Burning down the house

~ Patrick O'Grady
These adventure-starved kids are burning down our house!

These kids today. Why aren’t they out there riding their damn’ bikes like we did when we were their age?

Why, when I was a pup. …

Sigh. It’s the same old song; music they’ve never danced to. “I said, ‘Ride, Sally, ride, now. …”

Writing at The Atlantic, freelancer Erin Sagen says today’s kids are very much not riding their bicycles, and for a variety of perfectly defensible reasons, too:

Since the 1990s, speed limits have ticked upward. Each year (minus a few temporary dips), drivers have progressively clocked more collective miles and driven ever larger cars. According to a 2023 report by the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, “Over the past 30 years, the average U.S. passenger vehicle has gotten about 4 inches wider, 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier.” These machines may be protecting drivers and passengers, but they can be much more intimidating to people on bikes. The annual number of children killed on bikes has actually fallen, a 2021 CDC report found, but the report acknowledges that this is likely in part because fewer kids are out riding.

Boy howdy. Citing stats from the National Sporting Goods Association, Sagen writes that during the 1990s, an average of 20.5 million children ages 7 to 17 rode a bike six or more times a year. By 2023, a few decades later, that number dropped to about 10.9 million. And of those kids, less than 5 percent rode their bikes “frequently.”

Six or more times a year? Sheeyit. We hopped on our bikes six or more times a week. Some of us still do. It’s fun, it’s exercise, it’s transportation … it’s liberation. Damn The Man! Let’s get big air at the gravel pit! Using one chain to break another, as it were.

No mas, no mas. !Que triste es la vida velo!

No wonder the Adventure Cycling Association has put its storied headquarters up for sale. Once a must-see for the membership, it’s only visited now by a handful of overripe saddle tramps in saggy wool shorts who just herded a 36-pound steel bike, hung about with tattered ripstop sacks stuffed with camping gear, canned beans, and one change of underwear, from Miami to Missoula without once stopping for a shower.

According to the ACA board of directors, the group’s membership has been dwindling for at least five years as its demographic “ages out” of bike travel. Tours and map sales are likewise struggling, and the association is failing to attract a younger crowd because ACA’s “brand” is seen as a raggedy-assed herd of sunburnt old roadies who just aren’t hep to the latest jive (gravel, bikepacking, insert your thrill of the minute here).

So, bam! The ACA HQ goes on the block, listed for $2.7 million, reports The Missoulian, its hometown newspaper.

I don’t know how this sale might save the ACA, because I haven’t seen any actual rescue proposals put forward. Just some MarketSpeak® in Bicycle Retailer about how ACA is “facing a crossroads,” “grappling with challenges,” and “addressing brutal truths while maintaining faith in the mission,” and how selling the HQ will “help us adapt to our reality, giving us the runway to reshape our programs and resources to continue inspiring transformative bike travel experiences.”

Friend of the Blog Diane “The Outspoken Cyclist” Lees is among those not convinced. She has viewed with alarm at her Substack, and former members of the organization — including its founders — are among the people who put together this petition urging that the sale be stopped.

Now, $2.7 mil’ may sound like a lot of money, especially if you don’t have it. But since Bikecentennial hit the road in 1976 I have, despite an appalling shortage of investment capital and absolutely no plan at all, pissed away at least that much on cigarettes, booze, drugs, guns, comic books, actual literature, albums, CDs, stereo gear, Toyota trucks and Subaru cars, road trips in three countries, moving violations in one of them, cheap motels, pet-friendly rentals, real estate, meals remarkable and questionable, vet bills, drawing paper, pencils, and pens, countless Apple products and peripherals, cable TV, streaming video, Internet hookups (no, not that kind of Internet hookup), blog/podcast hosting, and audio-visual gear.

And the only person who got any bicycling out of it all was me — in 1976, because I had been doing without a driver’s license for a few years thanks to a minor traffic accident (hit by a train), and afterward because I learned to love it (the cycling, not being hit by trains).

By the time Bikecentennial blossomed into the Adventure Cycling Association in 1993 I had settled down a great deal. It helped that after 15 years of newspapering I was officially and permanently unemployed, building a second career of sorts as a freelancer peddling vicious libels, ugly scribbles, and outright lies to niche magazines with the circulation of a week-old murder victim. I had also begun racing bicycles, and acquiring them, the latter a jones which haunts me to this day.

