The Hartford Courant ran a piece on bicycle commuters today. It featured actual riders sharing their experiences commuting by bike and their reasons for doing so. Does this sound familiar? Though I’m offended the Courant would so brazenly plagiarize my writing under the guise of “real” bike commuters, I still got a good laugh from these fictitious anecdotes. They range from the typical cycling commuter’s complaints of rude drivers, narrow roads, and arriving to work smelling like an old sock, to more passionate missives like this one from a rider in Farmington:

“Whatever ones beliefs are about the human impact on the environment, there are finite limits on petroleum resources.”

The Courant really did a good job with these fake commuters. I could actually picture that guy. He does goes on to make some good points though, like this one:

“Of the two times I’ve been involved in car-bike accidents, one was being struck by a Volvo in a lane closed to automobile traffic, and the other by a Prius driver who ran a stop sign in front of me — interestingly, guys in large pickup trucks with gun racks in the rear window have rarely made me feel threatened on my bicycle, and have never actually put me in danger.”

Um, what can I say? I think that pretty much proves that this piece is fake. Unless he has a NRA sticker on the back of his helmet. He’s right about the Prius drivers though. If they truly felt so guilty after watching An Inconvenient Truth, why didn’t they go out and buy a bike? Last time I checked you could get a pretty nice one for $20,000.

The rest of the “submissions” deal with the health benefits of commuting, like the inability to use your extremities after finishing your commute. ‘Jim’ from West Hartford shares,

“Although there are other benefits to commuting by bicycle, I do it for the exercise. Before I started bicycling to work, I walked, ran, swam and danced.”

He danced? I can’t really see the crossover to cycling unless you count dodging cars as a form of dance. I once danced with death as a Yale Transit bus try to squeeze me off the road. If this piece is real, I feel bad for how ‘Jim’ is portrayed by the Courant. He continues,

“The greatest hazard is broken glass. When the bottle deposit was first instituted, the roadside glass disappeared for many years. Today, there is a lot of broken glass on the roadside. I got six flat tires this year.”

Someone should inform ‘Jim’ that sharp objects like broken glass should be avoided. You’d think six times would be enough.

Thanks to the Courant for a good Monday morning laugh and for using “real” cyclists to describe the benefits and hazards of commuting. Cheers!