Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => Freewheeling => Topic started by: telstarbox on 20 August, 2023, 07:15:20 pm
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I was out on a leisure ride this morning and the weather was good, so no surprise to see plenty of other cyclists about :thumbsup:
Have people been doing this at the weekend as long as bikes have existed, or is it a more recent trend? Would people have done leisure cycling if they also rode to work (when this was more common before cars)?
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I almost always cycled to (and from) work, snow, ice, rain, gales, blistering heat, I cycled. I also did leisure rides, snow, ice, rain, gales, blistering heat. Nothing kept me from my leisure rides.
Today I was intrigued by this guy who has spent an entire year riding without ever leaving the house:
https://zwiftinsider.com/keith-roy/
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Cycling started out as the leisure pursuit of the moneyed, mostly male, classes. It only became the common people's transport when it became cheap enough to replace walking. then came cars. And the rest is history. Well documented history. I can recommend Carlton Reid's Roads were not built for cars if you want to find out more.
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If it wasn't fun I wouldn't do it. Hate 'cycling' indoors, too - all the pain and none of the pleasure.
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Cycling started out as the leisure pursuit of the moneyed, mostly male, classes. It only became the common people's transport when it became cheap enough to replace walking. then came cars. And the rest is history. Well documented history. I can recommend Carlton Reid's Roads were not built for cars if you want to find out more.
It also became a (mostly) working class sport. Now it seems to be returning to being the leisure pursuit of the moneyed classes.
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If it wasn't fun I wouldn't do it. Hate 'cycling' indoors, too - all the pain and none of the pleasure.
+1
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I've tried indoor cycling but I find it frustrating to have to keep stopping and manhandling the trike through the doors ::-)
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That reminds me that when I was a PSO there was someone who used to ride their bike through the outside door, along the corridor to his room in first year halls.
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Indoor cycling peaked that time a member of staff who shall remain nameless, but presumably had a strong case of the career-prospects fuckits, let nikki and I cycle down the spiral ramp art gallery of The Public (https://www.thepublic.com/index.html). They even managed to synchronise the goods lift doors[1] so we could ride off the ramp, through the foyer and out what could charitably be referred to as a loading dock.
Sadly neither of us had a GoPro.
[1] Likely the only time the goods lift doors have ever been synchronised with anything. That lift was a menace.
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It also became a (mostly) working class sport. Now it seems to be returning to being the leisure pursuit of the moneyed classes.
Only if you read the Daily Mail/Express/Telegraph. As a BC regional commissaire and a keen cyclist and cyclotourist, I meet a huge diversity of people taking part in sporting as well as non-sporting leisure cycling. Not every cyclist is out there on their Pinarellos wearing Rapha 😉
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One of the best things about the segregated blue cycle lanes (A38 route, Birmingham) is that many different people use them from your expensive middle class cyclists through to BSOists on whatever BSO they can find or one of the local "free bikes for people on low income" schemes (orange bikes) oh and Not-So-Penniless-Student-Oaves on those e-scooter things. While the very fast 20kph or higher brigade often use the road, the lanes have a range of speeds with people usually behaving considerately towards others.