Oh my god...my husband is a "spandex" man. Weekend racer, self-wrencher, frame-builder, tee hee! But he is of a sub-category called "value for money" in which he also makes fun of "weekend warriors" (they call them "Freds"), who spend thousands on their bikes but don't know how to "mechanic".

I'll have to show this to him. Cyclists are an interesting subculture, or 2 or 200!

...and never shall the twain meet. Very funny video. Thanks.

Ha ha! Very true. I'm a weekend warrior - (full carbon Kestrel frame!) and my son is a "fixie". I helped him convert a (yup) late 80's Panasonic frame into a fixed gear. I'll never understand fixed gear - too fascist. You can NEVER coast! On a ride with him, we were going down a long grade and I was coasting down it doing a comfortable 25 mph just feeling the wind. I looked back at him - the poor guy's legs were going at least 120 rpm. He looked like a mosquito.

Seen the video and it is very funny.

Seen the video and it is very funny.

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It's a fun video -- thanks for this post!

But IMHO, both sides are just posers -- here's some real 'performance' :-)
http://www.bv.com.au/file/image/shanghai_cargo.jpg

Nice shots of Portland in the video.

The cyclists who make me laugh are the ones who ride along in apparently the lowest gear their bike has. They use a gear appropriate for going up Pike's Peak on the level sidewalk on Wilshire in Westwood, legs doing 120rpm and bike going less than 1 mph. . Either they don't know how to change gear, or their gears are slightly out of adjustment so they get that crunchy noise when they go to any gear other than the one they're in, or (my favorite theory) they are so monumentally unfit they can't actually exert any force on the damn pedals. I see a similar phenomenon on lakes where people think they can fight a headwind by flailing their kayak paddles ever faster, but never actually dig the blade into the water more than a couple of inches.

What is this fixie nonsense? I remember dying to get a grown-up bike with more than one gear ratio when I was about 8, and haven't had a fixed gear bike since I got off the kiddie machine.

@ Bart Hawkins Kreps: Loved the picture, and you're completely right! About a decade ago while Hiking in Nepal with my super-duper hiking shoes, I was repeatedly surpassed by men carrying HUGE tree-sized timber pieces while in bare feet or flimsy flip-flops. They are the true athletes.

@ Kevn Lee: Yes, I smiled when I saw Stumptown in the opening shot (luckily and thankfully, though, Seattle now has two Stumptown cafes!)

@GeeBee- When I was a rider, I actually had people tell me to lower gears, that I wasn't getting enough cardio because I wasn't getting enough rpm with my legs.

I'd just snicker as I always thought it was about efficiency. If I wasn't getting a substantial amount of resistance under my feet, I would change gears to get feel a larger push with each cycle and don't understand those who want the feeling of wasted effort. It's the bike that should be going fast, not just your legs.

This is a funny video, I actually first saw it on Lance Armstrong's Twitter page and he liked it too. I'm sadly of the spandex variety of cyclist. The nerds of the athletic world.

Too funny - makes me want to put on my spandex and jump on my blue Surly!

that this was from Portland ...is part of the humor in it for me. This place is rabidly pro-bicycle and it was only a matter of time before some smart-ass (I say this with ironic affection) did an excellent job of poking fun at bike mania and sterotypical riders.

I love it!
I love bikers--spandex, hipsters, whatever!
Screw cars!

True dat! I hate the cyclists here in Miami. There should be a law against selling spandex shorts to 40 year old men who stand 5'8" and weight 250 #s. Hot pokers!

One of my all-time favorite Dilbert strips has
Problem: Bicycle seats are hard; they hurt.
Analysis: There must be something wrong with your pants.
Solution: Dorky pants.
They should sell that one on a T-shirt. But then how many cyclists would wear it?