Recently a lot of people have asked us what we're doing for Bike Month. In fact, I've heard that question about as often as other bike shop FAQs like the Thursday afternoon favorite "Will this be ready by Friday? I want to ride this weekend" or 'Will this make me faster?" (If you're curious, the answers to those are usually a weary "yes" and a philosophical discussion, respectively.)

The Bike Month question has been a hard one for me to answer. We're a small shop, but we usually manage to put on a couple of special events—a darn good commuter course, for example, or a Bike to Work Day coffee-and-croissant reception. This year? Nothing. Not a tiny tube-patching seminar. Not a croissant crumb. Nothing. I've had a massive guilt storm brewing over this for weeks, and I'm afraid it will have to be hashed out in public. The simple and glib answer to the question is "Nothing. Every month is Bike Month here." There is a certain amount of truth to this, but it misses the point. Yes, TTR Bikes prioritizes the needs of transportation cyclists, commuters, and other everyday riders who get lip service during Bike Month but can sometimes feel marginalized in the bike business. Yes, we are very active in local bike advocacy . . . every month. But Bike Month is bigger than that—the amplification of the Bike Month message can inspire people to work to create the connected, sustainable communities that we want, and can serve to motivate people who are generally interested but haven't made the connections that make the next step—the active step—feel safe and possible.

This article from yesterday's NYT caught my eye for a few reasons. Ignore the standard (for the last couple of decades, anyway) spectacle of General Motors's goofy effort to appeal to younger customers and check out the data:

"In 2008, 46.3 percent of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses, compared with 64.4 percent in 1998, according to the Federal Highway Administration, and drivers ages 21 to 30 drove 12 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 1995.
Forty-six percent of drivers aged 18 to 24 said they would choose Internet access over owning a car, according to the research firm Gartner...In a survey of 3,000 consumers born from 1981 to 2000...Scratch asked which of 31 brands they preferred. Not one car brand ranked in the top 10"

There are certainly many possible reasons for this, but it seems pretty clear that some of it owes to young peoples' increased ambivalence towards cars and car culture as compared to previous generations.

Here's the money quote, from the consultant GM has hired to give them a, um, hip replacement. Or a relevance transfusion. Or whatever.