Dirt Tan Bike Club

Go for a ride or two on city streets, and gravel cycling’s appeal as a safer alternative becomes obvious pretty quickly. Much of gravel’s pull hinges on what we’re riding away from: The traffic. The noise. The rancor and danger and bullshit that come with being a human being on a bicycle in a car-centric city.

To ride on a gravel road is to feel like you’re leaving that junk behind—trading it for the quieter company of cattle and a few close friends. Few sounds in a Lincoln cyclist’s life are quite as welcome or as welcoming as that first dry splash of your tires leaving Coddington to touch gravel on Claire.

The welcomeness I feel in those opening yards of gravel matches what I’ve experienced over thousands of rural miles. The friendly curiosity of a hundred old farmers at gas stations and the kindness of coffee-pouring waitresses in nearly empty cafes. How far you going? Don’t your butt hurt? Jesus, that wind this morning. And take care.

I want to believe this welcome I so often receive is a generous absolute. But I know it’s not. Gravel cycling’s sharp growth has been enough to raise the hackles of more farmers, ranchers and rural residents. And their recoil is affecting gravel events large and small.

Let’s start with the large.

You may have already seen Bicycling‘s story about the Colorado ranchers upset at SBT GRVL. That piece, like a lot of national stories nowadays, is almost entirely reliant on a single piece of local reporting; in this case, a troubling story by the Colorado Sun.

Now, any event sending 3,000 riders into a small city and its surrounding roads is bound to be locally disruptive. And some of the ranchers’ complaints have merit. But in describing them, the Sun repeats rhetoric more at home in a red-faced anti-immigrant screed than an objective news feature.

In this Sun‘s slanted light, race participants become “outsiders” who “flock” and “upset a community’s heritage and threaten its values,” I suppose by riding bicycles together. The “throngs of riders … pushing into the county” unleash “mayhem” on ranchers who are “the heart and soul of this place.”

When riders “bleed” onto local roads, and when “annoying” spectators park “willy nilly” in town, they unforgivably clutter the very avenues “ranchers use daily to transport their cattle, hay and 4-H kids.” (Think of the children!)

The story covers the newsworthy decision by frustrated ranchers to organize in an effort to sway county commissioners. Their goal is to eliminate SBT GRVL by denying its permit, or, short of that, to change the permit in such a way that caps the event at a fragment of its current size. Race organizers are likewise moving to address problems, improve their relationship with the community and protect the event’s current permit.

The Colorado Sun is right to cover this story thoroughly. Where it veers off course is in the rhetoric it uses to describe the ranchers’ frustrations. The article tucks much of its loaded language behind the clever cover of that nameless source, “some say.”

I don’t wish to pile my own hyperbole on top of the newspaper’s. But there simply is a relationship between this kind of heated rhetoric, where outsiders threaten an American way of life, and violence.

Which brings me, sadly, to the example of the smaller race here in Nebraska. The Bohemian Sto Mil is (or was) a popular free-registration grassroots gravel race through southeast Nebraska’s “Bohemian Alps.” In October, multiple Sto Mil riders reported being buzzed off the road by the driver of a semi carrying grain.

I won’t claim to know what this driver was thinking as he repeatedly swerved his truck toward riders. But I’m guessing his thoughts were less than welcoming. I wouldn’t be shocked if he thought of farmers as “the heart and soul of this place.” Nor would I be surprised exactly if he viewed cyclists as outsiders who don’t belong on the roads he relies on to transport his grain, his cattle, his 4-H kids.

I don’t know. Maybe instead of humans, he saw “throngs” constantly “pushing their way into the county.” Maybe he thought somehow this violence was justified. Or not a big deal. What better way to let these folks know how it goes out here than a little close shave? A nice country welcome.

That’s all guessing. But I do know what the Sto Mil’s volunteer organizers thought when they heard the reports and saw the photo Jason Strohbehn was somehow fast enough to shoot. They thought: We can’t do this. They thought: Somebody could have died. Then they thought: We’re done.

They posted to their social media: “After 6 (nonconsecutive) years, we have decided the Bohemian Sto Mil has come to an end.”

And I’m left wondering about that welcome feeling I’d get every time I rolled onto that first gravel road. Will it be waiting for me next time like normal at the corner of Coddington and Claire? Or has something changed?