We finished up the Bristol fieldwork this month, although both Kat and I plan to return to the city again briefly later this Summer.

Towards the end of last week I interviewed a number of people at Yucca, a digital media company with a high proportion of cyclists. People spoke about conversations about bikes over coffee – ‘it probably sounds really boring’ (not to someone who’s researching cycling it doesn’t). At workplaces where cycling’s part of the culture, there’s often someone who’s a maintenance expert and – if you’re lucky – will fix your bike during the lunch break. (I remember my colleague Pete fiddling with my slightly broken dynamo, and being disappointed he didn’t get to use a welding torch to fix it!) It’s also more likely that people won’t look askance at you if you turn up with mud on your face after a rainy ride in.

Conversely, if cycling is looked down on by colleagues or clients, or seen as a bit eccentric, this can cause problems. One interviewee in Hull spoke about how ‘it doesn’t look right for your lawyer to turn up on a bike’, for example. Other people in different case study areas have spoken of feeling conspicuous turning up with cycling gear or cycling equipment, or even of colleagues joking about nearly running them over on the way to work.

If cycling is seen as something that fits in with your work identity (unless you loathe that identity, I guess), it can encourage you to keep cycling, even if family and friends don’t necessarily cycle. Talking to another interviewee in Bristol I learned about a building in two parts; one where the multiple bike racks were full to overflowing, and one with only a handful of bikes parked. Even within the same building or organisation there may be multiple transport cultures.

We’ve been asking people in interviews how (and if!) they would define themselves as a cyclist. This has produced a variety of responses – and sometimes, it seems like it’s easier for people to define themselves in terms of what they are not than what they are. Often, cycling identities come up unprompted too. It’s fascinating how they’re connected to other social identities, to other modes of transport, to strongly held views on good and bad cycling behaviour, and to much else.

We received this response in an email by one of our interviewees later on – and thought it would be an interesting post.

What sort of cyclist am I? An interesting question that has had me
thinking over the weekend.

There are at least two ways of answering this. Firstly what am I like as a cyclist. In this case, I would say I am fairly steady, safe and assertive. So I stop at wear reflective bib and helmet, use my bell, stop at red lights (given I expect others to obey traffic lights so should I) and use lights at night – and generally cycle a couple of yards from the kerb, not in the gutter. Trying not to get myself injured.

The secondly it is about identity. I am a cyclist. Being a cyclist is part of being me. Taking the stance that the personal is political, it is about cycling as a political statement and an expression of my values, about concern for the environment. So part of that is about cycling being normal, not something odd, special or different. So it is about cycling in my normal clothes, not Lycra; claiming cycle allowances; turning up at meetings with a cycling helmet; writing bike in forms asking for a car reg no; having a one less car sticker; being a visible cyclist.