The public image of cycling and cyclists

[Andre Jute]

"Money can't buy you love, but it is more comfortable to do you crying sitting in a Mercedes than on a bicycle." -- anonymous "witty" card writer, expressing a widely held sentiment as his sort is won't to do.

Andre Jute
On the other hand, when a decent bike costs as much as a nice pre-loved Mercedes, why should anyone except a masochist or an environmental lemming choose the bicycle?

[AMuzi]

Have you ever wrenched on a classic Mercedes? I'll that the
bicycle, thanks.

p.s. I see SpelChek didn't like the word 'wont'.

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

[Tom Kunich]

On Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 6:21:40 AM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
> On 6/15/2021 7:37 AM, Andre Jute wrote:
> > "Money can't buy you love, but it is more comfortable to do you crying sitting in a Mercedes than on a bicycle." -- anonymous "witty" card writer, expressing a widely held sentiment as his sort is won't to do.
> >
> > Andre Jute
> > On the other hand, when a decent bike costs as much as a nice pre-loved Mercedes, why should anyone except a masochist or an environmental lemming choose the bicycle?
> >
> Have you ever wrenched on a classic Mercedes? I'll that the
> bicycle, thanks.
>
> p.s. I see SpelChek didn't like the word 'wont'.

The frequency of a Mercedes needing wrenching is surprisingly often. All that money for so little real quality.

[sms]

On 6/15/2021 6:21 AM, AMuzi wrote:
> On 6/15/2021 7:37 AM, Andre Jute wrote:
>> "Money can't buy you love, but it is more comfortable to do you crying
>> sitting in a Mercedes than on a bicycle." -- anonymous "witty" card
>> writer, expressing a widely held sentiment as his sort is won't to do.
>>
>> Andre Jute
>> On the other hand, when a decent bike costs as much as a nice
>> pre-loved Mercedes, why should anyone except a masochist or an
>> environmental lemming choose the bicycle?
>>
>
> Have you ever wrenched on a classic Mercedes? I'll that the bicycle,
> thanks.

I had one friend whose neighbor was constantly working on his classic
Mercedes. Every time my friend would go over there while the neighbor
was under the car, or had the hood open, he would say "the German way is
the only way."

If you're sad about something, a bicycle ride will do more to cheer you
up than driving a Mercedes.

[Tom Kunich]

My younger brother came over yesterday evening and BBQ'd two huge steaks and corn on the cob and i baked a large sweet potato that we split. We ended up drinking a bottle of my cheap junk wine (which is pretty good by itself) and then for dinner opening his expensive bottle of Cab.

Well that much wine did NOT do well for me. What little balance I have was entirely lost this morning and it was nearly impossible to walk in a straight line. So I decided not to take a climbing ride and did a short flat ride, only 25 miles but the wind was howling and it was a fight on the way out and a hard cross wind on the route back. So, now I can walk straight again but I won't be drinking like that again. Going from a couple of glasses to a full bottle certainly didn't help my balance or my sleep getting up all night long to empty is out.

[James]

On 15/6/21 11:21 pm, AMuzi wrote:
> On 6/15/2021 7:37 AM, Andre Jute wrote:
>> "Money can't buy you love, but it is more comfortable to do you crying
>> sitting in a Mercedes than on a bicycle." -- anonymous "witty" card
>> writer, expressing a widely held sentiment as his sort is won't to do.
>>
>> Andre Jute
>> On the other hand, when a decent bike costs as much as a nice
>> pre-loved Mercedes, why should anyone except a masochist or an
>> environmental lemming choose the bicycle?
>>
>
> Have you ever wrenched on a classic Mercedes? I'll that the bicycle,
> thanks.
>
> p.s. I see SpelChek didn't like the word 'wont'.
>

P.S. I see Andre wrote "you" when he probably meant "your", and you
wrote "that" when you probably meant "take".

--
JS

[Sepp Ruf]

sms wrote:
> On 6/15/2021 6:21 AM, AMuzi wrote:
>> On 6/15/2021 7:37 AM, Andre Jute wrote:
>>> "Money can't buy you love, but it is more comfortable to do you crying
>>> sitting in a Mercedes than on a bicycle." -- anonymous "witty" card
>>> writer, expressing a widely held sentiment as his sort is won't to do.
>>>
>>> Andre Jute
>>> On the other hand, when a decent bike costs as much as a nice
>>> pre-loved Mercedes, why should anyone except a masochist or an
>>> environmental lemming choose the bicycle?

Decent (not perfect) pre-loved bikes are a steal here because "everyone" got
their ebike (or experimental Pfizer mutant shots... ) and really cannot
bio-propel their "lame second bike" to prestigious speeds anymore.

>> Have you ever wrenched on a classic Mercedes? I'll [take] the bicycle,

>> thanks.
>
> I had one friend whose neighbor was constantly working on his classic
> Mercedes. Every time my friend would go over there while the neighbor
> was under the car, or had the hood open, he would say "the German way is
> the only way."

The cars most worked on in German driveways seem to be Detroit clunkers.
Which might, or might not, be related to their owners liking to show off,
Mercedes needing more complicated work, or to the German garage size
standard hailing from the age of the KdF-Wagen.

> If you're sad about something, a bicycle ride will do more to cheer you
> up than driving a Mercedes.

