60 year old women going to the store on bicycles are a really common sight in other parts of the world. Unfortunately, the deliberate restructuring of roads, suburbs, and community/transportation layout after WWII in the U.S. crowned the automobile as supreme king and aggressively discouraged both bicycle and walking as means of transport. This resulted in the current situation where cycling is considered to be either a sport or recreation rather than simply a form of normal transportation.
The average civilian is afraid to ride a bicycle anywhere except on designated recreational 'paths'. Roads are not designed here to make bicycling safer, and aggressive drivers are not punished or educated to 'share the road'. Bicyclists get yelled and cursed at to 'get off the road' and to 'get off the sidewalk'.
Even small town or suburban kids and teens who used to typically ride their bikes to school are now driven to school even when it's 8 blocks away. America is 'car world', and sadly, any ordinary citizen using their bike to go to the store is typically considered an anomaly, whether they're 12 years old or 70.

Hopefully this will slowly change. Like it or not, the recession is creating a situation where roads are deteriorating, gas is more and more expensive, people are losing their health insurance and thus want to walk and bike to stay healthier, people are losing their jobs and looking for alternatives to going everywhere by car. This is both bad and good depending on how you look at it, but it will create a scenario where we are going to be seeing more average citizens riding their bikes to the store, and eventually such a sight won't be a cause of amazement.