Word: bike
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...efficiency, the bicycle is also cheap, handy, nimble. It can sprint like a cat, then stop on a dime and give you nine cents change. It is easy to ride and speedy enough for any sane short-distance traveler. In the typical bumper-to-bumper city creepathon the bike can outrun a Porsche...
Unlike the car, truck and bus, the bike does not spew stinky fumes and carcinogens. A bike is easy to park in a sliver of space, and of precious oil it needs only a smidgen to keep the wheels squeakless. Riders may turn rowdy, but the vehicle itself is quiet -- a blessed virtue amid the squawk-bleat- scream-grind-growl-honk-toot-wail-shr iek that is the voice of the big city...
Still, though Americans have always liked two-wheelers as a child's plaything, and currently own 111 million of them, they have never truly welcomed the bike as a serious vehicle. In fact, wherever it appears in numbers, the bicycle provokes tension, annoyance, outrage or hostility. This year bikers from Manhattan to Denver, from Oregon to Missouri, have wound up in conflicts: bikers vs. motorists, bikers vs. pedestrians, bikers vs. runners, bikers vs. police...
...history at the University of Michigan in 1972, Shapiro made up his mind to run for Congress himself. "I grew up reading that anyone could do it," Shapiro recalls. "So I decided to test what it would be like to run as someone who had a three-speed bike instead of a Volvo." He campaigned daily for six months, wearing out his only suit, and finished a close second in a primary field of six. The loss only whetted his appetite for the quadrennial U.S. political rites...
Blair's season started even before the opening of the Flames' training camp. "During the summer I went on the Nautilus and then did aerobic exercise," said Blair, a second team All-America selection his senior year. "I rollerskated or rode my bike for 40 minutes a day. I came to camp in the best shape of my life...