And after a decade and a half of that, thanks to the risk-taking spirit of the late, great Mike Deme, and his successors, Alex Strickland and Dan Meyer, I even sold some word count to Adventure Cyclist, at a time when the decline and fall of the for-profit bicycle magazine had left me short on runway and having trouble adapting to my reality.

Those dudes, and the other great advocates for and facilitators of bicycle travel I met while scribbling bike reviews for Adventure Cyclist, have all left the building that ACA plans to sell for … whatever. I’m sorry that I never visited them there, because now I never will. The building will become a bespoke hotel, law office, or assisted-living residence, whose half-daffy inmates will swear to their keepers that in the wee hours of the darkening night they hear the clicking of wide-range cassettes and catch a whiff of overworked chamois cream.

Sell the real estate? That’s what vulture capitalists do when they add another newspaper to their portfolio. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. A storied newspaper building becomes office space, condos, or a parking lot, the printing gets outsourced, and the few remaining journos who produce the paper are exiled to some soulless strip-mail shithole with all the joie de vivre of a happy-ending massage parlor — chances are the space used to be a happy-ending massage parlor — because the vulture capitalists don’t have any souls of their own and can’t imagine why anyone would want one. Bad for the bottom line.

Sell the real estate? Would the pope sell the Sistine Chapel? Puh-leeze. Dude won’t even Airbnb his summer place at Castel Gandolfo. Even a fucking Realtor will tell you it’s all about location, location, location.

Sell the real estate? It’s like eating your seed corn. Nothing down that long and winding road except for maybe one big dump and then death. Remember the wisdom of another intrepid traveler, Buckaroo Banzai, who has taught us: “No matter where you go, there you are.”

Is it too late for all these weak-in-the-knees whippersnappers askeered of the big, bad cars to revisit their cushy lifestyles, take a big ol’ bite out of life, savor the flavor of adventure cycling? And save the Adventure Cycling Association’s venerable headquarters, the hub around which America’s bicycle-travel universe revolves?

For the love of Deme, put that smartphone down, Rain, Drain or Spokane, whatever the hell your helicopter parents named your sorry ass, unless you’re calling Soma Fabrications to order up a damn’ Pescadero. Listen to the Voices. Here’s your panniers, there’s the door, what’s your hurry?

Don’t make me stop this blog and come back there.

39 thoughts on “Burning down the house”

  2. “Sell the real estate? It’s like eating your seed corn.” Probably the only ACA asset worth anything. Without seeing their financial reports, I have no idea what their debt load, if any, amount is. I never went to the HQ, but I bet it was heaven. I saw the pictures of members getting their ice cream there, and those were some big smiles. I really loved the magazine, especially the bike reviews! I hope the employees land on their feet. If not, I heard ICE is hiring in all 50 states. You even get free face masks!

    Side note. Guitar magazines are pretty much in the same boat with the rest of those shiny paper pubs that made us all wait by the mailbox every month. Fretboard Journal is one of the last, and I think I will subscribe today. Why play a real guitar when you can be a guitar hero or enter an air guitar competition?

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      1. Thanks for the link to the financial statements, PO’G. Interesting that the auditors did not issue a “going concern” opinion, the kiss of death where creditors are concerned, but the downward trend is apparent; this (non-profit) business is not sustainable long-term.

        ACA is an organization that time and technology have made obsolete. Those (fewer?) people who are bike-touring are no longer willing to pay for memberships, maps and magazines.
        I like Ms Jenks (love her HubBub mirrors), but her BRAIN recommendation that ACA find a way to inspire younger generations of touring cyclists lacks any real specific guidance on how that can be done. Many recreational and social non-profit organizations are withering away as we boomers do the same. The next generations are not joiners.
        Adventure Cycling was a fine thing in its time, but now we are witnessing the folding of the tent. So long, old friend.

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        1. Thanks for the expert opinion Eric. It is tough watching old friends fade away. Ant ideas why the next generation aren’t joiners? Is it an effect of social media use?

