When Bicycles are Faster Than Planes

I just love this! While one of Los Angeles’ major freeways was closed (the so-called “carmageddon”), and Jet Blue offered $4 airfares for the 40-mile jaunt between Burbank and Long Beach, a group of cyclists

 issu[ed] a modern-day John Henry challenge: on their bikes, they would beat the plane to the other side of the city.

And they did. The cyclists, part of a group called Wolfpack Hustle, made the ride in an hour and thirty-five minutes. Another member of the group drove to the airport, arrived the requisite hour early, waited in the security line, boarded the plane, landed, and took a cab (which apparently got lost) to the finish line—arriving more than an hour after the cyclists, and after a challenger who made the trip by public transit and walking, and another who rollerbladed it.

That’s right: On Sunday, an airplane got its butt kicked by bicycles, metro rail, and a pair of rollerblades.

Score two for self-propelled transportation (bikes AND inline skates), and another for land-based mass transit. I thought it was pretty cool that when I was a high school student in the Bronx, I could easily beat the bus coming back from school on my five-mile bike ride, and took about the same time on the way there (uphill). But this, I have to say, is so much cooler. 🙂

(Thanks to Eric Eustache  (@E_volution on Twitter) for sharing this terrific article.)