Spokesperson

A cycling enthusiast.

There is a growing trend in this country for cycling, as many who frequent the roads would have noticed (for those who have not, they drive the really thin cars often squeezed onto the little red side roads the bigger cars share with them). Alongside the people that ride bikes, there are people that watch the various competitions, and of course those who simply don the team-branded lycra just for a casual get together so that they can feel their scrotum tightly squashed against some other part of themselves.

But the recent explosion of interest does not emerge out of nowhere, in fact it emerges from somewhere very specific - Europe (**spit**). The fashion for pedal based travel emerged from the Netherlands (née Holland), in which it is believed 11 billion bicycle rides are taken every minute by residents and stoned tourists. The reason for this comes from the nation’s history, in which the post-war government, in an act of political defiance, signed into law a simple declaration: this house believes that cars were never invented. Because of this, no further driving legislation could ever be drafted and all political figures could not travel by car; it became legally impossible to drive anything resembling a car, let alone raise funds for roads/garage infrastructure to support them. However, there was a loophole available to the merry dutch - the humble bicycle. And boy did they take to them - it was easy, like… well… riding a small wheeled-horse where you had to push the stirrups in a circular rotation.

Invented by the formidable Jardin Le-fois in 1852, the bicycle has a joyous beginning. Le-fois was by most accounts a terrible unicyclist, and found himself unable to keep his balance until he selotaped two single wheeled vehicles together. Suddenly he did not fall and the humble bicycle was born. His latter attempts to iterate on his genius bore some success, at first with the three wheeled vehicle the ‘tricycle’ which was marketed at religious types who did not trust the two wheeled version, but by the time he released the quattuorviginticycle (a 24 wheeled vehicle) his public was no longer that interested in what he had to offer. Le-fois died of too much money in relative scurity, surrounded by the wheels he treasured the most.

Of course, not every cyclist is a spokesperson, nor does every spokesperson necessarily ride a bike. But there are inevitably crossovers. Let’s quickly take a look at this famous venn diagram between two pie charts, known as ‘Liberty’s Adjacent Pump’ theory (named after Liberty Pump) to understand the situation further.

The left chart depicts people who ride bikes stratified by their interests, while the right hand pie demonstrates commuter travel transportation types by those who self-identify as being at least mildly interested in cycling. Ignore for now regions 1-6 and 7-12.¹ The crossover occurs in the unlabelled sections depicted by a black star. On each side there are two regions that crossover, therefore suggesting that Spokespeople exist in the fruitful space inhabited by:

• People who ride bikes that have an interest in the early history of flight and who travel to work on 2 wheels.
• People who ride bikes that have an interest in films like ET and who travel to work using petroleum-free vehicles.
• People who ride bikes that have an interest in the early history of flight and who travel to work using petroleum free vehicles
• People who ride bikes that have an interest in films like ET and who travel to work on 2 wheels

For clarification, Spokespersons are distinct from Spoker players - who are the people who bet on the various cycling competitions - be it the Tour de France, the Tour de Force, the Tour de Western Supermare, the Tour de la Tour Eiffel, Big Billy’s Big Bicycle Bash, the Tour de Daghenam Shell Garage and the Tour de Tour de Tour (World Tour).

If you’ve read this far, I don’t know what else to say to you. Was it worth it? I doubt it.