^^^^^ ive had more close calls on the road bike
I’ve been riding my brakeless bike today and I’ll be the first to admit that I ride a helluva lot slower and more cautiously when I have no real, effective way of stopping myself.
It is kinda fun though from time to time.
NOBR AKES
my hoods negate my “fixie rida” status, so i sleep well at night.
I too generally really dislike the ‘fixed gear scene’. Even more so the fact that there is a ‘scene’. It’s well past the point of when hearing about close call scenarios evolving near misses with cars I generally assume the person on the bicycle was riding like a total idiot.
A few night ago, while riding my cross bike home, I almost T-boned one of these idiots riding the wrong way down the bike lane(he seemed to be riding in circles waiting for someone), with no lights on. When I stopped to confront this idiot - no sooner did I hear the other rider greeting me by name. Damnit!
It’s even worse at the bike shop when kids I know come in, that I know, and ask the most embarrassing questions and spend the fattest wads of cash on the most impractical stupid shit. I know this stuff doesn’t reflect on me but being associated with that kind of jackassery is never a good thing.
LOL.
i pretty much don’t ride bikes with anybody except maybe three people 'cause the “scene” here is so gross. though i always try to take more out of the way routes so i can avoid all of that (and cars, of course) in general, so i don’t see it too often. maybe on the occasional friday night inevitable jaunt on milwaukee ave.
[quote=tarckeemoon] I got downtown and was waiting at the red light*
*Yeah. I actually do that. Crazy, huh?[/quote]
so do i. tarckfive
where i’m at i haven’t really seen guys like that. the main people that piss me off here are ragbrai people. i mean the people who treat ragbrai teams like actual teams. also people with bluetooth headsets
the “scene” hear is young, so i try to encourage non-jackassness to new riders, without discouraging them from riding.
sigh.
The other day some dude came in with his tarcked-out pista asking about this beat up old trispoke we had hanging from the ceiling.
He wanted to buy it, we were like “dude it’s been wrecked, see this crack, you can’t ride this”
he said it’d be fine (it was a front wheel.) we insisted that it was unsafe to ride and he didn’t seem to care. Finally he said, 'come on man, I’m just going to hang if in my room" so we sold it to him for like $20, and told him that if he rides this wheel, we are not responsible.
Haven’t seen him since. I can only assume he rode it and wrecked.
edit:
this thread also reminds me about another dude that same day, I asked him how it was stopping his 53x15 brakeless (a legitemate question) he said “no problem brah, brakes are for fakes, gears are for queers”
god. damnit.
[quote=kmcdon3960]This thread also reminds me about another dude that same day, I asked him how it was stopping his 53x15 brakeless (a legitemate question) he said “no problem brah, brakes are for fakes, gears are for queers”
god. damnit.[/quote]
Those people are lucky I can’t hate them to death.
The bike scene in my neighborhood is 50 year-old mustachioed Mexicans in insulated flannel shirts (regardless of the temperature), blackened, acid-wash jeans and Brahma workboots, riding creaky, full-suspension NEXT bikes with slammed saddles. Other than that they exhibit the same riding style as the guys described by the OP except that they have brake levers but non-functioning brakes so they put their feet down to stop or just head for the bushes.
Fuckin’ scenesters.
This just in, humans exercise poor judgment sometimes. Surprised? Motorists, cyclists, pilots, crane operators. Man, let me tell you about crane operators. When I was in my 20s and building bridges, there was this one psycho-nutball crane operator at this job site. I’m pretty sure it was this overpass (I worked on several):
So, this guy, would drop these 10 ton bundles of rebar on the bridge deck from about 10-20ft above the deck. He’d just let the brake out on the crane and the fucking steel would drop to the deck causing wreckage among the rebar we’d already put in place and tied up. Concrete forms would break, chaos would ensue. Once, he hung an end of one of the bundles on the bridge and swung the crane over trying to free it. Once the steel swung free, it caught a guy and launched him 20 feet into the air. The crane operator was a serious bozo and when asked, he would just say that the crane was messed up and the brakes were worn.
We were a sub for this guy’s company and his company owned the crane. At some point, he stopped showing up and so we started operating the crane, which was quasi-permissible. I jumped in the crane one day to swing over a bundle of steel. As I was bringing the steel down, I went ever so slowly as I expected the brakes were horked and I’d likely kill someone if I wasn’t careful. Turns out, the brakes worked perfectly fine and I was able to feather them perfectly to bring the bundle of steel gently down to the deck of the bridge. Fuck that guy!
What was the topic again?
[quote=halbritt]This just in, humans exercise poor judgment sometimes. Surprised? Motorists, cyclists, pilots, crane operators. Man, let me tell you about crane operators. When I was in my 20s and building bridges, there was this one psycho-nutball crane operator at this job site. I’m pretty sure it was this overpass (I worked on several):
So, this guy, would drop these 10 ton bundles of rebar on the bridge deck from about 10-20ft above the deck. He’d just let the brake out on the crane and the fucking steel would drop to the deck causing wreckage among the rebar we’d already put in place and tied up. Concrete forms would break, chaos would ensue. Once, he hung an end of one of the bundles on the bridge and swung the crane over trying to free it. Once the steel swung free, it caught a guy and launched him 20 feet into the air. The crane operator was a serious bozo and when asked, he would just say that the crane was messed up and the brakes were worn.
We were a sub for this guy’s company and his company owned the crane. At some point, he stopped showing up and so we started operating the crane, which was quasi-permissible. I jumped in the crane one day to swing over a bundle of steel. As I was bringing the steel down, I went ever so slowly as I expected the brakes were horked and I’d likely kill someone if I wasn’t careful. Turns out, the brakes worked perfectly fine and I was able to feather them perfectly to bring the bundle of steel gently down to the deck of the bridge. Fuck that guy!
What was the topic again?[/quote]
Dood. A building crane toppled over in Taiwan recently falling onto a tour bus. Splitting it into half. The bus instantly turned into an explosion of red liquid bursting out of the glass windows. My friend lives 1 block away and is still scared to walk down that huge street. There are still lots of red splatter on the street. Fucking careless motherfuckers.
Coming from a small town, I’ve never even seen another riding fixed around here, but I’ve seen plenty of old tourists riding rented beach cruisers being jackass as hell as well. They aren’t screaming through reds are anything but they sure don’t seem to know that you aren’t supposed to ride on the sidewalk nor or you supposed to ride against traffic. That being said, there is a whole great lot of stupidity in not even slowing down and checking to make sure you are clear before rolling a red like I’ve heard stories of the urban fixed “scene” kids doing. It’s all for fucking show.
Riding on sidewalk is sometimes a necessity on huge streets with screaming cars.
Yeah, I’m talking about in the little historic downtown where all the tourists are attracted too. No screaming cars there. But I could definitely see that. I have to ride on a huge highway for 3 miles of my 6-7 mile way to work and it fucking blows.