America Hates Bikes
America hates bikes, which is remarkable, really, because of how much Americans love them. In this, the land of the free, the bicycle represents our first taste of true freedom as children. A bicycle is an archetype for the perfect Christmas gift, and it evokes nostalgia for late summer evenings with friends, beyond the watchful eye of our parents. LeBron put it best: “it was a way of life. If you had a bike it was kind of a way to let go and be free.”
The truth is unambiguous: bicycles make for happier, healthier people. They improve urban quality of life. And they (along with trees) are pretty much the only tool we have to actually slow climate change. Bicycle commuting increased 60% in the last decade, and mountain bike sales are growing at 10% annually. People are into it; that is rad.
And so it is a shame that cyclists on the road rank somewhere between a squirrel and a dog, and according to a recent Australian study, a bit more like a cockroach. The study found that road rage toward cyclists grew from the instinctual response that people on bikes are something less than human.
This phenomenon is born out beyond the lizard brains of car commuters. In this country there is a long tradition of killing a cyclist with your car and going home to make dinner. Murder appears to be quite legal in America, as long as you kill a cyclist with a car and apologize.
“Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of riding a bike.” – President John F. Kennedy, before he was shot
Beyond regular, open aggression from motorists cyclists regularly conform to a transportation infrastructure designed to exclude them. Post-war planning directed interstate highways from the urban job centers to the distant culs-du-sac of the suburbs, so that white folks could hold good jobs but wouldn’t have to live near the scary black people.
This has gutted cities (and laid the foundation for urban displacement 2.0). It has created a reality that a car is necessary to commute to work, buy groceries, and get kids to school in much of the country – even in relatively high-density neighborhoods where things aren’t that far apart.
To suggest that we should reinvest in livable cities and sustainable transportation? Blasphemy, apparently. In the face of being unambiguously the right thing to do, bicycle infrastructure is the bane of mid-sized newspaper comment threads across the country and at the heart of my personal favorite conspiracy theory: that the UN’s initiative to improve global transportation efficiency (Agenda 21) is a Trojan Horse to establish a New World Order, impose Sharia law, establish a blue helmet occupying force, and, you know, definitely, come take all of our guns.
In spite of overwhelming evidence about the benefits (ecological, social, economic) of bicycle infrastructure and the recent enthusiasm for bicycling by Americans, America won’t have it. Get those bikes off the road!
Interestingly, at the same time that bicyclists are intimidated from American roads they are increasingly barred from American trails and forests. Over the last ten years and in Montana alone, cyclists have been excluded from about a 1,000 miles of trails where they have cherished access, contributed to stewardship, and pursued conservation solutions for decades.
In front country conversations, like where mountain biking drives rural economies left behind by boom and bust extractive industry, vitriol toward cyclists is more violent than the lawsuits in Montana. In California and Colorado, reports of booby traps and tripwires that target mountain bikers are becoming commonplace. The road rage and coal rolling that undermines widespread bike commuting is making its way to the trails just as mountain biking is being widely embraced as the best way to build confidence and healthy lifestyles in the smartphone generation.
The reality is that people love bikes because they’re fun to ride. The fact that they’re intuitive solutions for our economic, health, and environmental woes is an added bonus, and one that doesn’t carry obvious downsides. The only hope now, is that America will catch up with Americans.
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GoFundMe
Hey there,
My name is Ben, and I’m running this GoFundMe because I’m the sickest person you know. Pretty much, I go around doing sick shit with sick people, and it’s pretty hard to hold down a job when you’re this ill. And this is great, because while you’re just sitting there dying at your “career,” or whatever, you can live vicariously through me while I go to Thailand and pretend I know how to surf.
I was going to do a Patreon thing, you know, for the blog, but then I realized that I would actually have to blog, and sometimes I’m just not really feeling it, you know? You can’t force art. So mostly I’ll throw up some photos on Instagram, and if you throw me some free gear I’ll tag you in the post. I’ve got, like, literally, hundreds, of followers, and they really think I’m rad.
So basically what happened was that I’ve never really done this before but my boy Pippo just got this van and we’re going to go blow up #vanlife in BC and rip trail. It’s going to be sick. You can’t go (job, remember?), but I really want to. So throw me a few bucks and I’ll go in your place.
Incidentally, I also live in the only industrialized country on earth where people regularly go bankrupt from medical bills, so it’s pretty likely that at some point I’ll have one of these things for hospital bills, too. Probably we should get a start on that.
Mahalo, or namaste, or whatever.
b
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Notre Dame
Is it just me or is this passage from the New York Times the perfect analogy for the 21 Century’s impending environmental and economic collapse?
The crowd gasped and cried in horror when the spire fell. “Paris is beheaded,” said Pierre-Eric Trimovillas, 32.
Vincent Dunn, a fire consultant and former New York City fire chief, said that fire hose streams could not reach the top of such a cathedral, and that reaching the top on foot was often an arduous climb over winding steps.
“These cathedrals and houses of worship are built to burn,” he said. “If they weren’t houses of worship, they’d be condemned.”
Couldn’t it just as easily have been written, “‘Yeah, I mean, obviously that was going to happen,’ remarked the expert, as silently sobbing masses could not look away from the disaster.”
Man Flu: what it is, how to diagnose it, and avenues for treatment
DESCRIPTION
Man Flu is an affliction distinct to a specific subset of the male population, and is characterized by prolonged periods of woeful cries, scalding shower naps, and self-pity. Genetic sequencing has not been able to identify at-risk populations, although elevated occurrences of the disease have been observed among men who say things like, “I don’t really get sick,” and “allergies are fake,” and “just rub dirt on it.”
This strain of the flu is associated with subjective anguish that presents as far more serious than objective symptoms suggest is appropriate.
DIAGNOSIS
Man Flu is distinct from other strains of the flu. While influenza can be diagnosed by swabbing for antigens in the patients nose and throat, Man Flu tends to be be self-diagnosed as one of the following: The Black Lung, The Consumption, Plague, The Black Death, etc.
TREATMENT
The first course of treatment, especially in advanced cases of Man Flu, is for the patient to find something more pathetic and impotent than himself to share the couch. A pug serves this role excellently. In fact in many extreme cases the only thing more pathetic and impotent than the patient is a pug, roadkill, or Theresa May.
In the early stages of the ailment, soup is necessary. When congestion presents, the soup should be very spicy. If gastrointestinal symptoms develop there will be side effects, but that is a problem for later.
There is no cure for Man Flu. The only truly effective treatment is to lie on the couch and wallow in self-pity. The baleful moans of the afflicted must be within earshot of roommates and loved ones.