Riding after sunset last night, crossing a somewhat deserted business park,
I spotted a recent AMG Merc and a couple of slightly sketchy male youths
sitting and squatting behind it on the street, with no motor or music
audible, and no picknick paraphernalia visible initially. But then I
realized there is a Burger King nearby and I was just a racist snob and the
paper trash was food containers. (A gallon of corn-free gas is more
expensive than a Double Whopper -- priorities.)

[AMuzi]

Yes thank you. Botched edit.

[Andre Jute]

And the final insult to a writer: "Microsoft Outlook has several writing ideas to improve your communication." -- AJ

[Tom Kunich]

Microsoft in general is probably the worst thing that ever happened to the personal computer.

[Andre Jute]

Buy a 50-year old Mercedes and a 50-year old Rolls-Royce, both equally well kept or not as the case may be, and expect a bill to make it roadworthy of 50 quid for the Rolls, and 50,000 for the Mercedes. And before the usual no-counts crawl out of the walls to accuse me of lying, that's an actual case when to of the Top Gear guys bought a pair of old cars and had them fixed up. Clarkson bought the Mercedes, May bought the Rolls.

Andre Jute
A Rolls-Royce from that period and until BMW took over is just a big American V8 engine (pretty close to the mid-1950s Chrysler V8) wrapped in Citroen suspension at the rear and long soft springs at the front, with added refinement. I had several, albeit with Bentley radiators on the prow, and the 7-litre Ford I used for fast runs from London or Paris to Nardo in the boot of Italy was definitely quieter when I needed to hustle. Neither was a sportscar, but then neither was my fave trans-Continent hustler, the Citroen SM, the most cosseting fast car I ever owned or drove -- and the Citroen was fragile, which the Rolls and the Ford were famously not.

[Andre Jute]

Credit where it's due: Microsoft did one thing right: they bought in Word from it's creators and marketed it widely. I'm still using a .doc version, and IIRC, that was knocked out by the .docx format about 1996. In my opinion the best word processor ever made. (I use it on a Mac, of course; I'm not so reckless as to expose my entire oevre to Windows.) -- AJ
.

[Tom Kunich]

I worked on cars for a long time before they got to close to the ground to safely crawl under without jack stands. Professional mechanics use hydraulic lifts these days. But in all of those years of car repair what I learned was that there wasn't a German car on this planet that was anywhere as reliable as an American car which seldom needs anything more than the fuel filter and spark plugs changed and the timing reset. If you were really trying to do a special job you'd reset the valve clearance. After hydraulic lifters you didn't even need to do that. I won't deny the mechanical expertise of the Germans, but extremely tight clearances cause excessive wear and lots more maintenance.

My big old Ford Taurus needed a $100 Tune-up that was clearly the first one it had ever had (three of the spark plugs had their insulators broken and the distributor wires had the insulation missing in areas This was probably due to a home mechanic changing the spark plugs. With that tuneup I put my 62 cm bike in the back seat merely by pulling the front wheel and drove to Phoenix making 39 mpg the entire way there and better mileage on the way back almost to the point that I didn't believe the meter even after checking it with each fill-up (44 mpg on one stretch.) Now, this is a V6 and the power it generates blows off ANY German car entering the freeway and I've done this enough times to know that it isn't the driver of those other cars who eventually catch and pass me like I'm standing still because I drive the speed limit.

The one weakness of American cars is that they burn a lot of gas in the city because of their weight. On the other hand, I paid $3200 for this car. What do you expect these people are paying for those Mercedes'?

[Tom Kunich]

Windows has had a very difficult time marketing Word because I'm still using the 1996 version and so is most other people until they upgrade to Windows 10 and it will not allow that version to work.

[Andre Jute]

I blame being a jock rather than a scholar -- I was away jocking so often that I had to learn speed-reading to keep up with the bookworms -- and working with competent copy-editors at my publishers for decades. I just don't see the spellchecker's solecisms. -- AJ
.

[Andre Jute]

.
A guy who can afford a Mercedes, where he pays for the prestige, soon finds that gas costs are dwarfed by depreciation. A big Mercedes,, a Rolls, a Bentley, an Aston Martin, a V12 Ferrari, a Maserati V8, a smaller engine hauling a big car as in the Fiat 130 coupe or a Citroen SM, two superior fast touring cars on only 2.7 or 2.8 litres, they all get 15mpg if you're driving carefully and don't use the gearbox much. If you drive with your foot in the corner, and use the brakes hard and accelerate hard, 10-11mpg is expected and acceptable, and it could drop under 10mpg if you drive that hard on the smaller roads off the big transcontinental routes. See, as European engines in general have grown more sophisticated (and American engines too -- what do you think powers today's Range Rovers and Jaguars? -- they're Fords in fancy dress), the cars have grown heavier. A Rolls today weighs over three tons, so does a Bentley, a Range Rover isn't too far under three tons -- they're like small tanks and slurp gas accordingly. That's why Audi and Jaguar have gone to aluminium frames for their big cars -- the weight was growing faster than the power because nobody buys a car without bells and whistles, and that weighs like crazy. By way of comparison, our big old Volvo estate car weighed 2800 pounds with all the option list thrown in. After I got tired of its wheezing engine slurping petrol beyond its station in life at rarely more than 19mpg, and fitted a small block Chevy 5.7 litre V8, the petrol consumption fell to 25mpg when driven hard through France, loaded for a holiday. The first Ford Mustangs weighted 2800 pounds or thereabouts...