What is a Bike Person?

This post was precipitated by a couple of days spent last week with Adrienne, who co-authors the blog Change Your Life, Ride a Bike! and her husband, who came for a visit. They brought their bikes, and we had a great time riding around, discussing all manner of topics, only occasionally bicycle-related. It got me thinking about the idea of “bicycle people” and “bicycle culture.”

It seems endemic to human nature to assign group identities to individuals. This appears to be reasonable on an evolutionary level, since identifying a person as a member of a group hostile to one’s own would be important for survival. Likewise, identifying friendly people and even potential mates as members of congenial groups, or assigning positive group characteristics to the groups we are most likely to join, helps us identify what is worthwhile and positive about ourselves. As much as we like to think of ourselves as solitary apes, we really do thrive as members of groups.

The problem, of course, comes when the identity of the group is taken to stand for the identity of the individual, or when others make assumptions about people based only on the characteristics of the group they are perceived to belong to.

Both Adrienne and I run bike blogs, we both ride quite a bit, and (I’m making an assumption here) we both spend a fair amount of time thinking about bikes and riding, so it seems reasonable to assume that we might talk mostly about bikes. This was not the case at all. Our bikes were, of course, physically present, but they were simply our transportation. Granted, we discussed their finer points and virtues, compared notes on little squeeks and rattles, talked a bit about strategies for urban riding, etc. The bikes were a commonality, to be sure, for we wouldn’t have even met were it not for bikes, but they do not define us as people, or limit the good we can see in others.

It is a common lament in Bike Blog Land how divided the broader “bike culture” can sometimes be. Every kind of bike and every style of riding has its own group of devotees, and every group has a set of perceptions about every other group. This is often lamented in terms of the possibilities for collective action that are lost by dividing “amongst ourselves.” The assumption is that we all have a shared set of concerns and interests if we could just get beyond all the silly posturing and attitudes. But what if we don’t?

Automobile drivers (which many bicyclists also are) don’t typically feel a sense of underlying kinship with other drivers. In fact, most drivers tend to have a pretty low opinion of other drivers. Why should I have (or want to have) a favorable impression of someone or friendship with them just because they choose the same mode of transportation as I do?

Bike bloggers also tend to emphasize the great people we meet while riding, but we also tend to assume to some degree that they are great because they also ride bikes. But what if that has nothing to do with it? What if some people are just nice and we get along with them really well, and what if some people are just jerks and we would rather not spend time with them? What if riding a bike has absolutely nothing to do with it?