It was a cycling crowd (I was in a bike shop, after all) and I'd uttered the phrase that must not be uttered. Eyeballs glanced around, seeking to know the whim of the group"--would anyone admit anything other than disdain? I uttered it again, "Seriously," I said. "What do you think of electric bicycles?"
The issue of purity was raised. "Well, they seem to defeat the purity of the bicycle," someone said. "They're ugly as sin," another added.
Ugly and impure. But not, I imagined, in the outlaw biker kind of way. None of that so-bad-it's-good stuff here.
"So none of you are fans of of the electric bike?" I asked. A silence. Finally, from the back of the shop, someone said, "They might be okay if..." he carefully turned his words over before continuing. "Maybe if they got more people to stop driving cars so much." He looked around at his fellow cyclists, his knicker-wearing brethren, and they nodded their heads in modest approval. "I mean... I wouldn't buy one," he continued, the others shaking their heads in agreement with that too. "But they might be good for some people."
"Yeah, blind people," someone quipped.
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