Spandex. A single word that defines an entire class of rider and bike shop owners for that matter.
I get along with them for most part but I love it one wants to confront me with a scowl saying things like how I am ruining bicycling or cheating.
I give them a good long look up and down and depending on the comment I mention Lance Armstrong and that if I'm cheating, at least I am doing it in plane view on the bike and not lying about it.
They are ATHLETES you speak of- I was one of them for a long long time, 14 years USCF and long time Category 1,
and I never particularly liked them as a group, because as ATHLETES- like almost all ATHLETES- they are at their core overly competitive anai a large part of the time.
They, and you, miss the real essense of what bike riding is to a real purist- and competitve cycling has worked AGAINST cycling by taking it all into the EXTREME EXOTIC and of most corporate conglomerate editorial self-importance EXPENSIVE ranges,
and out of the hands of the more mass movement that once surfaced and is seen as a threat to the precious precious motor and motorSPORT world-
I entered into it at the RENAISANCE- the late 60's to mid- 70's and I've seen the forces working against it all all this time
including the latest chat board media BLITZ by angry frustrated motorists whose lives dangle by a growing more tense and expensive and more 70-car-piled- up MOTORING thread, and want then to blame those who now so much haven't embraced CYCLING but are turning to it as a WAY OUT- many with no other choice because the Politicall Correct Corporate machine has already deprived them of a chance of car ownership.
Lance is perhaps a sell-out- who may have taken a lot of money- or GIVEN it to a cycling enterprise naturally hoiping to expand it's influence, but again being shot intentionally down by WORLD Big Oil who forever sees it as a threat- The whole Lance episode may in fact be more manufactured than our controlling media would want you to believe.
I don't care much- Bicycle Racing means little to me now- although it once did. CYCLING means a lot more
and ALL motor interests could learn a great deal from the basics of the fundamental principal of it:
GETTING FROM Point A to Point B with the LEAST EXPENDITURE OF ENERGY.
and I personally believe transportation interests will adopt more this tenet, as Global Warming is more contuinually recognized as the growing problem it in fact already is. CYCLING will not get credit, because it's been led down a road of ruin by Big Oil, who will still sell us our gear- but just make sure it isn't very good and it's EXPENSIVE to a point of impracticality.
cycling can be both relaxing and practical, and it's great for one's health,
when not surrounded by media FUELED road rage
HAPPY MOTORING from "A man called Flying Horse".... HA!