Wow, it’s 2024.
Welcome to the future!
If you had asked me when I was 16 year old what 2024 would be like, I’d have said we’ll be living in some sort of Orwellian dystopia in which truth no longer exists, omnipresent screens fill us with fear in order to control our thoughts and actions, and freedom is a dirty word. But thank Lob that’s not how things have turned out:
Ironically, it turns out all the bands I listened to back then got it exactly right, only while they were pointing and yelling in one direction all the dystopian stuff actually came from the other direction and they never even saw it coming:
Funny how that works.
Still, I feel good about 2024 in the same way I do about a really big sandwich: sure, sometimes you may think you’ll never finish it, and it may even cut up the roof of your mouth a little bit, but ultimately it’s going to be tremendously satisfying, and it goes really well with coleslaw, pickles, and potato chips.
And even if you don’t buy into New Year’s resolutions and all that crap there is a special significance to the bicycle you choose for your New Year’s Day ride. It is a symbol of your hopes, and your ideals, and your expectations for the year ahead. This was the bike I chose:
I like to think it means I’m embracing both simplicity and the fact that I’m getting older, but it probably just means I’m becoming more obstinate and contrarian as the years go by, and by New Year’s Day 2040 I strongly suspect I’ll be riding a pennyfarthing:
Apart from the actual bicycle and maybe the crotchal bulge, if that rider were to show up at the 2024 Nutmeg Nor’easter there is nothing about him that anybody would find remarkable in any way.
But while overall I’m optimistic about 2024, I’m not so sure that e-bikes are a bright spot:
Alas, what have we done to the poor bicycle? It’s a machine so astoundingly efficient that it even gave Steve Jobs a boner:
While all the little refinements over the past century or so have been nice it really needed little to nothing in the way of actual improvement. Nevertheless, in order to make bicycles slightly easier to ride we’re now strapping expensive, easily stolen, and potentially flammable batteries to them, which is ideal in a dense urban environment like New York City:
No doubt some e-bikes are better than others, but these Rad Power ones sure seem especially fantastic. Yes, not only can you use a blank key to remove the battery from them:
But apparently you can use just about anything:
And the more I read about them from satisfied owners, the better they sound:
Of course, if you’re going to put a battery and a motor on your bike, you might as well put a car horn on there too:
After that, all you really need are a couple more wheels, four doors and a roof.
By 2050 the bicycle will just be an electric Model T. I guess that’s the idea. Slowly phase out cars while simultaneously turning the bicycle into a car. Nothing will actually change, but at least we’ll get to say our streets are finally car-free.