Hmmmph!

There was some kind of protest in India regarding bicycles, but I can’t make heads or tails of it. Maybe someone will explain it to me.

Even though (or perhaps because) I read BusinessWeek religiously, I normally don’t care much for investment bankers. But I must give props to Paul Schaye, who was profiled earlier on Serotta’s website. Yeah, he’s an investment banker. But he’s also a cyclist, and he’s got cancer. Thing is, he’s not sitting home having a pity party. Quite the opposite. Paul’s been putting in the hard miles, plus he’s been involved in riding for a cure, long before he was diagnosed. So Google his name if you want to read more, and be sure to go to the Pan Mass website (www.pmc.org) to learn more about his upcoming ride.

Can we stop calling it a bicycle already? I’m talking about the ConferenceBike, or CoBi, that seven seat, four wheeled contraption that is anything but a bicycle. It might be fun for groups, but who really wants to plod along at a really slow pace with 6 other people? I’ll stick with our tandem. Two’s company, seven’s a crowd.

And back to Mayor Bloomberg again. I’m starting to see him as the “damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t” mayor. He just signed a bill requires restuarants and other businesses in NYC that employ cyclists for deliveries to pay for their helmets. At face value, this is admirable. But I don’t see the SS/Fixie crowd getting too excited about this. What I do find a bit misleading is that a study released last September found that between 1996 and 2003, there were 3462 cyclists that suffered serious injuries. Of that figure, 97 percent of the bicyclists who died were not wearing a safety helmet. This just begs the question, how many died of head injuries, as opposed to other injuries?

In Spain, a 59-year-old man robbed a bank and used a bike for his getaway vehicle. Is it any suprise he got caught? In France, he would have been charged with doping as well.