Are You A Cave Man?
There was an interesting question raised on the Commute By bike blog yesterday, as to why the world at large seems to view cyclists as “Kooks, Freaks and Weirdos”. Basically in societies where the car has usurped the bicycle as the mode of transport of choice about town, people riding bikes are very much in the minority.
So the media take on it tends to be that people riding bikes must be a special class of the lunatic fringe. Stands to reason, because otherwise they’d be in cars, right?
I have a different take on it though. I started riding a bike again, primarily because I had what I believe alcoholics call a “moment of clarity” about four years ago. While sitting in a queue of traffic, I realised that . . .
- Riding a bike is almost certainly as fast, if not quicker than driving, when door-to-door journey times are considered
- Peak oil is a-coming. Might be in 2040, might be in 2011, might be 2008.
- At the same time, oil demand is going up. So prices will really take off.
- Environment and green stuff and CO2 and polar bears and things like all that seemed to be a problem that I was contributing to.
So I needed a change in my mindset. I started cycling to my local clients (>90% of them are within 14 miles of home). Along the way, I discovered that riding a bike is FUN - precisely the reason I used to spend all day riding when I was a kid.
So now I want to get as many other people onto their bikes, to spread the luurve.
Along the way there have been risks - financial and physical. Buying bikes and stuff did take some money (though not as much as I’d have spent on fuel for the car), and I had to learn to mix it with the traffic again. In short, I acted like a pioneer, and did lots of new stuff just for the heck of it:
And now my mission in life is to go back, and tell the Settlers to get the wagon trains saddled up (or whatever it is you do with wagon trains), ‘cos I’ve discovered something they’re just going to love when they get there.
The problem is that there are CAVE men around - the media (”Shock Horror: Duffy Rides Without Helmet. In A Supermarket Too!”), many local councils, the police, Jeremy Clarkson drivers, drivers’ organisations, etc, etc.
So here’s a question for you: Where are you on this continuum? More to the point, where do you think the majority of people would place you - alongside the kooks, freaks and weirdos?
Nicely done. I love that graph.
With bikes I’m definitely a pioneer, although sometimes I’m a borderline settler, and as far as mobile phones go I’m somewhere behind the tail of the Cavemen section.
I’d add though that I don’t try and scare people into not having mobile phones…
Though some people do. Remember all those “Mobile Phone Base Station Made My Kid A Psychopath” stories? And then there’s WiFi. You can’t see it, yet it transmits data around your house. That simply has to be dangerous.
“Completely Against Virtually Everything” heh heh
There is a lot of change on the way, and it’s gonna be imposed whether the CAVE men like it or not. It won’t be comfortable for anybody, but the flexibility of the pioneers will (hopefully) be an asset.
I’m probably not a Pioneer, but high-Settlers territory. Or maybe I am a Pioneer; I don’t know. Not that many other people commute by bike in Bath, that’s for sure, but I’m a recent convert since changing jobs.
Re: wifi. It’s Silent Blinking Death, dontcha know
?
http://miscellanea.wellingtongrey.net/2007/05/27/the-truth-about-wireless-devices/
I guess that while I lived in the UK I was definitely in the green “pioneers” section. However, over here in NL it’s difficult to do anything on a bike which isn’t in the yellow “settlers” bit. Even commuting on a recumbent isn’t that weird. I see several others as I go along.
A few years ago my work involved getting computers to communicate via early TETRA radio. Some Motorola handsets that I was using had very amusing health warnings on the packaging which could be summarised as follows: “If the handset interferes with your pacemaker, try holding it in your other hand so that it’s further away”.
My favourite response to telling people I was riding to work was from a friend, who touched my arm and said “Well I think you’re very brave” in the tone of voice you might reserve for someone with an incurable disease.
The weird thing about my commute is that it doesn’t really save me money anymore and doesn’t really save time (traffic moves quite nicely at the times I’m riding). It’s just a lot more fun than sitting on my arse in some sweaty metal box, and my exercise for the day is done in the time I’d spend doing that sitting on my arse.
[...] I’m really enjoying Karl’s blog. Of note is the recent entry, Are You A Cave Man? [...]