From Your Door - By Maynard Hershon -
http://bicyclepaper.com/bp/issues/winter01/bp7.htm

I really like reading Maynard. A couple good quotes from the article:

'Bicycle ownership is nothing. Bicycle use is everything. Riding is everything.
And the riding that matters is riding INSTEAD of driving.'

'There's nothing cool about driving a car.'

'Riding bikes is good for us. Driving cars is not.'

-------------- Text included to prevent link rot ----------------------------

From Your Door - By Maynard Hershon

Last November, my buddy Donald arrived to spend a week in the sun and ride El
Tour de Tucson. One mid-week morning, we rode a mile or so to Starbucks in
street clothes. I had to talk him into it; Donald would prefer to drive.

He revealed that he'd never stepped on his Speedplay pedals (the
lollipop-looking ones) in street shoes, only in cleated cycling shoes. Meaning
he'd never ridden in walking shorts or jeans and normal shoes, only in cycling
gear.

He does not own a beater bicycle to use around town. Why would he? He doesn't
ride around town. He walks on errands near his home, but he never rides to get
anywhere. Every ride's a training ride, a workout.

Lots of us are like Donald. We depend on cars for transport. We do not think of
bikes as ways to get around. Elsewhere around the world people by the millions
use bicycles to get around. Year-round, rain, shine, they ride. We drive.

Then, I was pedaling down Mountain Avenue headed for the University of Arizona
campus to meet friends for a ride. I caught a guy at a light and said hi. He
was riding an ugly, rusty recumbent that looked homemade, or at least
unfinished. Sections of the frame had been liberated from a wedgie, or
conventional bicycle.

As we rode, I asked him about it, and he told me it'd been welded up by a local
bike mechanic, an old guy in a small shop unknown to most Tucson cyclists.

The guy on the recumbent said he rode strictly for transportation and didn't
have time for weekend rides, what we'd call recreational cycling. I asked him if
he'd been among the 6,000 who'd ridden El Tour de Tucson a few weeks earlier.

"Oh, no" he said, and asked me if I had. I did ride El Tour, I said. He looked
at me and said: "You must be a real enthusiast."

Hey, I LOOKED like an enthusiast. I had on a yellow-and-orange Giro helmet, a
thermal jacket from a club in Austin, Texas with lightning bolts and sponsor
names all over it. High-budget yellow-and-red cycling shoes, black tights and
red Elita team gloves. I rode a gleaming racing bicycle, blue with white decals
and a matching saddle.

None of that impressed him. He decided, on the basis of my El Tour ride, that I
was "a real enthusiast."

What do you suppose he meant by that? There he was, going the same speed as I
was in the Mountain Avenue bike lane. Did he mean that I was an enthusiast as
opposed to a back-and-forth cycle commuter, a veteran of the car wars?

I guess I am a real enthusiast, but I'm no more committed than that guy on the
unpainted recumbent. Hey, he rides every day. I'll bet he rides on rainy days
when the nearest I get to cycling is surfing cycling web sites.

Evidently, the guy on the rusty recumbent does not think of himself as an
enthusiast. He may feel he's a utility cyclist, a commuter, not a cycling
sportsman.

But he did not judge me to be an enthusiast on the basis of my clothing or
equipment, about which he may have known nothing. He didn't decide I was an
enthusiast on the basis of what I OWNED, but because of something I'd DONE. And
he's right. It's not about what we ride or wear. It's about what we DO. We're
cyclists because we ride.

The guy who owns the most expensive gear is not the most authentic cyclist. The
guy who bought the trick Italian bike with the team-issue pieces bolted on it is
not the most authentic cyclist.

The guy with the Suburu Forester with the three-rail Thule rack with a Kestrel
clipped in it is not the most authentic cyclist. The guy who bought the mint
late-70s Masi on E-Bay is not the most authentic cyclist.

The guy riding his rusty homemade recumbent is dead authentic, for sure. He's
the cyclist. Bicycle ownership is nothing. Bicycle use is everything. Riding is
everything. And the riding that matters is riding INSTEAD of driving.

The people behind the 2001 El Tour are urging us to ride our bikes to the event
and to ride home afterward. I'd like to urge you to make pedaling your bike to
and from your rides a habit. Ride from your door.

Too many of us load our bikes into or onto cars and drive them two miles to the
starts of rides. Road cyclists in the old days, in the '70s and '80s, resisted
that. Many couldn't afford cars or didn't want them. They believed that "Cars
Suck" as the T-shirt says.

It wasn't cool back then to roll up to ride starts in a car. It shouldn't be
cool today. There's nothing cool about driving a car.

Everyone does it. Driving a car doesn't set you apart. Guys who move their
mouths when they read and want to show you who owns the road drive cars. Takes
no brains, no class. Slobs who can't climb a flight of stairs drive cars. It's
easy. Preoccupied, careless people who'd never survive a mile-long bike ride
drive cars; They're safe in there with air bags and shoulder belts.

We, on the other hand, ride bikes.

Riding bikes is good for us. Driving cars is not. Riding bikes does no harm.

Driving cars does major harm. Short trips wear cars out; Bikes don't care how
long the ride is.

I'll bet you'd like to think of yourself, your way of life, as an example
tooters. I'll bet you'd like to believe that the world would be a better place
if everyone did what you do. You do feel that way, don't you, especially about
your cycling?

I thought so. Leave your car in the driveway. Ride your bike.

--------

Mark

"Cars take all the room you give them." - J.H. Crawford

-----------------------------------------
Mark Watson
Carfree Seattle
Website - http://carfree_seattle.tripod.com
Email list - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/carfree_seattle

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