Out There Monthly did a cover story on Urban Cycling in Spokane. The article talked to four daily riders and asked them the usual round of questions. In fact, the questions were eerily similar to those asked of me for a cycling related article in The Inlander last summer. It was good to see Liza Mattana sporting wool and fenders. I found it strange that some of the the other daily commuters had no fenders on their bikes. My job makes it easy to bike to work because I have clean, laundered pants and jacket waiting for me when I get there but still I would not bike to work without some fenders keeping the wet roads from striping me up the front and back.
One thing that the article did not talk about is critical mass and that is with lower case letters. I am not talking about Critical Mass where perfectly sensible cyclists engage in quixotic battle with cars, I am referring to the dynamic change in a community when more people bike. A lot of good happens when there are more people getting around by their own power. The one change that seems most relevant to the article is that driver's get used to sharing the road with us two wheelers. A lot of encounters I have had with motorists (including one last week), have gone bad because a driver is unsure of what he/she should do when faced with a tricky section of road and a biker.
There are a lot more people riding in this town. The change is coming. Making the cover of a local publication is just one more sign of it.
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