Such efficiencies only trim minutes over a dozen miles or more, so consider beginning earlier. Best time will always be just before dawn, when traffic is light and sunlight reveals what's afoot. Racers may average 25 mph, but only on closed courses and empty roads. You can get all nerdy and plot distance over time versus economical tweaks, but trying to match peloton speeds alongside busses, cars and trucks is incredibly risky, not worth compromising safety.
Reminded of economist Laffer and his plotted curve that supposedly links maximizing personal earnings by minimizing tax collection, better described as the worst kind of junk science that nevertheless drives public policy. Reaganomics were irrevocably disproven over three decades when class disparities did instead worsen, as, of course, intended. Not only did it create a few billionaires, it devalued savings and undermined all wealth. Laughing up his sleeve on way to a bank, Laffer's scheme earned him a medal from Trump. Now you have to be at least a celebrity or millionaire just to stay alive an extra year and survive health system set up to dump you back into poverty.
Tired of lies and traffic? Adam Conover has a new 80 minute podcast. Turns out, all private motorized transportation, even electric vehicles, allow anonymity, amplify aggression, eliminate middle class, equip criminals, exacerbate impatience, and expand evil. Labann has only been saying this for a quarter of a century; maybe eventually folks will awake and react. A car occupies 9 times the footprint of a person on a bike, bus or subway. Although cars are all about making mobility effortless and faster, airheads who design them fail miserably on both accounts.
Driving a car potentially divides time to arrival by 20, except you’re forced to deal with costs, gridlock, parking, and rudest of cretins who will kill to clip seconds for a thrill or to fulfill a minimum wage role at an impatient mill. Walking is easiest except when crossing roads and increasing distance. Riding a bicycle accelerates walking by 5 times, only 1/4 as fast as driving, but minimizes effort and investment to more than make up difference, so rates as the most efficient mode of transportation yet invented. Allow for freshening up after working up a sweat. While bicycling and walking may not suit your commute to factory set intentionally outside city in some industrial park next to a highway, you may still be surprised at its seasonal practicality.
If noted philosopher Henry David Thoreau, father of American environmentalism, were born in this century, he’d be a proponent of bicycling. Back in 1850’s, he extolled the logic of self propelling to go anywhere versus earning a wage to afford trip by train. At the end of the day, you’ll have already arrived instead of waiting to be paid before you can buy a ticket next day or week. Some might have called him cheap or lazy, but he thoroughly foresaw how enterprise would exploit wage slavery and threaten natural world. Ironically, Walden pond is now accessible by bicycle, which was concurrently emerging from Europe while he withdrew from society and wrote his renowned observations.
Labann’s weekly commutes and fondos ranging up to 120 miles did add up: Six times earth’s circumference of ~25000 miles (40 million meters). Any avid non-racing cyclist rides one of which every decade, though should exclude early years until mid teens and late after seventy when call fades and trips shorten. Sweet spot falls between ages 45 and 55, after you've earned enough to afford and insure, when family no longer so directly relies on your contributions or presence. It’s when you might cover 65% of lifetime total, though ages 15 through 35 see more real racing and randonneuring. A new father seldom goes farther.
Mean age of world peloton? Hard to determine, but very likely late 20's. In Tour de France it’s lately 28.5; peak performance years are considered to be 22 - 35, though age has crept up with medical advancements. Male racers in USA - where every week there are club crits, cyclocross meets, or ironman triathlons - average 39 years old if you include 35+ masters division.
Not because they’re physically unable, to the contrary likely anatomically superior for task, women have a tough time keeping up when intimidated on streets by male mashers. Late actress Lena Nyman depicted such inter-gender discontent during a harassment scene in I Am Curious - Yellow back in ’67, over a half century ago. Coming from a dad, though, complaints command less cred. To convince must defer to Unladylike podcast with distaff hosts Caroline Ervin and Christen Conger, Huffington Post, and news sources. In fact, bicyclists fill a legal vacuum, more akin to forsaken pedestrians than motorists, not driving a crushing vehicle, so unaffected by traffic code. Since bicyclists always have the right of way over motorists, when, if ever, can they be “at fault” in collisions? Would have almost have to crash into a stopped vehicle; even then, amount of damage would be negligible except under extraordinary circumstances.
As if music from a pair of 27" ride cymbals with long sustain, seem to repeat spinning same prayer wheels in an unrelenting beat driven by a scatterbrain. Incantations and supplications supposedly make wishes follow through, though evidence has always been circumstantial and occurrence coincidental. Often you don’t know what to do, yet personal attempts are the most educational.
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