Mario James, ContributorCYCLING IS slowly becoming trendy again. Designer bikes with price tags greater than some householder's yearly income are seen more and more on the roads. And, in the Kingston Metropolitan Area there are several well financed cycling groups consisting of ten or more "bikeists" and a pace car.
Such a fitness force can roam twenty miles or more before coming in, over hilly terrain as much as not. These excursions are timed, records are kept, and the amazing thing is that they are more likely to be composed of older Jamaicans in their fifties than the younger lads.
They say that the only
difference between a man and a boy is the price of their toys but they are very fit for fifty. If you doubt their road-worthiness, strap on one of their eleven-pound machines and storm up Stony Hill. If you make it past Red Gal Ring, I'll lay even money that you've done this before. But it's a no-brainer that you'll be coining a new adjective for the phrase 'sweating like a ?'
BALANCING BEER AND BABIES
There is another set of cycling folk, though, that consider their machines more than just status sym ... er, exercise machines. These are the guys and gals with a piece of planking between neck fittings and saddle-post and can be seen toting boxes, beer and babies on their two wheelers.
In times of yore, someone swapped the handlebars on traditional down-handle gentleman's frame with a butterfly handle and voila, the standard "One-A-Penny" cycle was wheeled into existence.
With that came the advent of the 'ghetto-blasticycle' and the garish and psychedelic 'reflecto-rama', a descendant of which today is called the 'rolling CD library'. But I digress. These folk truly have to put up with prejudices that only fellow cyclists can understand.
I ride too. Yup. Bought my yuppie-bike from Courts.
Didn't cost an arm and a leg;
just an arm. Nice machine, too. Aluminium frame, ratcheting gear levers and the smoothest gear change this side of a
hundred grand; quick release wheels, nice paint, nice bike.
It was bought so that its owner could lose some weight, and it
is working. I ride the 20-mile round trip (home to work and back) twice a week. Some of
the pudginess is gone. Hopefully for good. Almost killed twice.
DANGEROUS ROADS
Motorists, especially late motorists, do not appear to take kindly to us 'bi-pedalists' whizzing by unencumbered and unaffected. They do strange things, like pull out of the line while you're alongside. Or hurriedly overtake so that they can turn into that next left just ahead, which pins the cyclist between the kerb wall and their machine. Then there are car passengers who just open their doors willy-nilly into the path of unsuspecting bikers. It is as if we don't exist. 'Coaster' passengers, wanting to shorten the distance they have to walk, will bail off a bus while it is still moving. A recipe for a human cocktail, that one. BUFF! Arms and legs everywhere. Shaken and stirred.
We have a right to the road, too!
But, it is the drivers of heavy units that are feared most.
Have you ever seen cyclists deliberately riding on the wrong side of the road? I have. Before I got my bike, I could not understand this phenomenon. I used to ride in my teenage years, and it appalled me to see in the last four or five years the frequency of this occurrence. It took the death of a colleague to sharply bring the why into focus.
Three weeks ago this Saturday, Cleveland Drummonds, 63, was killed by a JUTC bus. He was hit from behind while riding on a well-lit stretch of the Boulevard.
This wrong side behaviour is an adaptation of that old pedestrian rule: When walking, always face oncoming traffic. The time for bike lanes is now. Rest in Peace, Mr. Drummonds.
Note: Good bikes range in cost from $20,000 to over $100,000 for racing models.
