As a middle aged man in lycra who enjoys riding road bikes fast for sport and is comfortable riding in traffic: That Forester guy sounds like a dick. One of the things that makes bikes so cool is that they come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes, optimised for different use cases. Road bikes are cool, but so are mountain bikes, cargo bikes, fixed gear bikes, dutch style upright bikes, etc. And even if countless near death experiences while cycling around cars have made me feel comfortable (or complacent?) riding in traffic, I still appreciate good cycling infrastructure. People deserve to be safe and every trip taken by bike instead of by car is a win.

I was expecting to read Forester was killed by being hit by a car while cycling , but dude lived to 90.

I grew up in a city that has hundreds of miles of cycle paths, you could ride anywhere without ever having to ride on a main road, only the occasional first/last section to get to a house/shop. The nearest path to my old house was 150 yards down the road and when I was growing up before I started driving at 17 (mid 90's), we used to ride everywhere. It was about 8 miles from corner of the city to the other.

As I got older and relied on a car... I found myself missing cycling. So in 2017, I got a 21spd hybrid city bike... Alas, I discovered that injuries and post op limitations restricted me to at best... 5-6 miles and I was exhausted.

So in 2022, I got myself an e-bike. A Haibike Trekking with the bosch mid drive system. I can now ride with ease once more.

Alas... I also moved from that city with hundreds of miles of cycle paths a few months after getting it... Now I live near to the sea and mountains... and there are 2 cycle routes near me. One I can do a 9m round trip, it would be longer but for some daft reason they never finished the path around the reservoir and it's boggy and muddy for 5 months of the year or any time it rains in the other 7 months. The other route means riding about 1/2 mile through town to pick up the nearest path and then you've got about 7 more miles of pretty flat, open countryside next to a river... but also next to flood planes. So at this time of year, it can flood a section about 1/2 a mile long at the 2.5m mark (from my house). Oh and that first route, also floods long before you ever get to the reservoir restricting your ride to at best 4 miles in total there and back... it's only 9 miles without the flooding.

I can do an 8 mile trip to an estuary and add another 1 mile I'm on the edge of a huge forest... 2 further miles through the forest and I'm at the beach... making it a 22 mile round trip... But the stony, gravel roads aren't exceptionally suited to my city bike. I've bought reinforced tyres and puncture proof tubes... so maybe I'll give it a shot next year.

For now, it's unlikely I'll be getting much riding done until March.

Very thorough and in depth but a bit long.