Friday Afternoon Commute - It's French for "the mond"

Good afternoon.

• Frederick, MD will be hosting America's only Penny Farthing race.There is apparantly a pretty big one in Tasmania, and two in England: London and Knutsford, but this may be the only one in all of the Americas.  The race will start at 4 p.m. Aug. 18 in front of Brewer's Alley. If that doesn't entice you, Greg Lemond will be competing. 
• "let’s have an honest discussion about being the “fattest people in the world.” Every day, “decision makers” make transportation infrastructure and planning decisions that favor cars over people, decisions that make walking and biking—walking or biking to real public transit options, to work, to school, to the store—come to seem more and more…radical. It is indeed time we took responsibility for these and for the full range of consequences they entail. Let’s take some personal responsibility and make sure we as a society make the decisions that instead favor people over cars, favor transportation infrastructure built around the human scale."
• A response to Wiggins' claim that "Ultimately, if you get knocked off and you don’t have a helmet on, then you can’t argue...You can get killed if you don’t have a helmet on."

Comments

[Tara]

And a startlingly reasonable take on car/biker liability from another pro racer:

http://road.cc/content/news/60231-mark-cavendish-says-motorists-should-be-presumed-liable-incidents-where-cyclists

[Crickey7]

I just smile when clinically obese people tell me that riding my bike in the city is dangerous.

[Jack]

So that's why I saw a penny farthing on the back of a car on 270!