So many one-speed riders on multi-speed bikes

As the weather gets nice, lots more bicycles on the road.

Also a huge increase in the number of cyclists who don't downshift when coming to a stop. So starting up again is a painful standing-on-the-pedals effort.

Last night I was behind someone who was in about the second-highest gear. When the light turned green, she strained to get going. Half a block, and she had achieved a wobbly 17 km/h.

I can understand fixie and one-speed riders doing this (and most of them are pretty quck). The club riders with corncob rear gears, well when they stand up and mash, they must be training for their upcoming Alpe d'Huez stage so that's okay too (and they'll drop me once they get up to speed....in a block or so....).

But for the fine-weather cyclists, I can't imagine why the shouldn't use their gears. It'll make acceleration a lot easier. On a couple of spacing blog postings, particularly this one we have cyclists saying "it takes too much energy to start up after a stop". Yeah, if you are using top gear, it sure is a strain. That's why you have gears other than top gear!

(My personal non-statistically-valid observations is that the likeliest people to pedal right through a stop sign, red light, or past a streetcar with doors open are i) the single-speed wobblers and ii) the club riders. And bicycle couriers, but they're in a class of their own.)

A lot of these stand-and-strain riders seem youngish as well. Well, if you use appropriate gears, your knees will thank you as you get older....