{"id":161083,"date":"2025-02-07T16:07:36","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T16:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/07\/when-you-assume\/"},"modified":"2025-02-07T16:07:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T16:07:36","slug":"when-you-assume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/07\/when-you-assume\/","title":{"rendered":"When You Assume\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Happy Friday! So here\u2019s a question for you<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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As a cyclist I\u2019ve long resented the fact that people make all sorts of assumptions about me just because I ride a bike. Like, I\u2019m automatically some sort of urbanite \u201cwoosie<\/a>\u201d with a liberal arts degree who maintains a gluten-free diet and who has never even fired a gun? I mean, sure, all those things are completely true, but you could at least take the trouble to get to know me first!<\/p>\n

So why is it then, that we\u2019ve been \u201cautomatically conscripted into the woke army,\u201d as she puts it?<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a very good question, though a funny one coming from a Guardian columnist. In a way, the answer\u2019s right there at the bottom of the article:<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the media who conscripts people for the \u201cculture wars,\u201d and if you\u2019re on the \u201cwoke\u201d side of it like the Guardian is then what better draftees than the sorts of namby pambies who ride bikes<\/a>?<\/p>\n

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Though as you can see, the article is over 14 years old, and there\u2019s no way they\u2019d use a culturally insensitive word like \u201ctribe\u201d today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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See that? Already we\u2019ve found yet another answer to the \u201cWho conscripted cyclists into the woke army?\u201d question, so if you\u2019re keeping track it\u2019s: 1) \u201cThe media;\u201d and 2) \u201cThe bike industry:\u201d<\/p>\n

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Well, good for them, it sounds like they had a powwow and decided to take their marketing in a different direction\u2013though it still doesn\u2019t address the problematic name \u201cYeti,\u201d which they appropriated from Tibetan culture and Sherpa folklore<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Quick! Somebody start a petition!<\/p>\n

Incidentally, I do feel like I have to address that Guardian photo, which was the first and maybe only time in my life I\u2019ve been the subject of a full-on Zoolander-type photo shoot:<\/p>\n

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I felt pretty silly hoisting that Scattante over my head, but I\u2019d also be lying if I said I didn\u2019t get a great big ego boost out of having a new book out and being photographed by a big-shot photographer, who I recall being a genuine and interesting guy, and who I\u2019m only now learning died back in 2019:<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m a little late, but I am going to do all those things in his memory, though I hope he won\u2019t mind that the poem may be more of a dirty limerick, because that\u2019s the only sort of verse I\u2019m capable of composing.<\/p>\n

Of course there\u2019s another far more important factor in the whole \u201ccyclists versus drivers\u201d thing, and it long predates the culture war\u2013or at least the current version of the culture war, which I guess you\u2019d summarize as \u201cwoke\u201d vs. \u201cbased\u201d or something like that\u2013which is that drivers kill cyclists<\/em>, and they started doing it almost immediately<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Yes, as the Guardian columnist points out, most cyclists also drive and all that stuff, but there\u2019s no getting around the fact that drivers kill cyclists and not the other way around, and if you ride a bike it\u2019s something you confront as soon as you experience that first close pass. Not every cyclist is radicalized because of this, though some certainly are, and I\u2019m surprised the columnist says \u201cI\u2019ve never actually met a cyclist who wants to be part of this battle,\u201d when there are hundreds of them at any given group ride or advocacy meeting. As for the rest of us, most of us do manage to successfully reconcile (or at least rationalize) our own car use with the many problems the sheer pervasiveness of motor vehicles has caused. Some of us drive reluctantly, some of us drive without hesitation, and some of us even love cars just as much as we love bikes. But I\u2019d wager even those of us in that last group have a perspective on motordom that many people who don\u2019t ride bikes lack, and it\u2019s equal parts respect for the power and danger and awesomeness of the machine, and contempt for and resentment of the many, many clueless and irresponsible people who lack that same respect. So absolutely, the idea that there\u2019s a war between cars and bikes and you\u2019ve got to pick a side is mostly ridiculous. At the same time, if you do ride a bike (or a motorcycle for that matter) odds are you\u2019ve got a certain amount of skepticism and cynicism where cars are concerned, even if you drive one yourself.<\/p>\n

Certainly if it were up to me people wouldn\u2019t automatically associate people who ride bikes with \u201cwokism\u201d or climate zealotry or herding people into 15-minute cities and making them eat bugs or any other agenda whether real or imagined. It\u2019s important to remember that not everybody fits neatly into well-defined categories. I recently stumbled on the social media feed of someone I used to know in college; it was post after post of \u201cWe need climate justice for trans people in Gaza!\u201d or whatever the latest progressive rallying cry is, interspersed with the odd screed about how the DOT needs to stop destroying New York City with bike lanes because STREETS ARE FOR CARS, two sentiments you really don\u2019t expect to see together. Some people do like their ideology laid out for them completely, like you do with a toddler\u2019s clothes, but she\u2019s more like the kid trying to dress himself for the first time who emerges from his bedroom wearing one of those swimming shirts with a pair of pajama bottoms and a pair of Spider-Man underpants on the outside. He may look ridiculous, and none of what he\u2019s wearing seems to work together, but at least he\u2019s trying.<\/p>\n

For me, cycling\u2019s about freedom and balance. Some think the vehicular embodiment of freedom is a Harley-Davidson or an F-150, but what\u2019s more free than a vehicle that requires no insurance, no registration, no license, and nothing from the energy grid in order to operate (the bicycle industry\u2019s efforts to change that last part notwithstanding)? And who knows better than the cyclist that you can\u2019t be all uptight and rigid, and that sometimes you need to lean left, or lean right, but if you lean too far left or too far right you fall over? An intrinsic understanding of the importance of self-sufficiency and balance is that is all I\u2019d assume about anybody who rides a bike. The rest is just projecting.<\/p>\n

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Happy Friday! So here\u2019s a question for you: As a cyclist I\u2019ve long resented the fact that people make all sorts of assumptions about me just because I ride a bike. Like, I\u2019m automatically some sort of urbanite \u201cwoosie\u201d with a liberal arts degree who maintains a gluten-free diet and who has never even fired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":161084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6804],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-161083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}