The Transportation

And then there is the transportation gang, often heard before they're seen with squeaky chains propelling haggard old bikes, for whom there is no choice...or perhaps the choice is to ride or hoof it, as the bicycle is their sole means of speedy A to B. Maybe they ride to work, maybe they're unemployed. Maybe they’re homeless, lost their license, or simply cannot afford the many hidden fiscal trappings of automobile ownership. Do they prefer to ride? No, no way; they are forced to by circumstance. To them the bike is a vintage tool, a rusty shovel among backhoes, a rake among leaf blowers, not a meaning-filled symbol or a recreational activity.

These three broad groups make up the majority of cyclists. Do they get along with each other? I don't think so. They sure don’t ride together unless it's incidental, but then again, they’re not really competing for resources, yet anyway...and that's a big "yet", I mean, if there were a world of just bicycles in the streets...would they eventually begin to flip each other off and relish in name calling belittlement? I’m all but sure this would happen, as space on the road would still be a premium and thus competed for. In fact, I was just talking to a kid working the front counter of a hotel in downtown Sacramento, Ca about his commuting on the bike I saw safely locked up out front as I checked in. I asked him how getting around town was, if the city was "bike-friendly", how the infrastructure was (bike paths and the like), and the general attitude of drivers toward cyclists. All where favorable but what he added as afterthought...musing that possibly more troublesome than the inherent hazards a cyclist's fragile body encounters whilst commingling with heavy automobiles on the street were the droves of club riders who often speed up from behind in large packs on the city's many established bike paths, rude with shouts of “on your left” and often squeezing him and his bike from the narrow pavement as they sped by.

When I heard this, I have to admit, I got a little defensive as I've been in those groups that have taken the path with shear speed and Lycra-clad numbers, but until that point never thought of my actions as rude, quite the contrary...but then again, I had never heard firsthand or imagined the consequences of my actions from another's point of view.

Think about it...just look at how your attitude changes when you sit in auto traffic. Blood pressure and Cortisol levels rise, anger creeps in, what little mindfulness you have goes out the window with an urge to shake your fist, road rage begets the “effenheimer” and the entire day starts out on the wrong foot because your once peaceful and unified "group" began infighting over a resource. You are very alone at that point, a group of one, competing with other motorists for your piece of precious pavement...


Look, here's the deal...bikes and cars? They're just two machines that got in the middle of the proverbial human condition simply by giving us another way to label each other. A human condition that's been brewing and evolving within us since the Miocene...a constant struggle between our reactive, animal brain and our thoughtful, processing, symbolic brain. For years, bikes and cars, taking the blame for something they have nothing to do with but, again, giving us another way to label one-another as different, to group ourselves, to pick sides. A mere separation of the two I'm afraid, without really understanding the root problem, will just pass the buck to a different arena.

Groupism is at the root of this problem. To solve it, I'm convinced we can, we need to see this bigger picture, leave bikes and cars out of it and work on the mess that's between our ears. Limbic System be damned...we must overcome.

The Recreational Cyclist

To another group within the group "cycling", the club riders and racers, the bike is a recreational activity; like hunting, fishing, or...er...umm...Irish road bowling. The problem here is, seeing the bike as a pastime and the paved road a playing field has with it inherent contradictions to the motor-dominated status quo, no?

As a recreational cyclist, you're not out there trying to get anywhere, or go someplace in particular; you're just trying to get some miles in, work off the bear claw you ate for breakfast***, and catch up on a weeks worth of gossip with your buddies. Many rides, whether organized events or off the cuff fartlek style, are very social occasions...and when harassed by an automobile in this social context, it feels like someone just streaked the pitch and stole the game ball before security could lay on a good tackle. Party-pooper. And from the driver's perspective, seeing someone constantly playing in the office when you're trying to get down to the business of work has got to be akin to a good slap in the face. Socialist pig.

But stepping back and seeing both sides here, one group seeing the road as a utility and another seeing it as recreational...you can really see how this dichotomy adds to the competitive roots of the conflict...we are after all, whether we realize it or not, competing over road space.

***Because you have the self control of a starving dog you chubby bastard...ah, self-deprecating humor is so fun.

Inter-group Conflict: The Symbol

You can't look for a solution without seeing that groupism, with it's sharp and divisive claws, has torn apart what it means today to ride a bicycle on the American road. For those that do so are split into three main groups as far as I can tell: the commuter class, the club riders and racers, and the simple transportation types. Or to look at it another way, there are those that see the bike as a symbol, those that see the bike as an activity, and those that see the bike as a tool.

Choice defines this first group (which can be further classified within a spectrum ranging from those that own a car and use the bike when convenient to militant hardcore bicycle activists who have forgone four wheels and a motor entirely). For them the bicycle, whether because riding one is simply fun or provides for some higher moral calling, is a brand that's worn, identifying the commuter and defining them as someone who's made the very conscious choice not to use a car because of what it means not for just the transportation it provides.

In the context of groupism, this defining of oneself aides in the segregation on the streets with thoughts of things like: I am a cyclist, apart from the auto or from the motorist perspective, There's another damn cyclist, out in the road where they don't belong. Through a more inclusive lens however, a broader-group worldview, the definition looses much of it's meaning and a commuting cyclist's presence in the street is merely seen as adding to the great diversity of road users.

To some of these folks, the bike has come to symbolize a future free of fossil-fuel dependence; a human-powered and Eco-friendly transport attracting a kind of rider that speaks of cars as their nemesis, or even evil incarnate (bud-um bum). They have no car because in choosing automotive abstinence they are, in their minds, taking the moral high-ground in a junkie, petroleum addicted, world.

While I don’t think you can argue about our current dependence on foreign oil being a road-block to growth, that doesn't make cars evil. It makes our nearsighted view of the world a bit immoral…it makes our consumerism suspect to sustainability…it makes corporate greed seem tangible, a wet-blanket heavy on the face...but it doesn't make cars evil. If you can’t find beauty in the lines of a ’68 Ford Mustang Fastback or find mellifluous the purr of eight steel cylinders humming in mechanical perfection then maybe you’re just not a "car person", but they’re not evil. For me, I’ll always find appeal there and the sound my Honda motorbike makes when I twist the throttle open will always be music to these ears.

Maybe some of those militant cyclists do have a point though. Do any of us really want to be tethered to the teat of the gas pump for the next thirty years? I’d like to think not, yet here we are nursing away, afraid to be weaned for fear our economy will suffer for our conservatism; afraid to swallow that bitter pill even though it will make us well in the long run; afraid that to do so would spell the end of our beautiful, beautiful cars.

Maybe it's just that it doesn't feel life threatening…yet. Maybe things have to be literally life-threatening for action in the US. Our glaciers have to melt entirely along with the Antarctic ice-sheet (hey, more shipping lanes right?), the ocean must acidify wiping out fish stocks and the rising sea level shrink the great phallus of Florida...maybe then we’ll act. Too bad we couldn't see global climate change as an evil fascist dictator, hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, committing genocide, or wanton world-domination. Then perhaps?

I'll quit babbling with this; if your use of the bike is driven by hate for the burning of fossil fuels...will a roadfull of plug-in electrics charged with the sun's power bring about a new peace? Or will a Nissan Leaf right-hook you just the same as a '59 Caddy?