Cycling these days .... rise of the clones?

[Fab Foodie]

FF your rant disappoints me! I'd got you down as an easy-going sort of bloke.

I am, but don't tell the others ....

 

[glasgowcyclist]

I preferred cycling when it was a minority sport.

Good luck to anyone who wants to ride a bike, but I'll be happier when it's not fashionable anymore.

For me it's not a sport, it's a mode of transport.

GC

 

[Markymark]

I preferred cycling when it was a minority sport.

Good luck to anyone who wants to ride a bike, but I'll be happier when it's not fashionable anymore.

Why? The more that do the greater the infrastructure we'll end up getting and the greater the status on the roads.

Cars in central London now seem much better at looking out for cyclists as they're everywhere.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I guess it's that I'm now part of a 'group' by 'proxy'. I was never asked if wanted to join, it's just engulfed me ....

 

[Fab Foodie]

Cars in central London now seem much better at looking out for cyclists as they're everywhere.

On the flipside I get more people shouting WAaaankeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr at me for no apparent reason when cycling (but if the cap fits ....) .....

 

[tyred]

Why? The more that do the greater the infrastructure we'll end up getting and the greater the status on the roads.

Cars in central London now seem much better at looking out for cyclists as they're everywhere.

Personally, I don't believe large groups of sports cyclists wearing expensive kit riding expensive bikes achieve anything very much at all.

What I like to see is ordinary people riding practical bikes going about their daily business. These are the people who actually do reduce the number of cars on the road and show non-cyclists that a bike is a viable means of transport. Weekend warriors don't do this. Telling people you need a load of kit and need to spend £XXXX on a bike (which isn't suitable for utility use anyway in most cases) to cycle isn't encouraging to a possible convert unless they are only looking for a new form of exercise.

 

[Wafer]

Isn't thinking something was better before it was popular a hipster trait?

 

[Markymark]

I suggest these groups are interconnected and the weekenders are often the commuters who discover they like it and buy an n+1........like me

 

[Dan B]

I preferred cycling when it was a minority sport.

Good luck to anyone who wants to ride a bike, but I'll be happier when it's not fashionable anymore.

I absolutely don't and won't prefer it as a minority sport. My other sport is inline skating. It was big in the 90s, it was tolerably sized during most of the 2000s (the decade I really got into it) and now every single bit of skating news[*] I get is about a manufacturer withdrawing from the market, an event that's stopped running, a shop that's closed down, a track under threat of redevelopment, a race that won't be run again next year ... how am I supposed to be happier that a pursuit that has given me so much enjoyment is each year harder for anyone else to get into (and harder even for me to carry on doing) than it had been the previous year?

[*] not counting rollerderby, which is an entirely separate phenomenon

 

[EltonFrog]

Cycling is growing - Hooray!
It's almost the new Golf, people spending all day in silly clothing.

Now on a Sunday morning there are cyclewaynekers everywhere, like marauding groups of 2 wheeled Piranhas moving en-masse. But here's the thing, they're all identikit, clones, like they have all fallen out of the same pattern book ... and they're so terribly earnest.

3 things have brought me to this point:

The other morning I arrived earlier than usual for the Freewheeling run to see Abingdon's other club depart for their Sunday constitutional. In some ways it was heartening to see 20 plus cyclists but saddening to see every one in pristine matching club kit, obligatory helmet, 'cycling shades' and latest big brand plastic bikes. Several of them waved at me from across the street and I had no idea who they were, each one a pea in a pod, each identical.

The TdF is much the same, it's impossible apart from the numbers or a facial close-up to figure out who is who, you only see their mouths and chins, they could be anyone out there.

My BIL has recently started cycling for fun and fitness, in Surrey on a hybrid and the one thing that puts him of cycling is being identified with the earnest pseudo-racer, lycra-clad Strava chasing MAMILs, and I'm starting to see his point. Mrs FF has a similar view.



Now, I'm speaking from a point of hypocrisy here, as to the layman I probably confer to the stereotype except for no helmet, plastic bike or designer shades, but somehow I don't feel I belong to the modern Sportive/Pro-emulating herd for whom cycling is about stats and the latest gizmo.
No, I guess my heart lies more with the everyday commuting and shopping cyclist, those that frequent the CTC, the Audax fraternity, our Freewheeling group and the diverse bunch that are The Fridays. People that have grown-up with cycling in their blood, for whom cycling is so much more than burning-up the local club-run, the latest gear and associated bragging rights.

