(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)
Welcome to May, the month that bicycle lovers go forth and multiply.
Now that National Bike Month lines up with the Bicycle Transportation Alliance’s Bike More Challenge and also with the Month that Portland Weather Starts Being Awesome on a Fairly Regular Basis, it seems fitting to spend some time reflecting on the way bicycles reproduce in our auto-oriented society: recruitment.
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Occasionally helping a friend, peer or family member get a hang of the necessary basics of bike transportation is one of the major joys of being a “bike person,” and it’s one of the core traditions of “bike advocacy.” Sam Oakland, the Portland State College English professor whose “Bicycle Lobby” group laid political groundwork for the Oregon Bike Bill, may have been known to more of his contemporaries as the guy who gave you advice on which streets to bike on before the city had bothered to.
Bicycling is about individualism and self-reliance. But it’s also about community, in part because it’s so obviously contagious. What’s one time you spread the contagion, or saw it spread? And how did you catch the bug yourself?
— Michael Andersen, (503) 333-7824 – michael@bikeportland.org