This may be a bit off topic, but a recent post on Cyclelicious caught my attention. The post points to an article about bike commuting on The Paceline, a Discovery Team sponsored website. In his post, Fritz says “usually, there doesn’t seem to be much in common between professional road cycling and transportational cycling besides the fact that both use a bike.” I won’t argue with that statement, but I do want to add that I am seeing more overlap now than ever between the fast club riding and racing crowd and daily commuters and other transportation oriented cyclists. Not too many years ago, there was little overlap between the two groups. Today, though all racers have not become commuters, there does seem to be more interest among the Lycra clad set in bicycle advocacy issues. In my local community, many fast riders are willing to spend time on cycling issues that will likely introduce the joy of bike riding to a wider audience and benefit the city as a whole. I, for one, am happy to see these lines getting blurred. As much as I like to talk about performance oriented road, mountain, cross, and track bikes, I also have a real interest in bikes that will start people riding who might not otherwise. And that is where design comes in.

Of course, there are exceptions to the “one big happy cycling family” picture. This post on Spinopsys paints a different picture (keep in mind that the author of the article linked to in the post is not completely serious).