“We have met the enemy and he is us.”   Evidently, that statement was coined by Walt Kelly and used on a Pogo cartoon poster for the first Earth Day in 1970.  The idea is that we are the ones causing pollution.  It isn’t someone else doing it, it’s us doing it.

    Here we are, forty years later, and I suggest this oft quoted statement applies to the bicycle community as well.  Some of us are among our worst enemies.  Last week, I read this statement by Coach Fred on the Road Bike Rider web page:  “Two-wheeled vehicles are inherently unstable and they don’t necessarily want to go in a desirable direction.”

    So what’s the deal?  Why does Coach Fred begin his lecture by calling bicycles unstable and why does he add words like “disaster” to his short article?  I don’t know and I probably shouldn’t speculate, but I sure wish he’d think about the image he gives bicycles when he, an expert, calls them “inherently unstable.”  

    When I lived in Washington State, I belonged to the Capital Bicycling Club.  One year, the club hosted a clinic for new riders in downtown Olympia, the state capital.  The newspaper had a reporter there, maybe the TV station did too, I don’t have a TV so I don’t know.  The newspaper reporter asked what the purpose of the clinic was and the response was that “Bicycles are inherently dangerous and if you ride them, you are going to crash sooner or later.”

    There are a lot of drivers on the road who don’t want to share it with bicycles.  Heck, they don’t want to share it with each other.  That’s why they get on your rear bumper when they don’t think you’re speeding fast enough for their taste.  Their mantra is that bicycles are “inherently unstable.”  Bicycles are “inherently unsafe.”  Bicycles don’t “belong on the road.”

    I really wish cyclists would stop telling a receptive audience how dangerous and unstable bicycles are.  Riding bicycles gets us outdoors where we enrich our lives, improve our health, and extend our life expectancy.  Come on, how dangerous is that?

 

On a nicer note, I just returned -- Saturday -- from a 70 ride where I saw two other riders out.  That’s pretty good for around here; especially in January -- even though we bumped into 60°.