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        2. Thank you for your thoughts on the matter, Eric.

          Time and technology are not always our friends. That one-two punch has done for a lot of newspapers and magazines. I hadn’t thought much about membership organizations, because I’m not a joiner, but I expect you’re on the mark there as well. It would be interesting to read a piece on the health of orgs like the Shriners, VFW, Toastmasters, Kiwanis, et al. I’ve heard a few people say USA Cycling isn’t exactly crushing it lately.

          I notice that the big group ride seems to be a thing of the past, at least here in ’Burque. There are a few smallish ones — New Mexico Touring Society being one with regular outings — but Back in the Day® in the B-burg, rides of 50-plus cyclists were not uncommon and the ones in Boulder were much, much bigger.

          Now everyone’s dicking around with Strava and Peloton, riding with earbuds in and the Grim Face of Death on — “Stare straight ahead, acknowledge no one, leave me be, can’t you see I’m training here?”

          Remember “E pluribus unum?” Neither does anyone else. Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

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          1. PO’G nails it!
            I was walking our dog yesterday and strolling the opposite direction was a singleton, 50’ish male. I waved and said “Hi”. There was no acknowledgement and he kept on walking as if in some kind of self-absorbed trance. Ear pods? No situational awareness? A jerk?
            Maybe “E Pluribus Unum” has been replaced by “Ego, Me Ipsum, Et”? (Me, Myself, and I)

          2. I get that all the time, JD. Cycling, running or walking, meet someone coming the other way, raise a hand, say, “Good morning,” and … nothing. Niente, nada, bupkis. Sometimes not even a glance your way. Just plain rude.

            No wonder the Republic is in its present dismal condition. No concept of solidarity or even a shared public space. “We” replaced by “me.”

          3. Perhaps “we” have been replaced by a digital world of video and audio. I see the ubiquitous earbud/cell phone zombies in the grocery store. Oblivious to the real world surrounding them, they talk or listen to someone or something unseen. Seeing children riding in a grocery cart staring at a screen is just wrong. When I see a nice bicycle with a cell phone holder on the handle bar, I scratch my head in wonder. Riding a bicycle provides so much joy from being in the moment outdoors alone or with friends. I never expected Moore’s law to lead to this soul crushing conclusion.

          4. Going to try to paraphrase, probably inaccurately, Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation take on the meat space vs virtual world yin-yang, which also basically covers Gen Y/Z vs Boomers and Millennials.

            Real World
            √ Embodied, visual cues to our conversations
            √ synchronous — back and forth, call and response
            √ one on one or small groups, with a known audience
            √ invested relationships

            Virtual
            x Disembodied, talking heads, language as text with no eye contract, facial expressions or vocal cues (sarcasm, irony, enthusiasm, certainty)
            x Async, so who knows what has happened in between blasts
            x Infinite potential recipients of every message, but also possibly zero
            x Relationships are non-existent. Don’t like me? Block me. Like me? Don’t expect that this means I’ll ever notice you.

            The weird thing is, it was intended to describe two modalities of human interaction, basically on the phone or off. But the routine of being mostly on leads to habits and norms that influence how we act off the phone.

            We all know the phrase “walk a mile in their shoes.” But that doesn’t necessarily imply a relationship there. Let’s normalize “ride a mile in their slipstream” or something like that. You can ride 10,000 hours on a Peloton without ever putting your nose in the wind, and you can partake in 10,000 spin classes without ever being protected from a crosswind by a fellow traveler.

            I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts, if you round up the next 20 cyclists who ride by and ask them what a “no drop ride” is, they’ll look at you like you you just made it up and translated it into another language. Cuz you need another person to have someone to actually drop. And that’s a foreign concept these days.

          5. Well, there are still a few younguns who enjoy each other’s actual company. I was spinning north along the bosque trail today when a half dozen dudes rocketed past like the GC group getting set to fight it out for overall time and/or the stage win, talking to each other (and me) along the way.

          6. HBL still advertises five beginner group rides per week with a few more on the monthly calendar. Can’t afford real estate over there, but I can afford a tent to pitch at one of the beach parks, where they have showers and garbage collection. Keeping that in the back of my mind for when the empty nest years finally come.

            https://hbl.org/group-ride-listings/

    1. It’s insane, isn’t it? As a Subaru driver I see nothing but lugnuts at stoplights. These overbuilt, jacked-up, tractor-tired DumpsterMobiles flat block out the fucking sun.

