Lawday - not gay.
During a time where inner city living has become essential to success in the corporate world due to the sheer time and tolls it takes to get there whether it be by unhealthily crammed public transport or at crawling pace in a car, bumper to bumper all the way. Both process’s are lengthy, expensive and time consuming not to mention the fossil fuels being burnt and the atmosphere disengaging with the amount of CO2 in there. With all this commuting time is scarce for such activities essential to living a long life such as excising. These problems are faced by civilisations all over the world, in high density cities, in the ‘Western worlds’. New York, London and Sydney to name a few, but with Sydney’s poor public transport structure it is most common here.
Sam, a young man, faces this problem everyday or his life. He wastes hours sitting, in line or standing; on a bus, train, in a car along with a couple thousand others. He’s stacked on the kilos since he started climbing the ladder in the business world. He spends a majority of his hard earned cash on living requirements such as housing, food and transport, whether it be fee of trains, ferries and buses or the tolls of the road, petrol and parking to and in the city.
Sam wants’ more money in his pocket for himself, time to somehow become healthy so he can live longer be fitter and have a well toned body (for the ladies). Bike’s fitted exactly that, so he had thought.
Sam has tried using bikes to commute to work. They have become remotely successful but have all failed somehow. He has tried his dad’s no longer used road bike, efficient on the road, fast and light enough to carry up stairs to his office…well that was the theory anyway. The hard tires and lack of forgiveness through the rigid fork lead Sam’s wrist, hand, shoulders and back to suffer on Sydney’s ungroomed and pothole filled roads. The ‘drop bars’ made his awareness and safety in traffic hazardous and Sam felt unsafe. Sometimes Sam had to get of his bike to walk down stars as this was a quicker way to work. His solution to this was a mountain bike.
The mountain bike had suspension, gears and was only marginally slower than the road bike. Sam felt safer in traffic because of the upright riding position, and combined with the suspension his wrist, hands, shoulders and back felt a lot better, could this solve his problem?
It turned down it couldn’t. Although he could ride down stairs and take other various shortcuts, Sam soon found himself forking out more money for tires as the knobbly ones wore out quickly on the road, the tires also picked up mud and other debris from the shortcut through the park, off road. This meant Sam had to leave it outside the office building…bad mistake. Even though Sam locked his bike up with a bike lock through his front wheel he one day found himself walking out of his building to a single bike wheel chained to a pole. Insurance wouldn’t cover it, so Sam gave up on the bike idea for the time being.
Over the next year Sam changed to another company. This particular company promoted greener commuting and offered a rebate on bikes purchased for commuting, there was a condition though. Due to the number of employees that road the bike had to be a folding bike that folded to a certain size. Sam liked the idea, he found a bike that folded to an acceptable size and had gears. Sam thought this was great, the bike had gears, even though it was a smaller selection due to the wheel size, it should be fine. Once again he thought it would work, and in theory it should have… but it didn’t.
The small wheels made for a slow commute, he felt looked like he looked very unprofessional on this ‘monkey bike’ and the limited gearing really showed and it was often hard to find the correct gear needed due to the wide range cassette. He established that the people which actually used the bikes at his new job lived closed and used them instead of walking. The bike so found its way to a new owner much to Sam’s disappointment.
Sam was fond of riding to work, even if it was wet Sam could hop on a bus, train or ferry and cut some riding time of his trip, even if it was to the inconvenience of others as the large wheeled bike (the ones he actually enjoyed riding) were bulky and took up a large amount of space. The only real thing that bothered Sam was that the geared bikes required a bit of maintenance such as putting lube on the chain and adjusting the gears.
Sam wanted to live a greener life so that the future generation could be able to inhabit the earth but there was no possible way he could see. His way of making a difference was hindered by thieves, potholes, traffic and time.
The project will solve Sam’s problems will be solved, through research and devolvement I am confident I can come up with a solution to solve his problem and the many other in his boat.
Start:
+ work
+ something else
=
To be subsituted into bikes parts soon!
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by crank
