Last year I bought a copy of Eugene Sloane’s Complete Book of All-Terrain Bicycles. I got it because I was buying another book from Better World Books or a similar used books online retailer, and I needed to spend a few more dollars to hit the free shipping threshold. Old bicycle books usually fall into the “a few more dollars” category, so I added it to the cart. I wasn’t particularly looking for this book, but I’m a sucker for old bike books, ones that offer a window into what cycling was like in older eras.
Eugene Sloane is a well-known bike book dude, as he was the man who wrote the first modern American bike book in 1970: The Complete Book of Bicycling. This was “the bible” for cyclists for quite a while, as Sloane covered choosing a bike, maintenance and repair, riding skills, and safety. 1970 was when the Bike Boom really got underway: Boomers were questioning the automobile’s central role in American culture, and also realized they needed more exercise. 1At the same time road bikes, then called 10-speeds, were becoming more common on these shores as they were increasingly imported from Europe first, then East Asia soon afterwards.
The Complete Book of Bicycling was successful, and Sloane updated it several more times, the last update in 1995. It was an invaluable tool for many. But like many things that are the singular vision of a strong-willed individual, Sloane’s preferences and prejudices were not-so-subtly introduced into the cycling mainstream, and with little other points of reference at that time, became “accepted wisdom”. To wit: Sloane did talk about three speed maintenance in the earlier editions, as more adult Americans would have that in 1970 than a more exotic ten speed. But he couldn’t disguise his disgust for them, pointing anyone he could towards “real” road bikes if they wanted to be “real” cyclists. The irony of course is that most of those ten speeds were stripped down machines that would need add-ons for carrying stuff and commuting, whereas a Raleigh Superbe would come with fenders, chainguard, rear rack, and lighting via Dynohub, a machine all-dressed for daily use. Few other “serious” bikes were that well endowed.2
Of course, someone’s preferences are influenced by experience. Eugene Sloane started bike commuting in the early ’60’s, when this was pretty much unheard of in the US. (Or Canada, for that matter.) Sloane’s first commute consisted of a 24 mile roundtrip to downtown Detroit from the suburbs. He had to bike on busy roads with nil in the way of bike infrastructure, so he had to bike fast. A light road bike from Europe would be the logical machine for this commute, a Raleigh Sports would not do.3 His mode of travel was so unusual that the Detroit Free Press did a profile on him in 1964. I’m sure most people reading that profile thought Sloane was “crazy”, yet a light bulb went off in the heads of a few readers, who then were inspired to commute on their own. Bike commuting in this era was A Heroic Act, and Eugene Sloane was a highly unique individual in a time when maybe a few hundred to thousand people bike commuted in America. He stood out.
*****
There’s a natural tendency in us to elevate the heroic, the people who stand out. It’s only natural that this would also happen in the world of cycling. The sport side is all about heroics, the glorification of elite racers like Eddy Merckx. Racers look up to these folks, aspire to be like them. I don’t bike race, have had no inclination to and probably won’t. I’m more aware of the heroics on the non-racing side of the bike world. While there’s not podiums or prizes for the most part, there still is a tendency to elevate certain individuals because of achievement, even if they don’t wear spandex. Sloane is a good model of what I’m talking about.
When I was riding around San Diego last year, I thought about two cycling individuals who called “America’s Finest City”4 home at some point, both fitting the heroic mold: John Forrester, the father of Vehicular Cycling, and Clifford Graves, the founder of the International Bicycle Touring Society (IBTS). Both were elite, and more importantly elitist cyclists, but in different ways: For Forrester, one had to be able to bike at higher speeds in regular traffic without separate facilities to be considered a “real” cyclist rather than an “incompetent” (his words) one. For Graves, one needed to be well heeled and/or connected (and preferably white)5 to participate in one of his expensive group bike tours–you can be sure that camping was never part of them. This was not “Cycling For Everyone”. But Forrester’s views on cycling were prominent for many years, his anti-infrastructure outlook was de facto bike policy in the US from the 70’s into the early ’90s, at least. Graves is more obscure, as he passed away around 1986 and the IBTS has evolved, but those 70’s bike books I so love to pick up definitely talk about what he did.
