A Riders Digest

January 17, 2003 7:39 AM

I should have expected a country that largely dismisses cycling as a viable mode of transportation would fail to understand the subtlety of riding skills that ultimately led to their plonking a man on the moon.
You don't need to be a cyclist to enjoy the intelligent and generous breadth of content at BikeReader - A Rider's Digest.
posted by normy (8 comments total)

There's a full index here.
posted by normy at 7:48 AM on January 17, 2003

One can't help observing that Wilbur and Orville were not satisied with bicycling as a mode of transportation, but wanted something cooler and faster and gasoline-powered.
posted by jfuller at 8:09 AM on January 17, 2003

Good article, but let us not forget it was the good old smoke-spitting internal combustion engine that turned the propellers.

I ride a bike, drive a car, and I've even piloted an airplane. There's something neat about flying a small plane and realizing how very low-tech the control surfaces really are. It's too bad human powered flight isn't practical beyond the occasional MIT project.
posted by bondcliff at 8:12 AM on January 17, 2003

Very nice index. There's a lot of good stuff to go through.

Personally, I was quite serious about cycling up untill 1 year ago. As the winter set, I quit for no reason and never picked it back up in the Spring. In retrospect, it's quite sad, really. The bike still sits in my kitchen, with a helmet and bicycle outfit nearby, but I doubt I will ever find the motivation to pick up where I left of.

These days I ride a sportsbike. It's rather fun, in a simiar way.

Witold
posted by Witold at 8:27 AM on January 17, 2003

One can't help observing that Wilbur and Orville were not satisied with bicycling as a mode of transportation, but wanted something cooler and faster and gasoline-powered.

I think the boys simply loved toys. I spend two to three hours a day on a bicycle and have, more than once, thought it akin to flying. Great site Normy.
posted by rotifer at 8:47 AM on January 17, 2003

An excellent tale...
posted by i_cola at 9:50 AM on January 17, 2003

Witold: It's rather fun, in a simia(n) way. ?
posted by daveg at 10:24 AM on January 17, 2003

One can't help observing that Wilbur and Orville were not satisied with bicycling as a mode of transportation, but wanted something cooler and faster and gasoline-powered.

Elsewhere on BikeReader, Patrick Field ponders:
It's understandable that 100 years ago Wilbur and Orville Wright thought that aeroplanes and the "infinite highway of the air" would offer humanity a faster route to paradise than the bicycle business that financed their aviation experiments. If they were still around at the end of our century-long experiment into the limits of the cheap-energy economy would they be reassessing their position?
posted by normy at 11:33 AM on January 17, 2003