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This machine kills fascists, fat, and bankers
"No single raindrop ever feels like it is responsible for the flood."
Speaking of raindrops, one of my favorite movies of all time is Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. The bicycle scene with Butch and Etta is unforgettable. Like many, I grew up riding a bike. I learned at a young age how to fix a flat and put on the chain. I loved the freedom of riding around town. My first stitches, five in the chin, were earned in a bike wreck that was caused by me. Consequences are such a powerful thing.
Sadly, kids these days tend to text their friends, or chat virtually inside an x-box game, rather than ride over to each other's home.
The bicycle is an amazing piece of technology that is capable of solving at least a few of our modern day health, financial, and energy problems. Consider that in many parts of the world where bicycles are the norm there is usually far less obesity, debt, and reliance on imported oil and the offensive war machine that is required to invade nations and murder people so that we may take their oil.
Bicycles are elegant...
Bicycles are efficient...
Bicycles are effective...
When widely adopted, bicycles can have a big effect on a population.
One reason, possibly the main reason, the Dutch are not getting more obese is bicycles:
In the Netherlands 27% of all trips and 25% of trips to work are made by bike. The average distance cycled per person per day is 2.5 km. Holland and bicycles go together like bread and jam. Despite the recession the cycle-happy Dutch are still spending a lot of money on their bicycles – nearly 1 billion euros’ worth a year. About 1.3 million bicycles were sold in the Netherlands in 2009, at an average price of 713 euros ($1,008) each. Amsterdam (the capital and largest city of the Netherlands) is one of the most bicycle-friendly large cities in the world. It has 400 km of bike lanes and nearly 40% of all commutes in Amsterdam are done on bike.
For comparison:
In the USA only 0.9% of all trips are made by bike. The average distance cycled per person is 0.1 km.
Minneapolis, San Francisco, Portland, Denver, and Boston are consistently ranked among the top bicycle cities in the USA. You will not find one of these five cities among the 25 fattest cities in the USA. Houston is the fattest city in the USA, is also probably the very worst for bicycles, and was ranked second by county for gasoline consumption, just behind Los Angeles.
The economics are obvious:
- The estimated average transaction price of a new car or truck sold in the U.S. in April was $33,560.
- Annual Cost to Own and Operate a Vehicle in 2015 is $8,698, according to AAA.
- According to Social Security data, the median net wage for a working individual in the US is $28,031.
How do average people afford a $33,560 car when they make $28,031 in a year? Debt, of course!
Through early September, Wall Street firms issued nearly $70 billion in securities backed by auto loans, up 9% from the same period a year ago, according to J.P. Morgan. About $21 billion of those were backed by subprime loans to relatively risky borrowers.
Subprime car-loan originations have taken off in recent years as lenders have loosened underwriting criteria in this sector, allowing for borrowers with low, and often no, credit scores to get access to financing. During the first half of 2015, lenders gave out $56.4 billion in subprime auto loans, up 13% from the same period a year ago and up 181% from the first half of 2009, when the market for these loans bottomed out, according to credit-reporting firm Equifax Inc.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-22/auto-loan-market-reminds-me-wha...
In contrast, I recently bought this folding bike for less than $300. It was made in China, which I now regret, but if you are willing to spend more than $1,000, then you can get one made in the USA. They easily fold up in about 10 seconds to put it in the back of a car, carry it on a train, throw it in the storage under a bus, or take it up the elevator to an apartment or office. No gasoline expense. No insurance expense. No parking expense.
So, if you are are sick from being overweight, tired of bombing brown people to steal their oil, and want to know something you can do about it, TODAY , that will also improve your personal financial situation, then ditch the car and ride a bike. You will feel better, and better about yourself, and remember, no single raindrop ever feels like it is responsible for the flood.
Go Dutch!
Be well!
Peace!
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Great article - thanks HH
I've been car free since 1992! I ride my bike to work and do a physically demanding job (gardener) and at 57 years old still have a behind like the lady in the top picture :)
I used to ride 9 months out of the year when I lived in Iowa. Atlanta and Dallas both suck for bicyclists (no trails and drivers are aggressive), but from time to time the wife and I make a 15 mi trek downtown to the farmer's market.
Another issue not discussed about this in the US, is how much people are "in a rush." To do nothing. Skip the TV and excess "required" activities and you have plenty of time to take a ride to nearby places.
