‘Ride to Work’ (Free Press, May 28) is an admirable objective, as the number of bikes on the road increases exponentially with the promise of summer.
The tires on bicycles passing by our front door have changed from phat to fat to skinny, and with that promise there is also the prospect of another silly season among some local cyclists.
It is to be hoped that the near-disastrous lack of road sense and knowledge, occasionally evident over previous seasons, will fade quickly like a bikie with the bonk.
For instance, last summer witnessed a young man, helmetless, riding south on Second Avenue during the busiest time of day, with a child still young enough to be in a onesie, bouncing on his knee with every revolution of the pedals.
Or the young woman who, vaguely in control of her bicycle, rigid with fear, on the wrong side of the road and with two wee ones on a behind-the-seat carrier, wobbled down the hill on to the Coal Creek bridge and barely made it across. On the sidewalk.
Or those who considered themselves courteous by calling to you from behind, ‘On your left!’. On the sidewalk.
Or all those bikies who consider stop signs merely decorative, if they consider them at all.
Or the parents who armour up their kids but ride helmetless themselves.
Such riders had their forerunners; those who refused to wear helmets when they were mandated in 1979. Many still claim that such a mandate is a threat to individual freedom.
Unfortunately, those of us who accepted the mandate as common sense do not have the individual freedom to redirect our tax dollars away from repairing their helmetless brains when they hit the dirt and harpoon a power pole.
As poet Alexander Pope wrote, ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’, and we can perhaps anticipate a betterment of both technique and approach through Cycling Fernie, 2024…and right quick, too, Only last week two riders were spied pedalling down Second Avenue, one texting, the other on a selfie; hands off handlebars, helmetless, either unclear on the concept or, arguably, brain dead.
In another place, at another time, we rode where anyone on a bike was considered part of the cycling community. We acknowledged brother and sister roadies and learned where and how to ride and to respect the space of other riders and vehicles.
Perhaps ‘Ride to Work’ and its partner, Cycling Week 2024, will encourage a communal cycling interest where younger - and quite a few older - riders will learn cycling sense and protocol.
JC Vallance,
Cokato