      Which, on a day like today (high of 96° expected), is kinda nice, actually. I hardly have to use the A/C at all.

      By the way, may I congratulate you on your excellent English? I thought all you Canucks habla’d the ol’ Française.

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  4. I got the Adventure Cycling memo in my Inbox the other day as I still send them my puny annual contribution. Then read their BRAIN letter. Now this. Patrick, you sure are a really good writer. Chapeau!

    First thing I thought of was why sell the building, given real estate generally keeps appreciating. Instead why not rent out part of the building to make some money. Especially since as the Founders and Former Staff Open Letter To The Board stated, they are not destitute. I still kick myself for selling our Honolulu house which appreciated by a factor of three after we left. The Los Alamos house doubled in price after we sold it. So aside from Adventure eating its seed corn, this is penny wise and pound foolish.

    I really think the organization is on a downward spiral with this Board and leadership. They are destroying the magazine little by little. The last decent magazine staff pushed or jumped, I’m not sure which. About a year or so ago I noted they were doing a lot of navel gazing about DEI stuff and were spending money on DEI “consultants”. I scratched my head, given it seemed to be driven by White Bicycling Guilt rather than an actual analysis of how to reach out to prospective riders. Indeed, the problem is with our addition to Bigger and Faster Cars (actually, we advocates were saying that in the 1990’s, where cycling to school was already becoming rare) rather than to No Colored, Trans, or Gay Bicyclists Need Apply. The road tests now read more like those “golly, gee” tests I used to read in Buycycling Magazine.

    I think it will be sad to see ACA spiral down, but I don’t feel optimistic. But meanwhile, did anyone else notice that Greg LeMond got a Congressional Gold Medal?

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    1. Thanks, brudda. And yeah, that’s one thing I keep hearing: Why sell the building? Why not rent out a big piece of it if you only need space for a few staffers?

      Especially if you’re gonna run through three executive directors in five years. How does that happen? I saw revolving doors at a few newspapers Back in the Day™, but that’s not a revolving door, that’s an ejection seat.

      The board is not coming in for a lot of love from the people I’ve heard from. I’d love to see a vote of confidence/no confidence from the membership, what remains of it.

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  5. When it comes to behemoth vehicles, SLATE might be the antidote. Would take POG back in time to his Toyota trucks. Great idea for 90% of my driving these days.

    Or

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        1. That is cool. Now and then I see one of the old trucks, ABQ having a rather extreme dose of “car culture,” and the difference between Then and Now is just staggering.

          When I was in high school a friend had one of the 1960 Apache panel trucks. He built storage compartments that doubled as seats over the wheel wells, and that was where we spent many a relaxing hour puffing away at the ditch weed that did so much for my GPA senior year.

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          1. In the FWIW category, we still have our 1990 4Runner. It’s been thru 15 moves around the globe, two kids for HS and college, and for the past 15 years has allowed my bride of 56 years and me to haul MTBs, soil, fertilizer, etc.
            I don’t want to jinx it; but I hope to use it as a Hurst to haul me to my final resting place in another two decades or so …. when I hit 100!

    2. I picked up a Ford Maverick when I finally, fer sure, re-retired (actually was pushed–budget woes, I was told) and didn’t need the 35-40 mpg Impreza, which frankly, was more fun to drive but hard to put in loads of gardening stuff and drywall. Looked at the Ford and at the Hyundai Santa Cruz and thought the Maverick was more down to earth (and a bit cheaper), so pulled the trigger. Like O’G, I feel like I am looking up at everything else on the road. It is sad that everyone needs to drive an Elevated Penis Extension.

      Back to ACA, 3 E.D.s in 5 years suggests to me a rudderless ship and internal turmoil between board and director. I was past president of the Hawaii Bicycling League and still on the Board when we had to show our longtime E.D. the door due to financial issues and the E.D.’s “creative accounting”. Almost killed the organization. A nonprofit needs a little bit of stability. And a little of that “vision thing”.