Not tired of bombing brown people, especially that ISIS kind. Could you please tell me where we bombed brown people and Then stole their oil? I think you have a bad case of pajama boy wussie guilt
Have you ever been to the Netherlands? I was there in April. Their whole nation is a fraction of what he size of NJ. The land is very urbanized and towns are close to each other, real close. How would your bike idea work in most of the western states of the US? Except for large cities with non-violent brown people it wouldn't
Not tired of bombing brown people, especially that ISIS kind. Could you please tell me where we bombed brown people and Then stole their oil? I think you have a bad case of pajama boy wussie guilt
Have you ever been to the Netherlands? I was there in April. Their whole nation is a fraction of what he size of NJ. The land is very urbanized and towns are close to each other, real close. How would your bike idea work in most of the western states of the US? Except for large cities with non-violent brown people it wouldn't
dont forget to mention that netherland is as flat as a pancake.
the highest "mountain" is 322 m
and 50% of area is 1m above sea level
Nice, but I think I would still prefer to see a huge bomb go off in the Whitehouse and several all along Wall St
Germans ride bikes but now buy electric bikes
1oz Silver American Eagles €12 @ EurGold
https://www.eurgold.eu/silver/silver-coins/american-eagle-1oz-silver-coi...
I really liked this article. Personally I (mainly my knees) hate riding a bicycle but I haven't owned a car since 2003. I walk, uber/taxi everywhere and if I really need a car I rent one by the hour, which the last time I did it cost $5 per hour including gas. Now I'm living in a country where a three mile uber ride costs me around $2.50 and because it's 85F every day I go swimming once or twice a day. Back in June I decided to quit going to the bar every night and I've lost 35lbs which is an added bonus. Exercise on its own doesn't make you lose weight but there's a certain liberating freedom that comes along with giving up the car (and house) and hitting the road. Back when I was young I figured by the time I hit my 50s I'd be miserably depressed and I probably would have been correct had i stuck in that particular rut.
OTOH last night I went back to the local bar to watch some sports and play a game of darts and the stunningly pretty waitress said to me, "You look so thin. When you were fat you were so handsome."
I've been fit.
I've been disabled by arthritis.
I'm fit again.
Fit feels good.
When I see people of the 'larger persuasion' I always think that if someone told them they had to carry around 40 bags of sugar 24/7 they's say you are nuts. Thing is, they are already doing it!
Carrying around that kind oc extra weight is rough on the knees.
Strange that you find cycling hurts your knees more than walking, I never find cycling gets my knees.
LM I was in the supermarket the other day and I was buying some butter which comes in 500g tubs (~one lb). I've got about another 10lbs to drop to get back to what I weighed in my early 20s and so I tried to pick up 10 of those tubs and nearly dropped the fuckers when I felt how heavy it was.
Old sports injuries on the knees but I was chatting to guy at the coffeeshop the other day and he said that if I keep riding a bike for a month or more the pain will probably go away and may help avoid surgery. It's more painful for me to walk downstairs than it is to walk upstairs which is apparently significant.
Keep riding then!
Hey goys, I've got a brilliant scheme to strike back at the globalist commie elites! Stop eating meat, give up your cars, move into a micro efficiency apartment or container crate, and ride your bicycle and take the bus. That'll show em!
First thing you've ever said that made sense!
I'm sure it was an accident, though!
"stop eating, breathing, driving, defecating, and procreating. sit in the dark and decompose on some garden seeds"... Dogbert, the Green Consultant.
Everyone does that, eventually.
The trick is to have a bit of fun first while taking care to allow others to do likewise.
When I graduated high school I didn't know what to do with my life. When I told my friends I hadn't applied to college they couldn't believe it. They all had and they had gotten accepted to Penn, McGill, the University of Oregon (I grew up in Eugene), and a list of UC schools.
I ran into a former teacher just before graduating and he asked what I was going to do. I told him I didn't know, but that I had a few thousand dollars saved up from the jobs I had worked. I had saved because I didin't own a car. "Go to Europe," he said. So I did. I backpacked all over.
Being a stoner I flew into Amsterdam. When I was bussing into the city from the airport I noticed droves of bicycles. Hundreds if not thousands at every intersection. The commute was not cars as it is here, but bicycles.
As I ventured into Europe I continued to notice no one was over weight, and I mean no one. I even kept a mental tally of how many Europeans were overweight and it remained below ten - I remember because I could use my hands to count - until I got to Germany, where many people were fat.
There is a lot wrong with Europe mind you - this is not some fuck the US rant, but one thing they do right is public transpotation. Americans are too overdependent on cars. And cars are fun and I own one, but I also walk everywhere I can and bike when I can, in large part because I know that it is the better choice for me and the earth in the long run.
