this week's navel-gazey post
This Week's Navel-Gazey Post is brought to you by the hula hoop: "The hula hoop. You know - for kids!"
Grist:
To be a successful adult, apparently, you have to drive. Cycling is for children; cycling is for losers. In this view, it's fitting that the pinnacle of the sport of cycling is the Tour de France. (Implied snicker about France as a symbol -- unfair, of course -- of all that's cowardly, effeminate, and weak.)
Call this Bicycle Shame.
Oh, one other thing. A variant of Bicycle Shame that's increasingly heard in Cascadia's [Washington] transportation debates is that cycling is elitist. It's for privileged, overeducated, white people. For urbanites. For intellectuals. (And they probably speak French.)
In the imagery that's typically invoked, real people -- regular people, who work real jobs and raise real families -- travel by regular means. They drive. They have no other choice.
It's a great post, so please read the rest.
One of my biggest concerns inre: graduating is finding that job that's in sight of some public transport and/or I can ride my bike to and from. This is not because I'm some kind of arch-cosmopolitan pussy, but, among other things, I'm trying to save the fucking world (like Doctor Who, but with more swearing), therefore, I'm somewhat obsessive about my carbon footprint and the notion that I just borrowed big heapum money for a degree in radical enviro philosophy in order to save said fucking world makes it seem silly to run out now and buy a car (i.e., I give a shit, the-man-in-the-mirror, etc., etc., et. al).
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