Very well said.

As you may know, Wells was one of twenty people chosen to despair for humanity. It was his job to sit at cafes and despair while pretending to read newspapers. Often, he would read six or seven at a time, hoping that passersby would not notice he was despairing. In truth, however, he could not read – though he did enjoy the scent of fresh print. Many people thought he was myopic. Truth be known, he was just sniffing. Very strange. He also had the strange habit of mushing cake into milk and offering the mixture to children when their parents weren’t looking. When he forced them to eat, some cried, and it pleased Wells. This helped him to worry better…We do not know why bicycle riders eased his pain.

I have absolutely no idea what this quote means.
Was he a bycycle seat sniffer or something?

Aside from staying away from Pedro I love riding a bike so much that I don't have a car. It's great exercise and gets me to where I want to go (I can put the bike on the front of the bus I take and take it on the non-peak hour train). I even have friends who ride bikes in mid-town Manhattan during rush hour.

As I see it not far from N.Y. City, who could disagree with Hupomone on this quote, except to add that Wells appeared to be from a perverse planet? As for bike riding, while it is very harmless, it cannot be a measure to help us to avoid despair. Would there be nothing to despair about if every Joe and Jane used bikes instead of a cars to go to work? Let us us hear from countries with a few automobiles. My educated guess is that if the bike replaces good-old-fashioned God, despair will abound much more – among other unmentionables, as it did with Wells. Finally, who are the militants promoting the euthanasia (despairing) movements, Godless people by far. Are we as individuals capable of learning from history or must man-willed diseases be experienced before we will know that it’s end is despair and death?

In China almost all roads have bicycle lanes between the pavement and the road. This is to segregate the motorised traffic from the bicycles, and the bicycles from the pedestrians. That is the theory.

In practice, everyone goes wherever they want as fast as they can get there, and b****r anyone in the way. The bicycle lanes are considered too slow (don't ask me why, I don't know - even an empty bicycle lane is too slow) so many cyclists use the road. Not, I hasten to add, the side of the road, but slap bang in the middle where they impede the traffic. Chinese drivers cannot tolerate a delay of a millisecond, so they ride up behind the pesky cyclists and blast their horns - not a polite bip, but an imperative beeeeeeep, beeeeeep, beeeeeep.

Some of the remaining cyclists go onto the pavement to play dodgems with the pedestrians. I was walking on the pavement one day recently - a broad, empty pavement next to a broad, empty bicycle lane, next to a quiet road. What happened? I was hit twice by cyclists. Why? I wish I knew. And worse, cyclists here never apologise for hitting either each other, or pedestrians; they just ignore their carnage and ride on. Somebody hurt? Too bad.
In my case, both cyclists looked at me after hitting me as though I was to blame. Fortunately, I wasn't hurt, but only because I managed to move sufficiently out of the way at the last second to avoid a worse clash.

To add to the chaos, drivers go into the bicycle lanes, and even onto the pavements. Their motivation is simple 'Get there asap'

I'm not even going to start on the hazards of using road crossings.

Pedro, if you ever come to China, a revolver wouldn't do. You'd be out of ammo in 2 minutes.