For a year now i drive my bike to and from work in Berlin, about 11km daily. I got a pretty cheap but decent quality single speed bike. It's light (aluminium) and fast, perfect daily driver. It's beautiful because of it's simplicity and efficiency. I am faster than either car or tram over the same route and on top of that it's healthy and fun. When i can't do it for a couple of days or even a week because of really bad weather, i start to feel really guilty and bad :)

Bicycles are pretty amazing. They're the most efficient form of human transportation over a reasonable surface (road or trail that's not too rough). You can go 100 km on the energy in a plate of pasta that probably costs $2 -if that - in terms of the ingredients.

The two main commuter cyclists in my office have belt-drive bikes, so bicycle technology hasn't completely ossified. They also have disk brakes, and seeing how this is wintertime in New England, they're also rocking studded tires. I don't have this, but I'm a fair-weather cyclist. Its like electric cars--people don't notice how its been slowly moving forward.

More history and images of the bikes described: http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1999/JSH2603/JS...

The article cites a race where the bikes were ~50 and 36 pounds. That sounds like a lot. Even a cheapo bike from Walmart is half that. But over time, its going to be the bearings that suck the most energy. I wonder what those were like compared to today.

Does anybody who knows the history of cycling know if this is talking about "high wheel" (penny farthing) bikes or modern bikes with equal sized wheels? Changes the context rather if they mean high wheel bikes. The reference to bigger wheels and general suggestions of impracticality makes me think they might.

The illustration on this piece suggests 1874 is still high wheel bike territory: http://www.oldbike.eu/museum/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/1874...

I wonder what was the technical limitation that prevented bikes being invented much earlier...unless it was simply that no-one did it. Steel piping? Lightweight wheels? Affordability?

I have a perfect bike commute from my house to the train station.

however I've found that the bike ride is 1hr longer than driving my car round trip, each day. That 1hr is time I don't want to loose being at home with family.

I can ride faster, but I'll by very sweaty when I get to the office.