Have you noticed a plague recently? It's called rentable electric scooters. They're sh... crap. Apparently they have a really short life span, so they're absolutely not environmentally friendly. They're for lazy people. People too lazy to propel themselves forward. People too lazy to park them out of the way, when they have reached their destination or ran out of battery. And the lazy, nature hating people who rent these scooters park them every-effing-where. On sidewalks. On bridges. In the forest. And in bicycle lanes.
Sorry dude. But you had it coming.
Right now it's the wild, wild west with these scooters in Gothenburg. A lot of people are actually renting them and I think there's three companies whose business idea is to rent electric scooters. But a lot of people, especially cyclists, are complaining about them, complaining that they´re parked everywhere and that they're in the way.
And now we have the first death case in Sweden that can be directly linked to electric scooters. A 27 year old man apparently rode his rented electric scooter down a steep hill and was hit by a driver in a car, in Helsingborg, in the south of Sweden, about a week ago. And yes, there is a huge difference between me getting annoyed over electric scooters being parked in the bicycle lanes, and the death of a man with the biggest part of his life ahead of him. A huge difference. It's a tragedy.
So will something be done about these scooters? Yes, I think so. Unless it turns out that these scooters were only a really short craze and all these three companies (Breakit, Lime and Voi) go bankrupt I think some legislations will be passed, so that you can't just park them anywhere. Or ride them anywhere, anyhow, with no safety improvements.
(A common sight in Gothenburg, Sweden, lately.)
Then, when I was taking a walk with T a couple of weeks ago, we saw an abandoned bike just lying on a lawn. We walked over to it to take a closer look when an elderly lady came up and talked to us. She said that the bike had been standing there, leaning against a distribution box for weeks, but now it was lying in the grass. Since no one had obviously moved it I decided that we were going to take it home, and take it to the lost propery office at the police, as soon as I could. Which was a couple of weeks ago. This is the bike that we found:
It's an OK bike, with 26" wheels, I think. But is the front fork broken? It looks a little bent.
I think the paint scheme is pretty cool (underneath all that dust). And it's made in Taiwan!
It's really kind of rusty, though...
This solution, for the front brake, actually is really interesting.
At the moment I don't know if the owner have picked, or will pick, the bike up, from the Police lost property office. If he (It's a "he". We can agree on that, can't we?)has picked, or will pick, up the bike I won't have a new old bike. Which is OK. Depending on whether I make any progress with the
Kona or not I will keep this bike and use it as a winter commuter bike, or donate it to
the Bike Kitchen. I mean, if and when T wants a proper mountain bike I'll probably look for something else.
It was some time since I last worked on the Kona, on that bloody stuck seat post, but lately other projects have had higher priority, like my road bike, my regular commuter bike and L's old commuter bike, which is now our spare bike. In short I am not short of bicycle projects.
Ride safe!
