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Sylvia Earle, except she's about as old as my dad, and I'm 50 (she went to high school with my dad, I think she was even romantically involved with his best friend, Wallace, for some high school definition of "romance"). Deep sea exploration, Jim suits. Cool stuff.

Failing that, Ross Evans and Kipchoge Spencer. They're younger. They want to save the world with cargo bicycles. Get one of their bikes, you don't need a car.

no-one makes their hardware open-source except a few niche vendors

Like my employer.

When you say "niche vendor", I think of the guys who helped design my bicycle.

I dunno how people shop for a family on a bike.

My last haul from Costco consisted of a 55lb bag of dog food, two gallons of orange juice, four gallons of milk, various meats, and quite a lot of miscellany besides. Yes, on a bicycle. My trick? A trailer. Other folks do the same thing with a cargo bike (the Bakfiets and the Xtracycle are two well-respected designs).

People carry all kinds of crazy things on Xtracycles -- I've seen photos of people carrying ladders, planters, other bicycles, etc.

Thats insane considering the alternatives. I can find a used *car* for that price.

I could find (no, have bought) a used car for the cost of the frakkin' GPS and headlights sitting on my handlebars and helmet. What's your point?

I don't have that many pet peeves, but the "you're on a bike? -- must be too poor to drive a car" kneejerk response is among them. We've seen that here with business owners objecting to a proposed bicycle boulevard project, though the numbers from other cities show that similar measures have resulted in dramatic increases in residential and retail property values elsewhere (in part because cyclists and pedestrians are going slow enough to actually notice the places they're passing, and thus generate more incidental traffic).

Do you call people who buy sports cars from Tesla idiots too? They're spending some money -- but it's money they have to spend (meaning it's coming out of an income source much higher than that $50K median), and they're getting a unique vehicle and the experience that comes with it. How is it your place or mine to say how well someone else's money is spent?

Further, there are very good reasons to be willing to spend some money on a quality conventional bicycle. If you're using something as your commute day-in and day-out, the last thing you want is back pain (or knee pain, or shoulder pain, or any of the other problems that can come from a poorly-fit bike). If you want something you can haul large amounts of cargo with (and by "large amounts" I mean several hundred pounds with lots of bulk), not a single one of the crappy cheap bikes that Wal-Mart or Target sells will do the trick, and (for that matter) not that many specialty shops sell longtail cargo haulers either.

Anyhow -- sure, you could find a car for that price, but sometimes a car isn't practical.

If you live in the city, parking is bloody expensive. Have only one parking spot for your two-person family, and both of you have jobs? If you ride a bike, that's not a problem.

Mandatory liability insurance? Bicycles very rarely generate substantial liability, hence such laws don't apply. Vehicle registration fees? In my state, those go to fund highways rather than regular roads; bicycles don't use highways, thus moot. Gasoline? Hah.

A folding bike (there are some good ones, and the custom builds tend to run in the neighborhood of or somewhat more than that $2300 watermark) will let you take public transportation for part of your commute or bring your vehicle with you when you travel by air. You can't do that with any car.

If you get a cheap used car, it'll need lots of TLC and maintenance -- and the skills and tools to do bicycle maintenance yourself are much cheaper.

A bicycle in the $2-4K range can be the Right Vehicle for many people.

Don't be so quick to make assumptions having lived in the country and in the city I can attest that it's definitely easier to ride in rural areas despite the fact the distances are greater. As for shopping on bikes, today it is easier than ever due to some innovative new (and old) designs.

See the Xtracycle, the Dutch Cargo Trike, and the Bakfiet.

Cars are cheap because nearly everybody in this country needs a car. You need a car to get to work, you need it to get to school and you need it for recreation. Sure, if you happen to live in a major city there is also mass transit, but for a large percentage of the population a car is a necessary reality.

False dichotomy. I don't need a car to get to work, and the mass transit here sucks. I take the most efficient form of transportation available, which also happens to be one of the cheapest: a bicycle. My hilly 10-mile commute takes 40-45 minutes each way.

For groceries and other cargo (such as children), there's the bakfiets (and clones), xtracycle and bike trailers. People even bike in the rain and snow.

The auto manufacturers have done an impressive job making us believe that "everybody in this country needs a car".

Or drive much smaller vehicles.

