I witnessed a wonderous sight last evening. Riding along Great Eastern Street in a westerly direction between Commercial Street and the Foundry, I followed another cyclist and then passed him. The first thing I noticed was that although his pedals had straps, he was using the underside of the pedal and therefore had no foot retention. I then saw that he was riding brakeless. I was very impressed that he should do so without being strapped in but not as impressed as I was when I realised that he was riding a singlespeed with a free wheel. Epic: brakeless single speed ftw. That is what I call a really cool dude. His riding style was necessarily interesting. He needed to anticipate any need to slow or stop and so rode quite slowly most of the time and used his feet to stop himself completely. Riding like that in heavy traffic was so cool and clearly evidenced the mind of a superior being. Total class. Let's hope it becomes a trend.
I'm pleased to say that he wasn't wearing a helmet. A helmet in such circumstances would have been overly ironic.
I witnessed a wonderous sight last evening. Riding along Great Eastern Street in a westerly direction between Commercial Street and the Foundry, I followed another cyclist and then passed him. The first thing I noticed was that although his pedals had straps, he was using the underside of the pedal and therefore had no foot retention. I then saw that he was riding brakeless. I was very impressed that he should do so without being strapped in but not as impressed as I was when I realised that he was riding a singlespeed with a free wheel. Epic: brakeless single speed ftw. That is what I call a really cool dude. His riding style was necessarily interesting. He needed to anticipate any need to slow or stop and so rode quite slowly most of the time and used his feet to stop himself completely. Riding like that in heavy traffic was so cool and clearly evidenced the mind of a superior being. Total class. Let's hope it becomes a trend.
I'm pleased to say that he wasn't wearing a helmet. A helmet in such circumstances would have been overly ironic.