Bicycle Fixation Weblog
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04/14/2008: "More and More Bikes"
This morning, while trundling our dirty clothes to the laundromat (I walk over, pulling our laundry basket on a photographer's folding dolly), I saw several people evidently commuting to work by bicycle--including a gentleman in his sixties wearing avery conservative shirt and tie!The, while taking a doughnut break during the drying cycle, I saw at least five more people during a one-block walk--all riding in regular clothes, and heading somewhere, most of them carrying bundles or bags of some sort.
Once the clean clothes were stowed, I pedaled over to the grocery to do my mother's shopping for her, and when I came out from the store, yet another practical bike was locked to the shopping cart corral along with mine!
In Japan or Denmark or Holland this would not be news, but that it's happening in Los Angeles, Ground Zero of Carmageddon, and that it involves all kinds of folks who wouldn't have considered utility bicycling before, is cause for celebration, I should say!
All told, in two or three short passages along side streets, totaling perhaps twenty minutes of exposure if that much, I saw at least six or seven practical riders besides myself, and only one of them had even a glimmer of the "enthusiast" look.