I may not have managed to express my thoughts clearly, but the upshot is that I'm increasingly finding that the rise of the clone-cyclists not only puts other people off, it's starting to work on me .....

Guilty as charged, except for the pro kit. I have a plastic bike, poncy shades, bling wheels, helmet, garmin bollix, go pro. You don't like it? tough titty doo dah!

 

[Crankarm]

It's supposed to be summertime, it's a bit drier and warmer, the Tdf is on and so everyone and his dog is now out on a bike. Come mid september these part timers and fair weather Pro wannabes will have disappeared leaving us proper cyclists to enjoy the empty paths and roads again to cycle on through the winter. It happens every year. It's purely a seasonal thing.

 

[Saluki]

I love that more people are riding but not so keen on it being the 'new golf'.
Yesterday, while swigging my free coffee at Waitrose (and eating not free chocolate fudge cake) a couple of golfers on their very high end carbon arrived. One went for coffee while the other held the bikes. Eaton is a pretty safe area, our bikes were leaned up against the wall next to us, unlocked. The holding the bikes chap - in full Sky kit - decided to hold forth on the fact that I was wearing a tee shirt instead of 'proper clothing' and that I wasn't doing my bike justice. He enquired as to how much my bike cost as he prefers a 'proper brand' that he'd heard off (He had a rather nice, shiney Spesh), didn't give me a cnance to tell him to MYOB but started bunnying on about how many strava segments he had with a lot of 'yah' ing going on. I just looked a little bemused and carried on with my cake. Personally I thought, if he had been a proper Sky fanboy, that he should have had a Pinarello

Hopefully he will bugger off back to the golf course as soon as the cooler weather sets in and there will be a nice Spesh up on gumtree. I think he might have been a 'clone'. The vast majority of cyclists that I come across while out and about are lovely people enjoying the ride, whether it be on a hybrid, their daughter's bike or a bit of swish carbon. Happily I don't see too many of the Sky clones who think that they are better than the rest of us because they have chucked thousands at their new hobby.

I don't frequent Waitrose a lot, BTW. Their coffee is really nice and I get a free one every day. Also, the Norwich Waitrose has outside tables where I can sit with my bike. It's in a handy place for the route we took yesterday.

 

[Ansome]

It was all smiles and fun until they invented speedometers for bikes. Until then you could always rely on Uncle Derek to stop the watch a bit early on the Club 10.

 

[phil_hg_uk]

I love that more people are riding but not so keen on it being the 'new golf'.
Yesterday, while swigging my free coffee at Waitrose (and eating not free chocolate fudge cake) a couple of golfers on their very high end carbon arrived. One went for coffee while the other held the bikes. Eaton is a pretty safe area, our bikes were leaned up against the wall next to us, unlocked. The holding the bikes chap - in full Sky kit - decided to hold forth on the fact that I was wearing a tee shirt instead of 'proper clothing' and that I wasn't doing my bike justice. He enquired as to how much my bike cost as he prefers a 'proper brand' that he'd heard off (He had a rather nice, shiney Spesh), didn't give me a cnance to tell him to MYOB but started bunnying on about how many strava segments he had with a lot of 'yah' ing going on. I just looked a little bemused and carried on with my cake. Personally I thought, if he had been a proper Sky fanboy, that he should have had a Pinarello

Hopefully he will bugger off back to the golf course as soon as the cooler weather sets in and there will be a nice Spesh up on gumtree. I think he might have been a 'clone'. The vast majority of cyclists that I come across while out and about are lovely people enjoying the ride, whether it be on a hybrid, their daughter's bike or a bit of swish carbon. Happily I don't see too many of the Sky clones who think that they are better than the rest of us because they have chucked thousands at their new hobby.

I don't frequent Waitrose a lot, BTW. Their coffee is really nice and I get a free one every day. Also, the Norwich Waitrose has outside tables where I can sit with my bike. It's in a handy place for the route we took yesterday.

Wait until you come across them in the middle of no where with a problem with their bike that they cant fix, the attitude drastically changes

 

[swee'pea99]

Wait until you come across them in the middle of no where with a problem with their bike that they cant fix, the attitude drastically changes

Also, there aren't many more amusing sights than a pot belly in a Sky jersey.