Bicycles in rural New York and Pennsylvania (Comments: 0)

(Originally posted at FortOrangeCycling.com.)

I spent the past few days working on a union organizing campaign in southwestern New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. This area is in severely bad shape economically. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been in a poor rural area — I do most of my organizing work in poor urban areas. The people were wonderful, as most people are, but they’re going through some very tough times.

Team RocBike member Jack Spula has often commented on his belief that many bike riders in our cities are poor and working class folks who can’t afford to drive. That theory seemed to be born out this week, judging solely by the number of bikes on the front porches of the houses I visited. Every few houses had one or more adult-sized bikes on the porch, and I saw quite a few people riding.

It didn’t occur to me until today to get all gwadzilla on things and take some photos, but I did snap a couple today. Here’s a cyclist in Sayre, PA:

He’s far away, but you can just about see that he’s rigged a nice little cargo cooler on the back of the bike — click for larger version

And here’s a cyclist in Waverly, NY:

Click for larger version