A cargo bike plus an electric assist will carry a load of groceries and/or a kid or two, and will do it with a daily range that is depressingly competitive with a lot of the e-cars being discussed nowadays (i.e., 40 miles -- 20 in a day on a human-powered cargo bike is a no-brainer). Wouldn't necessarily work in the boonies, but lots and lots of people drive in places that where 20-40 miles per day, most days, is enough.

One hopes that I won't hear the same tired excuses about rain, snow, dark, ice, and locusts; you're not supposed to bike naked (NSFW). That's why we have fenders, raincoats, gloves, and snow tires. What mostly lacks is a place that feels safe enough to ride; what we have now probably IS safe enough, but it seems unsafe, so that's the end of it for most people.

Or maybe the problem is that you think bicycles are slow.

Or maybe you think you'll miss taking your SUV off-roading.

...To simulate the situation presented earlier, try adding another kid and about 100 lbs worth of groceries to your daily ride and see how far you go.

I think the fact you seemingly require 100lbs+ of Costco crap, where he does not is itself very telling. I do just fine without bulk buying from Costco or WalMart, and can do most grocery trips by bike. Most times a large backpack is enough, though panniers and a rack to hold more helps when I need more than basics. Try more frequent smaller capacity trips. I manage to get by with one ~30min trip (rt, couch to kitchen) a week. It takes far less time than driving the extra distance to the bulk buy facility (Costco, Sams club, etc), wandering around an enormous warehouse trying to find what you need, loading a cart full of crap half of which will spoil before it gets used, loading it all into a car, then unloading and trying to organize it all. The nearest CostCo is at least 10mi away, Safeway is only 2 and doesnt require an annual fee for the privilege of shopping there.

Location and street conditions do play a factor, as I know certain parts of Atlanta would be almost suicidal to ride a bike to the store, though most areas have back road ways of bypassing the major highways.

Im not sure what bike trailer you have seen, but the Bob brand is rated to 70Lbs, and the Burley Nomad can do 100Lbs+ with 8000cu.in capacity. You can also add on a Xtracycle extension to carry your 2 kids (pic of it on their main page: Xtracycle.com). Granted, doing this while living on a Mountain is probably not ideal, but still not impossible.

You can pretty much REPLACE YOUR CAR with a longtail.

I would recommend getting on it NOW, so by the time everyone else is begging for one, you'll already have one and will be "a senior statesman" for your local group for your years of experience.

RS

i need to be able to carry things like groceries.

Gee. It's too bad there aren't working solutions to this problem.

can't afford transportation

Can't, my ass. It's a lifestyle choice, not an impossibility.

The median commute distance is around 10 miles. I've been Googling, it's well less than that in Canada, it's around that in Silicon Valley (http://www.cities21.org/BABPC/). If you choose to, you can do that on a bicycle, 52 weeks a year, in Boston, even if you are a late-40s overweight guy with a bad attitude. You can do it in the snow, you can do it in the rain. You can haul one kid to school and to soccer afterwards. You can carry groceries home (I ride a bike of unusual size). It does take appropriate clothing. It takes about 45 minutes on the bike, versus 25 in the car, but the bike timing is predictable, and there's no need to spend any other time on exercise, and (statistically speaking) you'll live longer for doing this instead of driving.

For the cost of two tanks of fuel oil (yeesh!) you can add an electric motor assist to the bike that will give you better speed while using very little additional energy.

There's some people way out on the tail of the commute distribution; they'll need to move, change jobs, telecommute, or find some other way to make things work, but most people could do their commute on a bicycle. There's plenty of "reasons" not to ride your bike, but most of them turn out to be bogus once you actually do it. Probably the biggest impediment for me is that people driving cars don't see too well in the dim and dark that we get in the winter, and they aren't looking for bikes.

A 20 mile round trip, twice a week, will let you pick and choose your cycling days, and still lose (my estimate) about a pound per week (I'm down 20 since I got serious about biking more). This is something that you can ease into, if you are the timid/prudent sort. If you need to carry a little bit of cargo, you can build trash can panniers. If you need a lot, you can get an xtracycle. I've got one, the handling is great unloaded, and better than expected when loaded.

You sweat (not good for dating/going to work)

Bathe more often. Change your underpants occasionally.

No place to store your groceries (or for the slashdot crowd, taking your rig to a lan party)
No place for the girlfriend to sit

Get one of these.

*No air conditioning
*Sun
*Rain

What sort of pansy are you?

You should write a FAQ and make a webpage on this. It sounds fascinating -- since you've done the research already, why not share? (P.S.: Do you have an Xtracycle for carrying all that gear around in?