"People in Oregon must be poor."

[Trek420]

Since my family in Canada couldn't afford to buy a car until I was 15 yrs. old (I am the eldest), I did genuinely associate carlessness, with poverty for a long time.

How can that be? Have you seen the price of wool? You have to be rich to do this sport.

That's the odd thing about cycling. Some equate it with poverty but others .... in my poor to lower-workingclass-semi-affordable Bay Area neighborhood I had to stop riding my road bike to work. There seemed such a reaction when I moved here of "what are you doing here". With my commutermobile they don't bat an eye, just another carless person on a mountainbike nobody notices the custom paint and Mavic wheels.

Before when I lived 2 miles away but in the hills even non-cyclists knew "nice bike, nice day for a ride".

Hard question to phrase but it seems part of the issue with getting people to ride is class issues. I've often felt we must show our so called invisible cyclists, working class that "there is a cycling community, you are part of it, this is how we ride. Ride with us"

[mimitabby]

Hard question to phrase but it seems part of the issue with getting people to ride is class issues. I've often felt we must show our so called invisible cyclists, working class that "there is a cycling community, you are part of it, this is how we ride. Ride with us"

This is an issue that we were confronted with on our ride Saturday.
we were in a rough neighborhood and a guy about our age, but who had definitely had a tougher life than us;was walking across the street with his dog, and his beater bike. He deliberately slowed down so that we would have to pause for him and told us to wait, smiling. I smiled back and said hi how ya doing, my husband was disgruntled but let me take the lead that time, because we both know that we need to be allies with guys like him, not adversaries.