What Does Bicycling Mean in Rural Towns? Madness.

Reimagine Rural highlights the upcoming South Dakota Bicycle Summit in Pierre January 21--22. RR's Mike Knutson asks what bicycling means for rural communities.

I can tell you that in my community, bicycling means, "That guy's nuts!"

I haven't ridden my bike as much this winter as I'd like. But on one of the milder days before Christmas, I threw on a couple layers and looped around Lake Herman to town on my trusty GT mountain bike. No major snow tech required: just my usual knobby tires, my hiking boots instead of my light biking shoes, my backpack warmly hugging my shoulders and tummy, and my blaze orange hat and reflecto-ankle straps to say, "Hey! See me! Don't run me over!"

It was a perfect winter day to ride. The south breeze was well short of lean-into magnitude. With the temp in the teens, my limbs and face didn't freeze and the snow on the road didn't melt. A nice coat of clean, crumpy snow (you know, crump, crump, the sound your feet make) gives better traction than warmer slick snow, and it's much nicer to ride over than the gritty road slush of 30 degrees.

Yet when I stopped at the library, neighbor and trusty librarian Bruce looked at my gear and couldn't believe I'd come on two wheels. His disbelief fit the default assumption of nearly everyone in Madison that bicycles get put away in November and don't reappear until April. What few bike racks we have around town will remain buried under snowpiles until nature takes its course. Even during those blessed six mild months, bicycles are still an exceptional form of transportation. A good friend once deemed it unthinkable that he would impregnate his work clothes with a mile's worth of sweat to ride his bike across town to the office.

To their credit, I've had generally good experience with my neighbors giving bicycles wide berth on the roads. I don't see much automotive hostility toward bicycles. But maybe motorists are just swerving wide left to avoid catching that two-wheeler's madness.

I have heard an undercurrent of macho denigration of bicycling. Occasionally when I mention my love of bicycling and encourage others to adopt two-wheeled transportation, some opposing comments go beyond the perfectly reasonable "How do I haul my tools and timber to work?" to anti-cyclist sentiment couched in language that says, "Bikes are for sissies." And I know one or two manly-man types locally who mutter imprecations about my skinny bike clothes.

The rejection of bicycling by much of rural culture seems at odds with what we think rural culture is about. Supposedly our prairie pioneer spirit embraces simple living, physical labor, self-sufficiency, and even hardy withstanding of the elements. Bicycling does all four: fewer moving parts, travel under your own power, a mechanical system you can maintain and fix yourself, and the occasional thrilling race with an afternoon thunderstorm.

Yet rural culture views bicycling as madness... or at best, occasional recreation, perhaps a commercial media event, but not a normal part of daily existence.

That's just one more part of rural culture for us to change.