:eek: How DREADFUL!
I agree it might be safer than carrying the child on the bike itself, but STILL! :eek:
That’s why I loathe the suburbs, full of the insufferable yuppies who think something like this is a swell idea.
Was it a GEM?
Why is it dreadful? Because it probably appeals to “insufferable yuppies”?
Funny you should say that. The first time I ever arrived in Scotland, I walked out of the train station in Edinburgh and saw about 2 dozen naked men strolling down the main road (I forget the name of the street across from the castle) making all kind of ruckus.
I just assumed it was a rugby team, or something. They looked like they were feeling no pain.
(I think I’ve posted this a couple of times here)
Christmas 1999.
Ormond Beach, Florida.
I was single and living in an upstairs flat above 2 businesses (closed for the holiday) accross the street from the ocean (A1A, Oceanshore Blvd.) It’s about 8 a.m. I wake up after a night of partying with friends, make a cup of coffee, and go wander out onto my balcony. Christmas morning and I have nowhere to be until noon. It’s extremely foggy, the ocean is very calm, and it’s eerily quiet out. No traffic either direction on A1A. No neighbors outside.
Then, coming up the side street to the left of me I see flashing red lights through the fog. No sirens. A big red firetruck comes creeping quietly out of the fog and takes a right onto A1A directly in front of me. As it passes, not more than 25 yards away from me, there he is. Santa Clause on top of the truck eye-level with me and not a soul around. He just rolls on by without a word just staring and waving at me.
I’m still in shock standing there in jeans without a shirt holding my coffee so all I can do is just wave back. And a half second later he disappears into the fog and it was dead quiet again.
I just stood there for 5 minutes thinking “what the hell did I drink last night?”
It was probably one of the most surreal things that I’ve ever seen.
Seriously, WTF? Of all the things to get upset about and call DREADFUL, what the hell is wrong with a child carrier on a bike?
I know what that is - disgusting isn’t it? It’s called black knot and I had to take my cherry tree down - this site might be helpful - but it’s likely the grossest thing I’ve seen in/on a tree.
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/faq7622
Gee, that’s funny. I loathe the suburbs because there are small-minded people who use their own fear to condemn anybody slightly different.
[Hint: if the child in the trailer is in danger, it’s not from the bicyclist. Even if the cyclist crashes, the trailer is enough protection that the child will be fine. What would hurt the child is an out of control motorist hitting the trailer.
So when you drive by and worry about the child’s safety, you’re basically saying that you can’t drive well enough to avoid hitting them.]
In 32 years of living in Glasgow and Edinburgh, this has only happened to me once (if you discount the odd flasher, here and there). Maybe they put on a special welcoming committee for visitors. Was it festival time? You know how cheeky those performance artists can be…
Central Iowa is eerily unstrange.
The oddest thing I’ve seen in the past week was a Black woman student at Iowa State University. They’re practically invisible here.
When I was a kid, my parents and a couple friends of theirs rented a country house together for the summer. The house was great, with a pool and huge gardens and everything, but there weren’t enough bedrooms for everyone, so arrangements had to be made. I shared my bedroom with two other kids, one on the bed and two on the floor on inflatable matresses.
On the first night I couldn’t sleep very well, and thus was witness to a bizarre incident. The guy sleeping in the bed woke up, walked three feet, very calmly pulled out his dick and started pissing, right then and there. In the middle of the bedroom. On his brother’s face. Very matter of factly too, his face a mask of serenity. I didn’t dare move a muscle. His brother, on the other hand, did wake up in a hurry, and cried out - not in anger but in sheer incredulity.
Turns out, they had spent like three weeks on a boat before they joined us, and on said boat they only had three feet to walk from their beds to be able to piss over the sideboard and into the sea. The guy wasn’t even fully awake.
Still, it’s one of the weirdest, most surreal scenes I have ever seen. This guy innocently pissing on his brother like it was just routine in their family.
