(sigh)
okay people. i'm going to break this down. it will seem obvious in retrospect, but it's obviously not obvious to a sufficiently large majority that corrective actions are necessary at this point. you know that revolution we keep talking about? the one that involves bicycles? think back. you may need to re-read some of the older posts to re-acquaint yourself. go ahead, i'll wait....
you back? good. let's jump into it. in order to have a revolution involving bicycles, everybody has to, you know, pretty much ride bicycles. biking isn't always the easiest way to get around (**) and it's just that much harder when your destination has no access to a safe place to lock up your bike.
as the union vanguard rode through washington this past week, we were repeatedly appalled at the shoddy accomodations that cyclists are offered.
while we generally feel it is unacceptable, it is especially unacceptable for a large organization that bills itself as progressive, and as an incubation chamber for improvements to third world countries to give it's first world employees third world accomodations for their first world bikes.
one of the union vanguard brought our ride to a screetching halt in the middle of pennsylvania avenue, and delivered a stunning extemporaneous speech which excoriated this smug, self-congratulatory institution for it's lack of attention to cyclists and it's inability to practice what it preaches.
the example below was by far the worst. the fact that this worker, this citizen, this proud fellow cyclist needed to endure these types of conditions was unthinkable until we witnessed it first hand. now the racing union doesn't go around like some celebrity actor or actress who flies to a central african republic and then spends two weeks (but no more) telling everyone in the most genteel manner possible how horrible the conditions are. we've talked about this before and we'll undoubtedly talk about it again.
in fact, in the near future, we'll be talking about htis a whole lot. but for now, the message is simple. you had better do better than this.
- - - posted by scott
(** this is just a statement of fact. i'll bet virtually everyone reading this is a pretty avid cyclist _and_ that virtually everyone reading this owns at least one car. if we can't do the car free lifestyle, how can you seriously expect others to do it? q.e.d.)