When I've shown the documentary in my class, students are always shocked by the fact that he rode his folding bike from the airport to the race. He may have taken a route similar to this one:
But see, this isn't weird. Riding a bicycle to get places is not weird, it isn't crazy, it isn't just for insane people who have vendettas against cars, it isn't just for vegans.
Bicycles have always been fantastic at getting people around, they are efficient, can be modified to do all sorts of great things like carrying kids, cargo, even other bicycles.
Bizarre is the fact that Wouter wanted to run the Barkley, one of the most tortuous ultra-marathons in the world and famous for crushing even the most accomplished psychos who love this sort of thing like Gary Robbins.
In the US, slow progress is being made. The number of bike trips taken by Americans has steadily increased since the 1970s and exploded in some places in the US. Apparently in Portland, nearly 6% of all trips are taken by bicycle.
But that is seen as weird by the majority of Americans. But it isn't weird, the only reason we think that is because we've been trained to think that.
Elsewhere, the culture of cycling to get places is completely, absolutely, majestically the norm. It isn't just in Copenhagen where people think it is normal to ride bikes.
It is certainly true that US cities lack the infrastructure to make cycling as safe as it is in other countries where people don't feel the need to wear helmets because riding a bike is inherently pretty safe until cars are involved hitting the people riding bikes.
And helmet laws discourage riding, which, as Chris Boardman so eloquently pointed out, makes people significantly less healthy. Mandatory helmet laws are seen as being so important but have never been shown to decrease head injuries.
This too is simply a cultural problem, a culture that believes that cycling itself is dangerous and weird is incapable of seeing that it isn't cycling that is dangerous, it is the way that people operate motor vehicles that is dangerous to everyone around them and in them.
And this has all sorts of incredibly negative effects on public health. Boardman writes: “In the UK one in six deaths – nearly 90,000 per year – is as a result of physical inactivity related disease including diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Clearly, any measure proven beyond doubt to reduce people’s likelihood to travel by bike, will almost certainly kill more people than it saves.”
But it is only terrifying because of drivers. Sometimes they are just ignorant about the rules regarding bikes in roads, sometimes (a lot of the time) they are just not paying attention, and sometimes they are belligerent and homicidal.
But the problem has nothing to do with me and my bike. But Americans can't see it that way because of the way they've been trained to view people on two wheels. Legally it is basically ok to hit and kill someone on a bike as long as you don't flee the scene and say you are sorry. Real cycling infrastructure always faces huge obstacles and takes decades to happen. Then as soon as it is in place for some time, most residents love it, even the people that don't ride bikes.
But the act of riding from the Knoxville airport to Frozen Head State Park to run the Barkley Marathons is not weird. It isn't unsafe, even though Wouter didn't wear a helmet.
Why would he? He knows cycling is safe because he grew up thinking that and has lived it.
Maybe someday America will realize it too.
PS - When I think of Wouters, I cannot help but think of Wouter Weylandt. Cycling can be dangerous sometimes, even for people who do it for a living. But those times are astonishingly few and far between even for the guys who take insane risks because they are racing down mountains in packs and in and out of cars, etc. RIP WW
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