My tribe

And another thing.

I am grappling to understand the identification of people as part of a tribe.  I don't get the whole tarring people with the same brush thing.  Labelling and dividing and divvying up into you and me, us and them, black and white.  It's weird.

I'm guilty of it too, you know.  I have a tendency to group together BMW drivers as being particularly  dangerous.  It does feel sometimes as though people driving "high end" cars do entitlement rather well. And selfishness too. And blindness to other people's existence. Sometimes I find myself thinking the same way about the very rich, or the tory voting. In fact, the way I find myself clumping together brexit voters is up there in, for me, in the ridiculous thought pattern.

From the inside of the group labelled as cyclists, there are, in fact, many sub groups, and lots and lots of individual human beings, and some of the sub groups overlap. Commuters, or utility cyclists are, to me, a really important group. It's bloody difficult not to find myself perched up there on some kind of moral high ground, but this is the group who, I believe, are doing something good. They are low polluting, low congesting, low impact, staying healthier through simple day to day routine. They may even be happier than those who don't, who knows.

So, I'm a cycle commuter, and a utility cyclist. I'm also a leisure cyclist. In fact, yes, put simply I'm a cyclist. But I see people on my commute who I would plonk in a sub group called people who ride bikes to do stuff. To me, those are the people who need to be looked after most. I'm someone who chooses cycling as a fun activity, I'm committed to it, I think about what I'm doing, what other people are doing, I'm aware of all manner of issues out there on the road, politics and safety and behaviour. I care, and I want change.

People who ride bikes to do stuff should be able to get on with that without all the other shit affecting them. It shouldn't require any more thought and comprehension than stepping out of the front door to walk to the newsagent.

I wish I could live in ignorance, I really do. I wish I wasn't so conscious of primary positions, secondary positions, left swipers, close passers, car door openers, exhaust fumes, pot holes, narrow roads, shared use paths that aren't. I wish I could just ride my bike to work A to B without all the thinking.