I live in Wisconsin and bicycle about 4,000 miles a year over a 9 to 10 month period when the roads are free of ice. I’m definitely a senior citizen and have my share of physical aliments to complain about. However, I believe the invention of the bicycle (and modern hi-tech tricycles) is one of man’s finest achievements and I find cycling to be one of my greatest pleasures in life. Too bad the automobile spoiled this for most people. The bicycle and its “human powered vehicle” variants can easily address many of mankind’s transportation and health issues. Cold, wind, rain, heat, etc. are not the real impediments to using a bicycle. Here in the US (and many other industrialized countries) we simply have succumbed to the “Car Culture” and have embraced it with more insanity than the worst drug addicts.

I live in a “nice” community that could easily do away with 90 percent of the school buses, 70 percent of the parking lots, and 40 percent of the roadways. But, this is not going to happen any time soon. In fact, most law makers here constantly advocate more pavement, more automobile accommodation, and do not want to hear about bicycles under any circumstance – although the subject is sometimes forced upon them. As long as government leadership does not promote cycling as a serious means of transportation, the average citizen is not going to risk their lives or the lives of their children trying to compete with motorized folks who are sometimes even hostile to cyclists who infringe upon “their” roads and inconvenience them.

Mass insanity is a fact of life in our current culture and it will take some pretty extreme events to jar that mindset into considering real alternatives.