use my bike as truck. I have a truck, and more than one bike. I am not perfect, and I'm not a full-time commuter by bicycle. I'm at a point of epiphany however that we as inhabitants of this world are very soon going find ourselves looking for alternate means of transportation. This is not to imply I am the first to discover this; indeed, I've come to it very late like many in the US. The era of the multi-car family seems to be proving problematic in many ways. There is a finite amount of Oil to be mined and refined into gasoline. There is a deficit in the amount the US uses in a day versus the amount we can make within our own borders. Countries that export oil to the US are becoming less stable or reliable all the time. The oil we relied upon from Mexico is no longer available. The amount of oil we get from the friendly European States is dwindling faster than anticipated. At the very least, the local pricing of our gas is becoming a burden that must now be looked at for its value to each family within the family budget. If my few sentences have taken anyone by surprise, big surprise, I recommend an internet search for "peak oil production" or "Global Peak oil" or even "Peak oil production in the US." That would be a good start to finding out why our bikes will be more important in the near future. Other than the simple costs of the fuel for the cars, there's a house of cards built around the cheap-gas-era transportation ideology. Suburban sprawl, health and fitness problems, lack of locally-grown food, lack of any manufacturing left here, and almost no public transportation in most US cities. The bicycle can help with some of this. I'll try to cover each of these later to see how the bike can help, and where it can't really help directly, I'll show a link between bike use and alleviating the symptom.
There's an item here where the president of Trek talks about the future of bicycles. It's long but the story is quite interesting. In future installments here I'll provide some links to products that look to be of some help in transitioning the bike we ride on weekends for "fitness" to a vehicle we use everyday for everyday uses. I'm no shill, although I've considered becoming a dealer for some of these items. I currently make no money from any of them, and only use a couple of them.
For now, this is a start.
