Less is More
Gordon Hobbis May 01, 2008

When is eight more than twenty four? That is when my loving wife tells me so. This lesson was learned on a recent bicycle excursion that exposed this new math to me. My wife’s bike is a regular 24 speed hybrid style bike, with two shifters on the handlebars, three chain rings on the front and 8 sprockets on the rear. Now I know that’s a lot of math and sometimes all those levers and cogs makes gear shifting intimidating for some riders. When my wife tried a bike that was an eight speed with only one shifter she was able to use the whole range of gears. She felt that the bike actually had more gears then her other 24 speed bike because it was so easy to use. To make it even easier to use, the eight speed bike she was riding had an internal hub gear. I have been raving about these for years and when I saw first hand how much my wife enjoyed ridding a bike with this hub I new my excitement for this type of bike was justified. Today there are more bikes popping up on the market with internal gear hubs. These are easier to use because the rider doesn’t have to be pedaling to shift gears and there is no chain rattling around like on a derailleur type bike.

The world of bicycles is where the axiom “less is more” must have first been used because it is true in most aspects of cycling. The cross country cycle tourist knows that with less equipment they can travel more and competitive racer cyclists will choose less weight for more speed. Also, cycling shorts are made from spandex because less material is more comfortable. Think about it; a world where less is more. This notion can be very liberating and can alleviate many symptoms of industrial disease where the goal is to consume more and have less. Bicycles use less and give more in just about every way. A shiver just went down my spine writing this as I am trying to be a good capitalist and run a bicycle store where I definitely want you, to want more, of the things in my store. This is somewhat contradictory to my thinking here but I hope you get the point, more or less.

To this end there are a few opportunities with your bicycle to get more. Bike to Work week is soon approaching, and despite the dreadful weather that is now surely in the past, this years bike to work week will out do all the others. The dates this year are May 26th to June 1st. According to the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition last years Bike to Work Week attracted 593 teams with 3,541 participants that resulted in 908 new commuter cyclists. That’s big. Electronic Arts was the biggest in total number of commutes and kilometers commuted. Maybe they were working on a new game “Cycle Cyber Commuter 2008” or something like that. If you want to get a workplace team together it’s easy to do, just visit www.vacc.bc.ca and follow the links to get your team in place. By the way, Cap’s will be out there at commuter stations around Burnaby and New Westminster with prizes, mechanical help and good old fashioned cheers to encourage you on the way.

Something coming up a bit sooner is a new event called the “New Westminster Heritage Cycling Tour”. The Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition is again involved, this time collaborating with the New Westminster Museum and Archives, to take you on a cycle tour of BC’s first city. The tour finishes at Irving House after taking the wheelers along city greenways through Columbia Street, Queen’s Park and Sapperton where you might happen to see one of Canada’s oldest bicycle shops. The tour happens on May 24th from 1:00 - 4:00 pm and the registration fee is only five dollars. How you apply the less is more rule here is up to you but keep those pedals turning and you’ll be fine.