Not just cars .....SUGAR
Good story soul glow. Good choice too. You learn a shitload more from traveling than you do from university. There are quite few great schools in europe that are very low cost or even free so you could have combined the two.
Because if you take public transit in the us ur gonna get knifed or knocked out by feral niggers.
So there are fat people in Germany? The only country in Europe where people have jobs, cars, and money for food? Funny how that works. So if you are so pooryou have to walk and bike everywhere and you often go hungry rather than eat because you have so little money you are "fit?"
I guess we sshould beg our communist masters to tax us all into the ground so everyone can be thin and fit then?
"So there are fat people in Germany? The only country in Europe where people have jobs, cars, and money for food?"
Germany is the 14th richest country in europe per capita (depending on whose stats you read/believe). Holland is 10th on the list.
Most German women have big backsides nowadays - big contrast with 20 years ago. Germans look more like Americans. Must be cream cakes and sugar. Hip replacements must be a growth industry - people are fat and sluggish. Must be the US diet of Sugar + TV + Cars
You should see some of the sweat hogs in Belgium (which, ironically, has a bit of a biking tradition as well, but, perhaps, more in Flanders than in Wallonia). They love their "frites"...and their cigarettes.
I gave up my car in September 2010, and haven't regreted it since. I live in a rural town and have had the same bicycle that cost 300 bucks for the last 5 years. I pedal an average of 5-10 miles a day depending on what I want/need to do that day. I'm the healthiest I've ever been and in my late 50's. In the Pacific Northwest when it rains, you get wet, so wear gortex. Since I live on the eastern side of the Cascade mountain range, it doesn't rain as much as it does west of them. It gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer, again, I have to dress accordingly. I have studded tires for the ice and snow, and own a hybrid bike that allows me to go off road as well as brave the streets of my bustling little town We have bike lanes, and people do get hit by cars, and even die, but that has been the exception rather than the rule. I have been very fortunate so far, and of course, riding anywhere on the back roads through town has been the best strategy to get around. In 5 years I have saved thousands of dollars from not owning a car. If I need to go out of town, I have friends or I can rent a vehicle if I need to. The public transportation in town is bike friendly too, one can store their bike on the front of the bus on the bike rack if they want to use the bus system. We have our fair share of obese people, and scooter jockey's that ride around in the local grocery stores. But there are a few of us here that aren't beholden to Big Oil, and Insurance, and gov't for transportation needs. We also have our fair share of armaments, ammo, and pm, if needed. For the most part, the people who are living a livestock existence in major cities are making that choice...some of us recognized the choices that exist in a changing world and are gradually living, more & more, outside the mainstream...
Careful with that Gore Tex... it might kill you
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-04-23-teflon-usat_x.htm
Ha! Thanks, but I don't eat the stuff, tryin to quit. Seriously though, my gortex is 23 years old, and the clothes I wear under the pants keep anything from leeching in. Shit we all gotta go sometime, either by gortex or toxic H2O. Choose your poison I guess!
I gave up riding a bicycle anywhere except for leisure on paths well away from roads after nearly being run over and killed in three separate incidents. All 3 incidents were deliberate attempts to hit and run by drivers.
No thanks... no more
This will keep people so busy they won't have time to find sites like Zerohedge, get educated, get angry and do something to stop these that would covet our lives
obligatory machine that kills fascists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbulO_FB2ZI
Man, forget that old black and white shit. You need to get up to date. This machine kills fascists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLkLW-utlGw
This machine is great for Marxist ecnomies, head up their ass liberal enclaves - but totally ineffective in "killing" Fascist - I owned a bike as a kid and Fascist and it was very friendly.
I love this article. Maybe one of my favorites ever. On par with Marla.
If any survive the next 20-30 years or so, (and I believe they will) I sincerely hope they have a mechanism by which to stamp out the criminal nature of central planning.
It's just my personal opinion that far enough down this rabbit-hole you become every bit as much mystified as do those individuals who contemplate mathematical languages, various Quantum theory channels, http://ponerology.com/evil_2b.html
On a l-o-n-g enough timeline.......
3 years of research, its all there in the UN 2050 futures plan, they are not my predictions, im not saying that YOU personally or knowingly are promoting UN Agenda 21, however, if you look at the future goals & vision for the UN goals, getting cars off the road, getting people on bikes & stopping the use of oil are facts, like it or not. may i ask what country you live in hedgless?
Edit, the 1140 page UN biodiversity report, i'll post some if up if you like or write an artcle for ZH if that would be better to explain it?
I reside in the Republic of Texas.
I have no agenda to get cars off the road, promote communism, or put people in camps.
