I’m lazy, and didn’t expect any useful responses to my rant, so I never came back. So, this is out of date, and I wouldn’t have replied at all, except that you guys actually try to make some good points, and so I felt slightly obligated to reply to them. I am piking minkuni to quote as he made the most “useful” points.
Hey, I shower at least once a month…
That is not an argument that would hold up under any real scrutiny. You in fact have no idea what would have happened to you if you had not been wearing a helmet. There is proof, though again, I’m too lazy to go find it again, that states that helmet use is indeterminate in saving or CAUSING injury. There are as many studies showing that helmets save people, as studies showing that helmets cause injuries that otherwise would have been prevented had no helmet been worn.
That is in deed a FINE thing to say. And I’m not disputing it WHAT-SO-EVER. But if you reread what got my biscuits so fired up, other than ANYTHING written by Fossy, you’ll see that this all stemmed from Tom saying that this was folly to be riding without helmets, and that hopefully there would be a LAW against it for RTL. Again, what you say is great, I don’t herass (or myass for that matter) people for wearing a helmet. I am however constantly himassed by people telling me that I could or should or MUST wear a helmet. That is NOT ACCEPTABLE to me in any way, shape, or form. If you accept that I shouldn’t tell people what to do (which, if you reread what I said, you’ll see that I didn’t) then you must accept that people (any people, law officials included) shouldn’t tell me what to do, as long as the only person that I’m possibly injuring is myself. (Don’t even get me started on how we don’t own our own bodies, (suicide being illegal and whatnot) though, cuz that really gets my hizzy in a tizzy.) (Though, my uncle made an astute point the other day, he said that perhaps the police weren’t looking out for our own safety in implementing mandatory seat belt laws, but were instead looking out for the tidiness of the unfortunate souls who might run over our bodies as they are flung from our vehicles.)
Oh, and by the by, 20 mph, though brisk, is really not that fast. If you can sustain 20mph in a race situation, you should also be able to roll out of a fall and save yourself any major injuries completely. That is not to say that all can, but that’s the same as the skinny-assed skater boys from youtube fame that (though wearing a helmet, cuz that really saved them) break their arms and legs from falling literally off their skateboard while standing still, cuz they have no musculature built up at all. They, and you if you fall into the unicycling end of this spectrum, shouldn’t be riding hard. If you do, and you fall, and you break yourself, then you have no right at all to tell the rest of us that we should take extra precautions because of what happened to you. The rest of us are in good enough shape for our bodies to save us, we don’t need “safety” gear to do what we can inherently do ourselves.
So, anywho, once again, I’m not a troll, I just don’t like people being stupid. And to the point, I agree that to each his own, it’s when people start spouting off against that, that I get mad.
So, to everyone (cept my fav bud fossy) have a great evening and weekend, and don’t let them scary trolls get you.
?
?
?
?
). Aspen Mike used to solely use 170mm cranks on his 36er and he is able to cover quite a large amount of distance. Stick with your current set up for now and you should be comfortable riding 8 miles a day to/from work. After you get comfortable with the 170s, I would highly recommend switching to 150mm cranks (or smaller) if you are going to be commuting. If you have any other commuting questions feel free to ask, as we have a number of uni commuters on this board.