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Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

Nope - that was aimed at me not them - but I'm happy to let the stereotype burn stand ;-)

I will say to a first approximation, 100% of the RadioShack lycra liveried carbon fibre Trek riders I see riding through Sydney traffic on a weekday morning are _not_ Lance Armstrong class riders.

(Not any more than I'm a Carl Fogarty or Troy Bayliss class motorcycle racer when I put my racing leathers on and fire up my Ducati Monster...).

It's mostly posing and toys, with an unhealthy dose of brand snobbery and wealth signalling (and being brutally honest, I'm guilty of a little bit of both of those myself - no matter how much I protest that "My Ducati is just a fun toy! I;m not a brand conscious poser! Not like those _other_ Ducati riders...")

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Well, even among serious hobbyist cyclists, very very few of them are or can be fit for world class pro cycling. Still, it's perfectly okay to use whatever clothes and bikes they enjoy, and it has nothing to do with pretending to be world class.

I imagine a nice lycra suit would actually be comfortable. I don't know, I go with jeans and a T-shirt (when the weather is warm enough for that) but proper cycling wear should help with chafing down there as well as stopping your clothes from dripping sweat while still keeping you warm enough for when you're starting to get exhausted or the weather gets chilly. These problems exist even for non-sporty people cycling to work as long as they ride fast enough for their bodies and have a long enough commute...

Toys? I guess. I would say all hobby equipment is toys.

What a weird implication that you need to be the best to use good gear.

The pro-style clothing isn't posing or brand snobbery. Jeans are way too hot, cotton clothes get uncomfortably sticky from sweat way too fast and let cold wind go through them. Proper bike clothes allow me to feel comfortable for a long time and won't get me sick.

As for a good bike, it's just a better experience. I've owned a bunch of different bikes, starting with a old soviet fixed-gear Školnik, and ending with my current Trek road bike with fancy gear. Everything about riding the Trek is better than any of my older bikes. The gears change in a smoother fashion, I can roll on without cycling for much longer, and the effort-to-speed ratio is much better, allowing me to reach way higher speeds than ever before.

Sure, but I see guys riding to work in "pro style clothing" with Rabobank and RadioShack logos all over them. My cynicism makes it hard for me to come up with justifications for that which are not super easy to make fun of...

I get the "owning nice toys" thing - I even get the guys who are 20kg overweight spending $5k+ to get a bike that's 2kg lighter than a bike that costs 20% of that. To me though, it starts seeming weird when they do that while dressed up in sponsor logos for companies that sometimes don't even exist in this country...

(And it's not just lycra wearing mamils either, I don't get the motorcycle riders who paint Repsol livery on their Honda or Aruba or Xerox logos on their Ducati...)

Ah, you're talking about sponsor logos. I didn't get that at first. The only thing I know about RadioShack is that it's a store chain. I assumed they sell some rebranded bike clothes. Having sponsor logos on you that weren't put there by the clothing store seems indeed a bit quirky. I haven't seen that myself.

Does your cynicism carry over into teamwear for all sports? Baseball hats? Logowear in general? None of these people are pretending they are linebackers and point guards.

One thing you may not know is that logowear is like 90% of available men's cycling gear. There's an element of market failure.

Yeah, it does - and hypocritically so. I'm currently wearing a tshirt with a Kees Van Der Westen Speedster logo on it (an espresso machine I covet badly, but am not prepared to spend $10k+ to own). I own and wear various motorcycle branded tshirts and coffee brand tshirts, as well as many many band and musician merch tshirts. So I;m just as guilty of "making a staement" with what I choose to wear. But, of course, _my_ choices are all rational and understandable. Those _other_ guys who dress up like Lance Armstrong while riding to work are _clearly_ worthy of my derision, right? ;-)

A little off topic, but what's cycling like there?

From what I've heard (never been there) Australia is about as close as it gets to the perfect society... except they hate cyclists like the plague?

> Australia ... the perfect society

Hahaha

I commute to work on an e-bike in Melbourne. My route is mostly on trails and roads with dedicated bike lanes, so its pretty easy going. The hate towards cyclists might be a bit overstated. Some of it is justified as cyclists will often break road rules, I usually see multiple cyclists run red lights every day. Ive seen more aggression coming from cyclists then I have seen from drivers aimed at cyclists, but obviously aggressive drivers are much more dangerous than aggressive cyclists.

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