It’s Wednesday, that means that its GreenOptions article day, as always you can see the latest of my articles at GreenOptions.com Enjoy.
We all know that driving around a couple thousand pounds of steel, glass, and plastic, by burning gasoline just to go down the street to drop off a library book, or pick up lunch, is an inherently silly endeavor. If you think about the power of your car, 0-60 in such and such, this or that horsepower, 300+ miles per tank, it becomes clear that cars are highly powerful machines that are for most tasks woefully over-engineered. For most people, especially those that live in cities, using your car every day is the equivalent of using a sledge hammer to polish the fine china.
So what then are we to do? We could all walk, or we could all take public transportation (if your area has it), but these have their drawbacks. Walking is slow, public transportation can be a turn off for some (crowded trains, poor bus service, lack of routes, doesn’t go where you want, etc). It is often much faster, and fun, to ride a bicycle.
For people who last picked up a bicycle when it had training wheels on them this can be a daunting task. What sort of bike should they use, and what kind of gear do they need?