I have been getting a lot of satisfaction lately from group bike rides. Community emerges naturally when people ride bikes in groups. The contrast underscores how automobile culture is a death cult: every driver gets their own sarcophagus for the living to move them through places while keeping the driver sealed apart. The driver is isolated from nature, from community, and from life at a human scale. They begin to live at a car scale where our instincts and experiences no longer bind us to our neighbours. The car is built to move at 60, 80, 100 km per hour, and to be indifferent to anything it might need to kill to do so.
Group bike rides provide a tangible vision for an idealized future without private cars. That’s a world where people who take the same routes and live in the same neighbourhoods know each other and talk: where they are neighbours. That’s a world with flower fairy girls on lavishly decorated cruiser bikes, and with guys in motorcycle helmets and body armour riding on zippy electric unicycles.
On a bike in the city, you live with the constant awareness of being killed. When riding alone, the great majority of my attention is always directed to nearby drivers and what abrupt, dangerous, or illegal thing they may do next. For drivers in the city, they may live with a mild awareness that their every careless action threatens to kill others, but they are distracted by bluetooth calls and streaming media, alienated from their fellow residents by socially atomized affluence, and shielded by public opinion and a legal system where killing someone with your car through simple carelessness is a minor and unimportant oversight which ought not to impede your happy motoring.
Being on a bike and in a car are two very different experiences – with the first being so much more connected with surroundings.
After years of road riding, knee limitations kept me from cycling.
Use of an electric bicycle has opened the world of cycling again and it feels very very good.
I have not returned to group rides, but about 25% of the time go on a ride with a friend
Cars and oil are Canada’s biggest industries. Opposing them consigns you to political irrelevance in the Gulf Islands.
“The activities that once brought us together now drive us apart. Where once we travelled to work on buses, trams and trains, now, partly as a result of massive state investment in roads coupled with the declining availability of public transport, many have little choice but to travel by car. It is not just that this means we stop talking to each other, but that when we drive, society becomes an obstacle. Pedestrians, bicycles, traffic calming, speed limits, the law; they all become a nuisance to be wished away. The more we drive, the more bloody-minded and individualistic we become.”
Monbiot, George. Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. Verso, 2017. p. 60
“I think it’s analogous to the same way that people are more aggressive behind the keyboard,” she said. “Being in a car gives us a sense of anonymity and deindividuation. It’s a kind of psychological barrier between us and other people.”
Being in a car also creates a barrier that make it difficult for drivers to read each other’s intentions, which means a harmless beep can be perceived as an aggressive honk.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-road-rage-1.7306230
China roads blocked by thousands of cyclists in night quest for dumplings
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8lxly6xd1o
It started as a social media quest for breakfast dumplings, but ended with thousands of cyclists bringing traffic gridlock between two cities in central China.
What should have been a boost to the ancient city of Kaifeng’s economy backfired when the trend went viral – tens of thousands on rented bikes cycled through the night from nearby Zhenghou.
A six-lane expressway between the two cities quickly filled with cyclists as police took to loudspeakers urging them to leave. Bike rental firms warned they would remotely lock bikes taken out of Zhengzhou.
The event is part of a trend where young Chinese are travelling cheaply at a time when the economy is faltering and job prospects are scarce.
It began with four university students who cycled for 50km (30 miles) from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng in June to try guantangbao, a type of soup dumpling.
Tens of thousands of Chinese college students went cycling at night. That put the government on edge
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/11/china/china-kaifeng-night-bike-craze-crackdown-intl-hnk/index.html
Hong Kong
CNN
—
They arrived in huge numbers on shared bikes after pedaling 30 miles in the evening chill, pumped by the adrenaline of youth and the thrill of embarking on a spontaneous adventure with friends.
Nighttime bike rides to Kaifeng, an ancient city in central China’s Henan province known for its historic sites and soup dumplings, have been all the rage among college students in the nearby provincial capital Zhengzhou – a trend initially encouraged by the government as it sought to promote local tourism.
But now, officials are scrambling to curb the craze by deploying police and closing bike lanes after its popularity appears to have gotten out of hand. Tens of thousands of cyclists brought intercity traffic to a standstill, while piles of discarded bikes overwhelmed the streets of Kaifeng, leaving commuters in Zhengzhou struggling to find bikes to ride home.
Authorities cited traffic disruptions and safety concerns for the clampdown on the impromptu gathering.