Embracing My Inner Magpie Leads To Englightenment (Or, Being More Informed About Cycling Advocacy, Anyway)

One thing you learn (sometimes, anyway) as you get older is to accept what you are and work with it--or let it work for you.

For a long time, I tried to suppress my inner magpie.  So, yes, I'll admit it:  I like pretty, shiny things, especially if I can recognize my own reflection in them. Then again, given what I've just said, a pretty, shiny thing is something that will, by definition, allow me to recognize my own reflection.  And vice-versa.

OK, enough of these extremely amateurish philosophical ramblings.  I accept that I like looking at pretty,shiny things and it leads me to images like this:

Instead of turning my nose up at this two-wheeled contraption (which is, however you define it, a bicycle), as I might have done not so long ago, I allowed myself to be drawn in by the pretty, shiny lights.  It led me to blog, which also contains this image:

That blog, is the most important find of all: Chicago Bicycle Advocate. I looked at a few posts on either side of the ones containing those photos.  The stories in them are all-too-familiar to urban cyclists:  getting doored (been there, done that!), a police officer who struck a cyclist and lied about it and  a driver who darted in front of a cyclist and tried to blame the cyclist for the ensuing crash.  But there are also inspiring stories, like that of the 13-year-old girl who came up with an idea for a signal system after seeing a man "doored" while she rode with her mother.

In reading those posts, and others, I was impressed by the level of analysis and clarity in discussions of the issues involved with accidents and other incidents involving cyclists.  I am going to subscribe to it, even though I live nowhere near Chicago.

Hooda thunk it:  Embracing my inner magpie has enhanced my understanding of the legal issues around cycling!

A Rocket In His Pocket

We've all heard the declaration, "I know it when I see it".  Most of us have probably used it, or some expression that means more or less the same thing.  Nobody knows who first uttered it, but it's most often attributed to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in an obscenity case.  He admitted he couldn't define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it. I'd love to know how he, or anyone else knows!;-)

(By the way:  He decided that the work in question wasn't pornography.)

I think most people would respond in the same way as Justice Stewart if asked to define a "bicycle".  Just about everybody agrees that it has two wheels.  (That, after all, is the literal definition of the word.)  I think most would also say that it has pedals, or is powered by human energy in some way or another.

Very few people, I believe, would define anything with a motor on it as a bicycle.  Even fewer, I think, would say that a bicycle is powered by a rocket.

 

That makes the record held by Francois Gissy questionable, to say the least.  His 263KPH (163MPH) ride is listed as the land speed record for a bicycle.  At least one rider has reached 260 KPH with his own feet:  He was paced by a racing car, but pedaled to his record nonetheless.

Cycling Out Of Poverty?

Time was, not long ago, when one "graduated" from riding a bicycle.  In the US, that usually happened (and, sometimes, still happens) when someone gets his or her driver's license.

In much of the world, though, people have left their bicycles behind when they moved up on the socio-economic ladder--or when automobiles and petrol became more affordable.  Some of the newly-affluent (or middle-class) have continued to cycle for recreation, but for the most part, new motorists distance themselves from motorless two-wheeled vehicles in much the same way they might try to get as far away from the slums and working-class districts in which they had been living.

The phenomenon I've just described happened with increasing frequency in Europe:  It seemed that I saw fewer and fewer cyclists on each trip I took from 1980 until 2001.  Lately, though, there's been a resurgence in cycling, mainly among young people,in northern European cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen.  In the Danish capital, people who can easily afford the high auto and petrol prices choose to cycle because it's easier to navigate the city's traffic on two wheels, and because it's a way to de-stress.

We are also seeing people cycle because they can, though perhaps on a lesser scale, in some North American cities like Portland, San Francisco, New York and Montreal. However, in urban areas of emerging countries like China, the bicycle is still seen as something one escapes from, rather than on:  In Beijing in particular, automobiles are signs of prosperity and two wheels spin in a cycle of downward mobility.

However, there are still parts of the world in which the bicycle can be a vehicle out of poverty, so to speak.  One such place is East Africa, where New York-based Bicycles Against Poverty sells bicycles to local people on installment plans matched to their circumstances and conducts repair workshops, among other things.  

The best part, though, is that BAP engages with local communities by buying bicycles from Roadmaster, a Ugandan manufacturer--and, best of all, training local staff to conduct workshops and in financial management.  Bicycle distribution is determined by the answers received on applications; as the organization's website says, BAP "aims to strike a balance between an individual's need for a bicycle and their (sic) ability to pay for it".

It will be interesting to see where this model leads those who buy the bikes. One cause for optimism is that the BAP model seems to avoid the colonial paternalism of too many aid programs, which almost invariably leads to mismanagement and corruption. Will that lead local people to develop their own sustainable communities?  Or will prosperity lead them away from the bicyles?