Subcultural domination
Lately Techeye has been spending too much time indoors with our malodorous, Post-it note hoarding colleagues, and it's starting to worry us. Just last week we caught one guy from the office groping the water cooler when he thought nobody was looking. The scary part is that it didn't seem particularly weird to us.
We don't want to end up like that guy, so we're exploring options to diversify our social life. To this end Techeye has decided to join a cool subculture of some kind. Sure, it seems an odd strategy, especially since we enjoy mocking people who are earnestly passionate about, well, anything. But the prospect of a future full of water-cooler-gropage has us scared, so we're willing to try.
The hard part, however, is deciding which subculture to join. After a little research we ruled out beatniks, gay skinheads, nudists, emos and hippies, all of whom are a bit too conservative for our tastes. Yuppies seem a little too neat and chavs a little too mingin', while trekkies and rednecks are right out. On the other hand, cosplayers - people who dress up like video game or anime characters - seem intriguingly hygienic, but there's no way Techeye can afford so many shiny clothes.
That doesn't leave too many options - since nudist cosplay isn't really a subculture - which was a little depressing, but then we came across velomobilers. Take that guy you knew in high school who professed unabashed and derision-worthy love for model-ship building. Then imagine him a little older, chubbier and dorkier, with plenty of disposable income and a guilty environmental conscience. That sounds like an archetypal velomobile freak, though we're sure they'd dispute the description. Some of them used to make model airplanes, after all.
A velomobile, for the uninitiated, is bicycle car. They are usually one-person affairs and boast a "full fairing," which is just fancy talk for a shell around the bike. The one we're looking into - since you need a velomobile in order to become a velomobiler - is Beyss Leichtfahrzeuge's Go-One3.
Go-One3 drivers can expect to travel "in excess of 20 mph" and needn't worry overly about tipping over, though a buxom wench leaning too far to one side could invite disaster. The vehicle isn't one-size-fits-all, either - Beyss notes that people between 5'6" and 6'2", weighing a maximum of 220 lbs, are the "best candidates" for its velomobile.
The Go-One3 ain't cheap - expect to pay between $10,739-19,747 (zł.23,110-42,502), depending on the options you choose. Techeye is getting the $260 (zł.560) luggage rack, though, which will definitely make us one of the coolest of our new subculture buddies.