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      1. The “Rick” is doing great for Ford. I see a ton of them here where pickups rule. They planned to do a compact e-truck but due to small minded Rethuglicans nursing on the oil tit, that will have to wait. Did you get the hybrid? They are in short supply here.

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        1. What I see mostly is the new Bronco. And I see a lot of ’em. Kinda cute, I gotta admit. But after that demon-possessed 1996 F-150 I owned briefly before going straight back to the Land of the Rising Sun, you will see me pushing my Subaru up to the Sandia Crest before you see me driving another Ford product off a dealer’s lot.

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          1. MI Espousa made a trip to an Idaho trail race in a Bronco and came back cursing it, finding it noisy, uncomfortable, and fuel-inefficient in general, a real “Charley Foxtrot.” My Jeep Cherokee with an underpowered four banger does okay and is paid for. I still own a 1993 Ford F150 that ate a transmission at 66,000 miles and I added two front ball joints. Plus the steering wheel padding died on it twice before the warranty ran I may donate it to a charity cuz it deserves somebody to abuse it. My luck with Ford products is not at all. FIat and ford have a lotcommon.

        2. The hybrids with AWD were in No Supply down here. When I was shopping late last year the hybrids were all FWD and I wanted all wheel drive for winter, the steep hills, and dirt roads, so got the EcoBoost. I actually prefer it, given it has fewer things to go wrong.

          This is the first time I have bought an American vehicle (although I got a couple of them free back in grad school, as long as I was able to get them running) so I hope it doesn’t turn out to be the reincarnation of O’Grady’s old Demon Possessed F-150. After Subarus, Fords seem to be quite popular here and I still see a lot of old ones on the road.

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  6. $2.7 M reminds me of the Irish footballer George Best’s line about where his money went.

    I spent some on girls, booze, and fast cars, and the rest I wasted.

    Colin Hay’s take:

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  7. Now, that you bring it up, I had three Fords, a F-150, F-250, and a Ranger pickup. All had quality problems; the F-150 the best of the lot. Went to Toyotas and stayed to this day. The sales folks were surprised we traded a Rav4 for a small Corolla hatchback. They figured we wanted bigger. I told them we would have bought a Yaris hatchback if they still made them. The really got amused when I brought in a guitar case, amplifier, and stand bag in to see if they would fit in the hatchback before we ordered one.

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      1. Me: I got the Dominator X-10. Thirty inches of thigh-slapping, blood-pumping, nuclear brain damage!
        You: Bitchin’! Hey, what’s it fucking cost?
        Me: That’s the bitchin’ part about it! It don’t matter! If you can’t afford it, FUCKING FINANCE IT!
        [turns it on]
        So what if it’s as big as a Subaru and costs as much? You’ll never have to trade this in! This is gonna be with you for the rest of your life! And when you die, they can BURY you in it!

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  8. I’ve got a stack of AC magazines that I haven’t read yet. I usually take them on vacation where there is no cell service or internet and they are pretty good bathroom reading. Mostly I get my touring fix by watching Youtube. But my touring itch has gradually decreased over the years. I’ve still got all the stuff but no time to go. I rarely pull up CGOAB and waste hours reading the blogs like I used to when I had a full time job. I got my AC renewal in the mail a few weeks ago but I doubt I’ll send them any money. That ship has pretty much sailed.

    I’ve never owned a Ford. My GF has a full size Transit that is pretty nice though. My dad bought a new 1974 Country Squire station wagon. The kind with the fold down way back seats. It was a POS so he dumped it and bought mostly Chevys from then on. He did buy a Dodge van back in the 80’s that was another POS. I’m sticking with Toyota and Honda for the foreseeable future.

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    1. I really enjoyed working with the Adventure Cycling Association people, especially the mag staff. What a refreshing change from bike racing and the industry that supports it.

      But it seems a very different place these days. And it’s not like, “Fuck, we’re running out of old white guys to keep the lights on” is exactly breaking news in any aspect of cycling.

      Me, I’ve owned one Chevy, one Ford, and several Toyotas and Subarus. I just spent a few hundy keeping the old Forester roadworthy. I’ma drive the wheels smack off’n that sumbitch.

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