Things may seem pretty chaotic these days here in West Greenland, but we’ve got nothing on London, which is in the grip of “E-Bike Mayhem:”
The problem? A strike has brought London’s tubular-shaped subterranean train system to a halt, and now everybody’s fighting over Lime bikes:
“Securing a Lime bike on Tuesday morning was almost as precious as getting Taylor Swift Eras Tour tickets,” said Barmby, who eventually did find a bike—like the Eras ticket. “I’d say it’s a great week to be the CEO of Lime.”
London’s Tube drivers have been striking since Sunday over demands for a shorter working week and better pay. The strike is expected to continue until Friday morning. There has been no service on the Underground, which usually hosts four million journeys a day.
Shorter working week and better pay? Ah, to be a public employee… In the real world that’s like walking into Rivendell and demanding a Homer Hilsen made of crabon. Also, I was under the impression everyone in London had at least one Brompton, but apparently not. Or maybe they do but they never use them and so when they finally pulled them out of their closets they couldn’t deal with the learning curve:
Anyway, next you’ll tell me Londoners don’t all wear bowler hats and carry umbrellas and comport themselves in an orderly fashion at all times–oh, wait:
For those lucky enough to find a bike, a more daunting challenge awaits: navigating London roads. Notorious even at the best of times for being unfriendly to cyclists, roads this week have been unruly. Bike lanes, which have quadrupled since 2016, are full of women in heels and men in suits pedaling their way through the city.
Taxi driver Alisson Viaria, 33, felt nervous driving around the city with so many new cyclists on the roads. “Most people don’t cycle everyday, so they’re riding around like crazy,” he said.
Dear Lord, it’s the mother of all shoals!
Though I admit it is truly inspiring to see Freds, Bromptonauts, Beautiful Godzillas, and e-bikers side by side in total indifference.
Also, I witnessed both magnificent shoals and enthusiastic Cat 6-ing in London as far back as 2011:
So I have little doubt they’ll survive this latest blitz.
Meanwhile, here in the land of opportunity and the home of deranged entrepreneurship, somebody’s trying to reinvent professional cycling again:
So why isn’t pro cycling a mainstream sport now? Because there aren’t really “childhood development pathways” for it:
In the years since LeMond and Armstrong captured domestic audiences, other sports have strengthened and consolidated their hold on the U.S. market – partly through improved public accessibility and established (often publicly funded) childhood development pathways. Every elementary school aged child is exposed to and plays a variety of “games” like baseball, soccer, and basketball, while track and field is a staple of gym class activities; after-school programs connect these children into coaching, league play, and long-term participation. In comparison, safe public spaces for kids to discover bicycle racing – unlike a basketball court or a multi-use football and athletics field – are almost non-existent in the U.S. today, save for a very few velodrome track facilities. And the expense of equipment needed for competitive cycling has become more and more of a barrier to participation, often placing the sport out of reach for children in less affluent families.
This is true, which is why if you’re looking to grow participation you should give your money to a program like Star Track. But instead they’re trying to invent a completely new type of bike racing:
StadioBike is the newest and most promising disruptor for shaking up U.S. cycling. According to its organizers – and demonstrated in a 2024 Las Vegas test event that featured Mark Cavendish – it is a scaled-up version of the (Indiana University) Little 500 racing format made famous by the Oscar-winning film, Breaking Away. Events will be run on existing motorsports racing tracks like those used in NASCAR and contested by up to 30 teams of five to seven riders each, depending on the track size, with two to three riders from each team racing on the track at any given moment. Each team must “substitute” riders for each other on the course a minimum number of times via a “pit stop” exchange during the 60 or more laps of the race. While this may sound easy on paper, the format guarantees that the pace will always be high, push every rider to the limit of their maximum power, and require skill, top-end fitness, and a calculated strategy that is quite different from road, trac, or criterium racing.
I visited the website, and while they’re endeavoring to “disrupt” and “shake up” pro cycling, it’s more like watching someone trying to start a fire with a book of matches and a wet log:
Granted, they do promise equal pay for men…
And women…
Though that’s easy to do if everyone’s getting paid like shit.
They also implore you to “think auto racing…”
“But for cycling…”
This is a bad idea for two reasons. First, everyone understands what a race is. Whether it’s cars or motorcycles or bikes or just simply running it’s fairly self-explanatory. So there’s no reason to bring another type of racing into it. They might as well say, “It’s like horse racing, only the horse has two wheels instead of four hooves, and pedals instead of stirrups, and it’s not alive.”
Second, the risk of comparing a bike race to another far more popular type of race is that it instantly makes the bike race seem boring. “Take the triple-digit speeds and raw horsepower and sheer visceral excitement of auto racing and then get rid of it. Now you have bike racing!” Not only that, but they’re actually holding the races on auto race tracks, so spectators will know exactly what they’re missing. It’s like serving alfa sprouts in a McDonald’s french fry container.
It really does seem astonishing that people keep trying to make pro cycling happen in America, and when they do I can only assume that either they’re trying to launder money, or else they’re trying to spend as much money as quickly as possible because they’ve just learned they’re the beneficiaries of an extremely quirky estate à la the movie “Brewster’s Millions.” After all, the landscape of American pro cycling is littered with the remains of defunct races, teams, and promoters. Remember Cross Vegas?
Or how about the Red Hook Crit?
And what about Rock Racing?
And that’s not even addressing all the erstwhile stage races:
Thought ironically the sport of cycling has produced more US presidents than any other, so there is that.
Nevertheless, like it or not, when it comes to bike racing in America there’s only one kind that’s experiencing growth, and that’s the “G” word:
Don’t forget to enter that lottery!
And you can even get exposure to gravel racing in the stock market:
Looks like the Unbound course profile:
I’ll keep all my money in Chris King headsets.