Seriously, they don’t trail behind far enough that anyone has any business putting their car in that space.
I always think they look fun, like something I wish they had when I was a kid so I could get pulled around on a bike.
Continuing the hijack: I get really nervous seeing those baby trailers because people in my suburb really suck at driving. They’re oblivious, there’s a ton of cellphone usage; my husband even swore he once saw someone talking on the cellphone - no earpiece, either - and applying makeup while driving. I just kind of wince along while driving past the trailers, hoping they have only a quick trip planned.
Anyway, here’s my weirdest thing I’ve seen, from a previous thread on the subject from years ago. (Direct link)
I moved out to Seattle for a job, was laid off with half the building six months later, and drove back to my parent’s house in Cleveland. I’m on I90 driving east, west of the Rockies, I think. This might have been just east. I’m on a long straight stretch of highway surrounded by tall trees, it’s dark, and I see some bright flashing lights up ahead. On both sides of the road was a tall structure covered with huge stadium type flood lights, facing each other. The lights were flashing on and off to some pattern I couldn’t figure out. I actually pulled over and stopped to have a look. The light were big enough that you could hear it when they came on. I didn’t see any signs or other buildings or anything, so eventually I just drove away. Never did find out what that was.
I saw weird things in Seattle all the time. One night I was up late, unemployed, and I heard music coming from the open window. Someone was playing ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ on a trumpet, and playing it pretty well. I look out the window, and saw a guy walking down the middle of the road at 3 AM, playing a trumpet. He just kept going till I couldn’t hear him any more.
Brooklyn, CT
driving from Springfield, MA to the casinos.
saw a shirtless man with a crutch and an eye patch walking on the shoulder of the road.
It was dusk, it was the middle of nowhere.
It was very, very creepy…
When I lived in Atlanta, I was staying in a room on the second floor of a house near East Atlanta. My window had a sort of seat in it and looked out over the front yard and street. There was a neighborhood road that ran along the front of the yard and another that basically dead ended into the house. A very quiet area, really.
So one afternoon around 3, I’m sitting in my windowseat reading a book. I hear some hubbub outside and look down. Coming down both roads from three directions are big crowds of what look to be high school kids. Backpacks, hooded sweatshirts - I’m not talking gang colors here, just maybe a hundred to a hundred and fifty regular city kids. They all massed in front of my house and started fighting! Punches thrown, people getting knocked down and kicked, a full on sudden riot, right there like I was staging it for my own pleasure. About a minute in, cop cars show up and hem them in from all sides. Of course, kids run in all directions, but they rounded up quite a few. Ten minutes later they were all gone, and you would have never known it happened. Strange indeed.
Oh, shut the hell up! I’m not afraid of anything “slightly different”, you’re just trying to start a fight. I see it as putting a little child in an ANIMAL CARRIER on wheels. You can’t talk to the kid, or see how it’s doing, or point out things like flowers and clouds. The neighbors see a conveyance hauled behind a bike, not a child. What’s the fucking point??? A change of air from the McMansion? Get Dad away from the HDTV to get some exercise AND get the kid out of the house?
It looks as ridiculous as those stupid, I don’t know what you call them, racing strollers? some years ago. The ones that enable the yuppie moms in sports bras and cooter cutter shorts to go running like coked out idiots pushing their kid ahead of them.
Hey! That looks an awful lot like it, but it’s not a fruit tree. It’s a bush that gets little berries on it (maybe that counts??). Mulberry or something? I’ll try to get a picture of it. It totally looks like a dog turd.
This post is so filled with idiocy and ignorance I wish I had the energy to start a pit thread. They are not animal carriers, nor were they initially intended to be animal carriers. They were originally made to carry children behind bikes. They’ve been around for quite awhile now, so I’m flabbergasted that you’re just now noticing them.
What in the world could you possibly mean by “what is the point?” I should think it’s perfectly obvious that the point is to be able to bring your child with you on a bike ride.
Before you say it, I do not own a bike or a child carrier.