And it’s not just about folks in the past, nor is it just racing, as I’ve definitely seen heroic trends in contemporary “alt” cycling. Even when we say we eschew things like “performance” or “competition”, these qualifiers still sneak back in, dressed in flannel and jorts instead of spandex. We’re enthralled by bikepacking, bike touring’s more rough-and-tumble cousin, where the threat of cars is traded for the difficulty of remote, challenging terrain. We buy supple tires because we think we’ll achieve the performance level of that company’s head, someone who completed a mostly-unpaved, mountainous 300 mile “not a race” race6 in thirty hours, then take a split second at the finish and decide to bike the rest of the way home, another 200 or so miles, without even pausing. We follow the GPS tracks of self-supported endurance cyclists trying to get the FNT (fastest known time) on the Great Divide mountain bike route or the Trans-Am. We applaud those cyclists who complete a coast-to-coast tour, a definitely admirable achievement, so we feel bad when we aim for that goal but only manage to get to Chicago.
Let me be clear: There is nothing necessarily wrong with elevating extraordinary individuals or aiming for big achievements. It’s ingrained in our history and culture, and it’s futile for one person to change that. And there is nothing wrong with the people I mention above (with the exception of John Forrester7) or the things they do. I may not always dig them, but that’s just my opinion.
What I’m driving at, is this: We need more everyday bike heroes. When the simple act of cycling is made to seem A Heroic Act, it means we have less cyclists. I’m sure most of us want to see more butts on bikes, including most of the heroes mentioned above.8 If we only concentrate on the big deal, “epic” trips, if we only talk about those who do endurance cycling or long/remote tours, we scare off the people who just want to ride a few miles to get some exercise or get somewhere without a car. Fifty-odd years ago being a bike commuter in the United States was definitely a Herculean feat, riding on roads that had been (re)designed for exclusive automobile use. Things are by no means perfect now, but we’ve come quite a ways since then. So let’s stop carrying the belief systems of riders who had to defy odds in order to simply ride.
And don’t interpret my grousing above as sour grapes, or that I have some desire to be one of these heroes. I do what I do, and while I hope it connects with others, I don’t want to be on any kind of pedestal. I just want to see utility bicycling actually take hold in the US. And that’s not going to happen if we keep on making out cycling as a rarified act done by rarified people.
- I should note that Sloane was not a Boomer. Born in 1916, he was part of my grandparents generation who served in World War II. By the time of his Detroit Free Press profile, he was 48, the same age as me. It’s amazing to think how late in life he took up cycling. ↩︎
- Someone will probably point out that there were French bikes, like randonneur-styled ones, that would come so equipped. True, but on these shores the only French bikes you’d most likely find would be bare-bones Peugeots and Gitanes, not Alex Singers. (There were a few over here, but they were imported individually by someone in the know.) Other European countries (and Japan) also made well set up city bikes, but were rarely if ever seen in the US. British three speeds with racks and fenders were way more common. ↩︎
- Though in this obit from the Chicago Tribune, they note he started commuting on a “heavy” three speed. It could have been British, or maybe an American make, like Schwinn or Columbia. This was most likely because it was the best option available when he started commuting in 1962. By 1964, with a couple years of experience under his belt, he had switched to a lightweight ten spped. ↩︎
- This nickname is obviously self-chosen, probably by those residents who consider perfect weather and ocean proximity the most important factors. I found SD not bad, but not that fine. ↩︎
- Many years ago I read Graves’s long out of print self-published memoir/autobio, My Life on Two Wheels. He would go into great detail about those who participated in his tours, noting their station in life/what company they were president of/etc. He kept pointing out the Japanese-American heritage of one woman (as if it mattered) when the ethnic backgrounds of others were hardly mentioned. The coup de grace: A slur pertaining to Mexicans was also used, in a book published in 1985, one so egregious that I’m sure an editor would have excised it. ↩︎
- In alt cycling, even when something is ostensibly not about performance, it will get co-opted by those who cannot see the world in any other way. ↩︎
- Seriously, F– that guy. He pretty much single-handedly held back bicycling infrastructure in the US for decades. ↩︎
- Again, John Forrester is the exception here, as he pretty much did not care if more people were cycling, and only would recognize people as true cyclists if they cycled the way he wanted them to. ↩︎
Urban Adventure League 
Great post, and a laudable perspective. I think part of the problem in this backwards country is that, given the state of cycling infra in the US – without exception – any truly everyday rider is a minor ‘hero,’ inasmuch as they will necessarily make their way around their city without a consistent, connected, network properly designed for their safety and well-being. I still believe that the only way to normalize everyday cycling, and to increase the number of such riders, is building what heretofore we refuse to build.