Groups of people can truly accomplish great things. Some really awful things, too, but mostly good.
What I don’t entirely understand myself is why many groups feel a need to define themselves in some part by what they’re against. I was reading Let’s Go Ride a Bike’s post about the bicycle-centric Tour de Fat (by New Belgium Brewing Company), and it sounded like a fun event that I’d go out of my way to attend someday.
Except for one thing. Apparently the event also has a strong undercurrent of anti-automobile going on, and I have trouble with that. I think bicycles are great, and I love riding. I ride to lunch often, I ride the occasional singletrack on my mountain bike, I enjoy 20-50 mile rides on the road bike, and I can have the time of my life exploring the streets of a city like NYC on a rental bike. I ride enough that people I know through business ask if that was me they saw riding down West End at lunchtime.
But I also love cars! Love ‘em. I love motorcycles and scooters, too. And so I just don’t think I can get into Tour de Fat, because rather than just celebrating the bicycle, they’re demonizing the car. Is it not possible to enjoy and promote bicycles without saying cars suck? Maybe next year they’ll drop the negativity — and get closer to town than a seven-hour drive.
July 13, 2009 at 11:05 pm
I can see what you’re saying. It was kinda fun to hate on the car for a day, though, since they push me around every other day. Plus, in a city as jam packed as Chicago, there’s really not much need for them
July 14, 2009 at 10:37 am
Fair enough! Although the Lakeshore Drive S-curve is huge fun in a sporty car, once you’re west of Lake Shore (i.e. anywhere else in Chicago), the driving’s not as fun. I’ve yet to get a bicycle up there, but maybe in the next year I’ll have a Bike Friday tikit and hop on a cheap Southwest flight with it.
July 14, 2009 at 10:57 am
Think back to high school. A lot of teenagers define their social groups not so much by what they like, but by who or what they don’t like. As they get older, people move into groups of mutual likes, but not everybody lets go of that.