The number one question I get these days is, "Are you riding Pelotonia?"
My answer is, "No," for the reasons set forth below. But I AM supporting Pelotonia by making pledges to several of my friends who are riding. I support anything that gets more butts on bikes, so I support Pelotonia if it accomplishes that.
But I am not riding Pelotonia because:
1. Pelotonia benefits a worthy cause, cancer research, but is only tangentially about bicycling. My passion and volunteer efforts are focused on getting more people to bike and walk to work, school, etc. because I think this is the surest, perhaps only, path to personal health, environmental health and community health. I give money to cancer research through other organizations. If I were to raise $2,000 for an important cause, I would contribute it to true bicycling initiatives.
2. Getting 2,000+ people on bikes one day a year is OK, but getting an increasing percentage of our citizens biking and walking for everyday transportation would do as much or more to prevent cancer and other diseases ravaging our community and our nation. Adult and childhood obesity are rampant in our community and are contributing to cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other ailments that kill our fellow citizens and drive up health care costs. I am happy that we are researching ways to treat and cure cancer, but I think we can and should do more to reduce obesity in this country, which former surgeon general Richard Carmona says is the #1 threat to the country's health. Exercise and dieting have not made a dent in this serious problem (the adult obesity rate in central Ohio increased from 25% to 30% in the last 2 years and Columbus just broke into the "Top 10" most obese cities in the U.S.) Converting to "people powered" transportation WOULD help solve this.
3. Getting 2,000+ people on bikes one day a year does very little to reduce our carbon footprint. 42% of the automobile trips in this country are 2 miles or less and 85% are 5 miles or less. Replacing just 10% of these short auto trips with bicycle trips would have a significant positive impact on the environment (and eliminate the need to import any foreign oil). That's another reason I'm working diligently to this end.
4. A cyclist is required to raise $2,000 in pledges to ride Pelotonia (you can do a shorter ride if you raise only $1,000). This is too much money for most ordinary folks to raise. There are also lots of other, long standing charitable rides competing for dollars in these challenging economic times.......most other charity rides don't have pledge requirements this high. Many individual cyclists are not riding Pelotonia because they cannot raise this amount of money or wish to do several charity rides and need to spread their pledges around. Consequently, Pelotonia is soliciting local corporations to support the ride by encouraging and/or subsidizing their employees to participate. This is not a bad thing, but given all this, it is unlikely that Pelotonia will attract a diverse group of riders that are representative of the wonderful diversity of our community. Of course this is true of many recreational rides (although TOSRV always seems to to a good job on this score).
5. I rarely do recreational or charity rides, preferring to use my cycling and my energy for getting to work every day and using the weekends to recuperate. ( I give lots of time and lots of money to charitable causes, so don't feel the need to bike for them, too.) I do enjoy the camaraderie and tradition of TOSRV and we have started a new Hi Lo ride to put the high tech and cycling communities together (in furtherance of our vision that Columbus will have the highest tech jobs in the U.S. but we will use low tech transportation (i.e. bicycles) to get to these jobs). My hope is that new riders introduced to cycling through Pelotonia and other recreational/charity rides will start to embrace the idea of biking to work, school, the market, etc. If we work collaboratively we can change the way our community gets around and prevent/cure cancer along the way.
Here's to "More Butts on Bikes!" Go Pelotonia!
Wow. Well said, Doug. I think even Lance would say regarding Pelotonia, "It's not about the bike"
Posted by: John | July 23, 2009 at 03:32 PM