By Maynard Hershon

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Last November, my buddy Donald arrived to spend a week in the sun and ride El Tour de Tucson. One mid-week morning, we rode a mile or so to Starbucks in street clothes. I had to talk him into it; Donald would prefer to drive.

He revealed that he'd never stepped on his Speedplay pedals (the lollipop-looking ones) in street shoes, only in cleated cycling shoes. Meaning he'd never ridden in walking shorts or jeans and normal shoes, only in cycling gear.

He does not own a beater bicycle to use around town. Why would he? He doesn't ride around town. He walks on errands near his home, but he never rides to get anywhere. Every ride's a training ride, a workout.

Lots of us are like Donald. We depend on cars for transport. We do not think of bikes as ways to get around. Elsewhere around the world people by the millions use bicycles to get around. Year-round, rain, shine, they ride. We drive.

Then, I was pedaling down Mountain Avenue headed for the UofA campus to meet friends for a ride. I caught a guy at a light and said hi. He was riding an ugly, rusty recumbent that looked homemade, or at least unfinished. Sections of the frame had been liberated from a wedgie, or conventional bicycle.

As we rode, I asked him about it, and he told me it'd been welded up by a local bike mechanic, a old guy in a small shop unknown to most Tucson cyclists.

The guy on the recumbent said he rode strictly for transportation and didn't have time for weekend rides, what we'd call recreational cycling. I asked him if he'd been among the 6,000 who'd ridden El Tour de Tucson a few weeks earlier.

Oh, no, he said, and asked me if I had. I did ride El Tour, I said.

He looked at me and said: "You must be a real enthusiast."

Hey, I LOOKED like an enthusiast. I had on a yellow-and-orange Giro helmet. A thermal jacket from a club in Austin, Texas with lightning bolts and sponsor names all over it. High-budget yellow-and-red cycling shoes, black tights and red Elita team gloves. I rode a gleaming racing bicycle, blue with white decals and a matching saddle.

None of that impressed him. He decided, on the basis of my El Tour ride, that I was "a real enthusiast."

What do you suppose he meant by that? There he was, going the same speed as I was in the Mountain Avenue bike lane. Did he mean that I was an enthusiast as opposed to a back-and-forth cycle commuter, a veteran of the car wars?

I guess I am a real enthusiast, but I'm no more committed than that guy on the unpainted recumbent. Hey, he rides every day. I'll bet he rides on rainy days when the nearest I get to cycling is surfing cycling web sites.

Evidently, the guy on the rusty recumbent does not think of himself as an enthusiast. He may feel he's a utility cyclist, a commuter, not a cycling sportsman.

But he did not judge me to be an enthusiast on the basis of my clothing or equipment, about which he may have known nothing. He didn't decide I was an enthusiast on the basis of what I OWNED, but because of something I'd DONE.

And he's right. It's not about what we ride or wear. It's about what we DO. We're cyclists because we ride.

The guy who owns the most expensive gear is not the most authentic cyclist. The guy who bought the trick Italian bike with the team-issue pieces bolted on it is not the most authentic cyclist.

The guy with the Suburu Forester with the three-rail Thule rack with a Kestrel clipped in it is not the most authentic cyclist. The guy who bought the mint late-70s Masi on E-Bay is not the most authentic cyclist.

The guy riding his rusty homemade recumbent is dead authentic, for sure. He's the cyclist. Bicycle ownership is nothing. Bicycle use is everything. Riding is everything. And the riding that matters is riding INSTEAD of driving.

The people behind the 2001 El Tour are urging us to ride our bikes to the event and to ride home afterward. I'd like to urge you to make pedaling your bike to and from your rides a habit. Ride from your door.

Too many of us load our bikes into or onto cars and drive them two miles to the starts of rides. Road cyclists in the old days, in the '70s and '80s, resisted that. Many couldn't afford cars or didn't want them. They believed that "Cars Suck" as the T-shirt says.

It wasn't cool back then to roll up to ride starts in a car. It shouldn't be cool today. Nothing cool about driving a car.

Everyone does it. Driving a car doesn't set you apart. Guys who move their mouths when they read and want to show you who owns the road drive cars. Takes no brains, no class. Slobs who can't climb a flight of stairs drive cars. It's easy. Preoccupied, careless people who'd never survive a mile-long bike ride drive cars; They're safe in there with air bags and shoulder belts.

We, on the other hand, ride bikes.

Riding bikes is good for us. Driving cars is not. Riding bikes does no harm. Driving cars does major harm. Short trips wear cars out; Bikes don't care how long the ride is.

I'll bet you'd like to think of yourself, your way of life, as an example to others. I'll bet you'd like to believe that the world would be a better place if everyone did what you do. You do feel that way, don't you, especially about your cycling?

I thought so. Leave your car in the driveway. Ride your bike.

END