As clearly advertised, this article is solely intended to offer bicycles as a [and not the] proven, elegant, efficent, and effective solution for readers that independently may find themselves...
cheers hedgless, no harm done i hope,
appologies for being abrupt.
No, you were right, this is pure agenda 21 propaganda and next thing he'll be telling how we should encourage our white daughters to race mix. Looks like the butterfly has emerged from his cacoon and revealed himself to be a shark, with a gun in his mouth.
Seriously TW, it's an article about riding a bicycle and some of the benefits you may experience.
You might consider a visit to The Netherlands, Denmark. Germany, etc., to check your predictions.
A side note: Beautiful lakes in Italy, however, no motor boats allowed. Poeple come and gaze at the beauty of it, have a coffee or lunch and move along, no wakeboarding, waterskiing, heaven forbid, as it is of course the masses that desecrate the planet, not the always eco-freindly corporations that rule the planet. coming to the US I am sure.
well, well, I like calm in the woods, myself. Renred a kayak at Lake Hopatcong to see if I could work some pounds off, and the buzzers wouldn't leave me alone, wakeboarding, bah!
the byicycle craze & promotion is a scam hidden as a heath benefit... only a fat mug would fall for it.
this cycle theme is a part of agenda 21 FACT, ive written articles on it at UKColumn.org , go look it up (you'll see harrybrown on the cover)
http://www.ukcolumn.org/sites/default/files/pdf/your-life-in-their-hands.pdf
cycle lanes will push cars out of existance & cars / all personal transport are to be bannished forever (communism), leaving the goyim grounded in "eco villages & "work camps" no joke, you can see what the end goal is here, one clue is depopulation once we're all in the camps. Is that what we really want? has zerohedge really thought this article through thoroughly?
Also we're currently demonizing oil at the same time ( coincidence?), as its now the turn of russia, Iran, china etc to grow their economies... but wait, the west says you'll pollute the earth, so you must stop!... but 100 years of the USA doing it is ok.
Roads aren't for peasants, they are for limos. Shame on us unwashed wanting to dirty their roads paved with black gold
pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?
Great article. Thank you.
Been riding bikes since I was like 5. I'm 62 and have two bikes, both classics, a Raleigh and a Schwinn.
I can do 20 miles without a problem. Ride mostly for fun now and exercise. Biking is the best, cheapest exercise there is, plus it's fun, fun, fun. I've never felt as free as when I'm riding a bike.
Happy trails to all.
Based on about half the comments here, it is obvious why Americans don't ride bikes. They like being fat, stupid, unhealthy and exploited. Apparently the opposite of all that is "communist".
Bikes are a lot of fun when you choose to ride one. Not always fun when you can't choose not to ride one.
I spent several years communting by bicylce from Sausalito to SF over the GG Bridge ... Awesome everyday!
Not 40 miles through snow ... but this guy's absoltuely right. Why exercise in gym and pay a trainer $40+ when you can actually go somewhere nice at the same time.
Of course, the dutch are cheating: the highest point in Holland ia about 50' above sea level.
Nope - in the south, the hills rise to over 1050 feet.
Europeans are poor and cannot afford a car. Well, they could if their tyrannical communist owners didn't use all the powers of government to make it unaffordable and discourage CAR ownership.
We're talking fees and taxes like you simply cannot imagine. $10 per gallon gas. $3000 driving classes. 38% vat and environmental taxes on cars. Annual fees in the thousands. All manner of inspection regimens and fees. The come the tolls and parking costs. It costs hundreds of euro to drive across France due to tolls alone. Italy isn't much better. The only nation with "free" roads is Germany, the abused whore of europe.
And if you do drive somewhere, good luck finding parking. And since you mention Amsterdam let me tell you that city is full of niggers, Muslims, British tourists and freak druggies that swarm the place from around the world like it is some sort of Mecca for pot heads with dreadlocks and weird piercings.
And Europe is a tyrannical communist police state. Being poor and walking and riding bikes didn't do a fucking thing to save these people from living under communism run the the various Jews that own ALL of Europe. The only good thing about it is the girls and women here aren't fat cows like in the Anglo nations. All the bike riding gives them a particular kind of butt and is certainly better than the huge rearends in the average american cow that weighs 170 pounds by age 30.
Europe is not a state... its a continent, and not all European countries are in the ECM and use the common currency. They speak many different languages there and most people speak more than one...Its clear that your education from Sarah Palin U in American english (or Mericun, as they like to call it) is somewhat thin....
But don't let the voice of ignorance and racism be unheard... keep posting!