Cycling

The Dirty Kanza

   It is still raining. Before I did the last post on Inbreeding, which is also about cycling, I was reading a major U.S. newspaper when the image above popped up. I realize that the sudden appearance of such things is usually related to searches one has done when shopping. But, not having requested a tourist brochure from Kansas, I was curious about events in Emporia and had a look. I suppose now I will be getting more ads from that state.  One does have to acknowledge the Jayhawks for their marketing creativity.

   The adventure has to do with cycling and I guess I should have thought of that since I recently did do some online shopping for a bike. I really can't travel there at this time and you probably can't either, but if you can, here is what is going on in the Gravel City. 

Cycling

Emporia, Kansas is home to an avid cycling community, and the surrounding Flint Hills offer some of the best and most challenging gravel cycling opportunities in the nation. We’re nicknamed Gravel City for a reason! Emporia also hosts the Dirty Kanza, known as the “World’s Premier Gravel Grinder” each year on the Saturday after Memorial Day. More than 2,000 riders come from all over the United States and many foreign countries to race through 200 miles in the beautiful Flint Hills.

Ride the Flint Hills

Whether you’re training for a gravel cycling competition like the Dirty Kanza 200, or you want to take a leisure ride and just enjoy the outdoors, the beautiful Flint Hills of Kansas is the place to be. While traveling through the Flint Hills you can enjoy 40 grass species, native stone fences, hundreds of wildflowers, 150 species of birds, barns, bridges, historic towns, breathtaking views, and quiet serenity.

Inbreeding

   It is a rainy day and I just read these sentences: 

"With a bicycle, the world would have expanded dramatically for fin-de-siecle Victorians, particularly as bikes became increasingly affordable, bringing new experiences and opportunities, and perhaps even new romantic liaisons. Sociologists now credit the bicycle with a decrease in genetic faults associated with inbreeding in the U.K. , and as early as 1900, the U.S. Census Office identified the invention as a game-changer: 'Few articles ever used by man have created so great a revolution in social conditions as the bicycle."

   I thought the comment about inbreeding an interesting one and had never associated cycling with consanguinity, so I went looking for some of the 'sociologists' who have found a relationship between the rise in cycling and the decline in sexual activities among those who are related. The search turned out to be more difficult than I thought and the subject of inbreeding, like just about any subject these days, is not without its controversial aspects. 

   I did find some support, however, and have no reason to doubt that cycling, like the back seats of cars, may have affected sexual relationships. William Manners writes in The Guardian about how cycling changed society: 

One unexpected way it did this was in the field of genetics. For the majority of those living in rural areas, owning a bicycle dramatically increased the number of potential marriage partners, as for the first time they possessed their own means of travelling beyond their local communities. The widening of gene pools which resulted from this process means that the biologist Steve Jones ranks the invention of the bicycle as the most important event in recent human evolution.

     I did track down Professor Jones, a well-respected geneticist, and, indeed, he does write  in The Language of Genes that, There is little doubt that the most important event in recent human evolution was the invention of the bicycle.

    Although it is still raining, I decided to stop searching and write this. If you need more proof, have a look yourself.

Sources:

   The sentences which led to the search are found in: Revolutions: How Women Changed the World on Wheels, by Hannah Ross.

    The article by Mr. Manners: "The Secret History of 19th Century Cyclists: The Early Days of the Modern Bicycle Brought Not Just Joyful Escape for the Masses, But Proved a Catalyst for Wider Social Change, The Guardian, June 9, 2015.

The Bonus: 

  In The Guardian article one also finds these quotes:

Hobsbawm wrote:

If physical mobility is an essential condition of freedom, the bicycle has probably been the greatest single device for achieving what Marx has called the full realisation of being human invented since Gutenberg, and the only one without obvious drawbacks.

And H.G. Wells said:

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.