One thing that irks me is reading bike blogs talking about the weight of a bike. It’s always about speed and handling. What about picking it up and carrying it up and down stairs? That’s what I think about. And so I wrote a comment on the http://amsterdamize.com/ blog recently saying that no, I don’t care that Dutch bikes might handle a little slower because of frame weight but that I think most Americans living in a big city have to keep in mind the weight of a bike because we have stairs to think about if we live in apartments.

And the reply was: “I understand, our bikes suit us, because we leave ‘m outside all year. Every block in every neighborhood in every city has bicycle parking racks and we lock ‘m up there. Besides that, since the early 90’s the building code requires a space for indoor bicycle parking for every home/apartment, on the ground floor.”

If Mayor Daley and the government here really cared about biking…but I’m not holding my breath.