I remember seeing that Slate article and figured it said where our culture still was with that category of people. Slashdot also had an article about the increase in cycling what with high gas prices here, and most comments definitely considered people who rode bikes to be a "them, not us" group, and definitely a lower echelon of so-called human. There were a couple of people posting who were cyclists and explained its benefits and those posts got good ratings for being, if I remember right, "interesting" rather than "insightful" (though I'm not sure ... but I remember figuring that yes, the overwhelming majority of nerds (slashdot is "news for nerds") seemed to be sedentary.

It's that idea that the car-centric lifestyle is righteous and good that is galling... but it's typical human behavior. If there's a change we don't want to make, we tend to defensively arrange our opinions around that change being inferior... people who have made the change, therefore, must be beneath us so we don't have to face what we don't want to face.

Whether I post depends on where my head is. I'll put something out there if I can do it constructively, because I figure some readers will be bikers too, and because I *don't* like the cliquey escalations that happen when people start feeding off each other.

I know some folks in my realm disdain me but there are 2 car-free folks in our department (and we're not even in New York ) -- and a fair number of staff folks here ride at least some of the time.