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Welcome! Today is Thursday, September 9, 2010, the time is 5:17 EDT.
Cecil Yount may be seen as a bicycle advocate around here, but he sees himself as an advocate for much more. His real goals, he explained, are education, an increase in the local economy and better health for everyone. “Cycling has just been shown to positively affect all of that,” he said. It’s these bigger issues, not just cycling itself, that led Yount to help found the biking advisory council, BicycleHaywoodNC, in 2009. They are also what prompted the council to sponsor six weeks of group bicycle rides around Waynesville. The rides, which take off from RollsRite Bicycles a little after 5:30 p.m. Thursdays, are meant to be short and easy jaunts, aimed
at sparking interest in beginning riders and bringing former riders back into the fold. Though there are only two rides left in the series, Yount would like to add more if there’s enough interest.
The heart of the “very low-key” rides, he said, is “to teach and energize our increasing number of cyclists to improve the quality of their lives through cycling.”
That might sound like a tall order, but Yount knows the sport’s transformative power first hand. Before he discovered cycling three years ago, he was a different person, out of shape and much heavier. Though he’d been athletic growing up, he had admittedly “let things go,” he said. His self-described “point of disgust” came when he found himself sore after playing a video game. That woke him right up.
“I said, ‘There’s something bad-wrong about this. I’m getting back into shape,’” he recalled.
So he did. Yount originally chose cycling as a means of exercise because ankle problems kept him from running. He soon found himself loving it. In short order, he started to feel and sleep better. He lost 30 pounds, and his resting heart rate plunged (it’s now at 42). He began talking with local riding great Moody Fowler, who gave him a better understanding of cycling, and Yount started commuting between his work in Waynesville and his Bethel home. In no time, Yount became a bonafide member of the cycling community.
Though he had never thought of biking as anything beyond exercise and pleasure, he began to understand the advocacy side of it. He found that one of the most pressing issues locally is cyclist safety. Though so many of the roads in Haywood County are “incredible,” he said, sometimes they can be hairy for riders.
“It’s been my experience that 95 percent of the motoring public is courteous and they give you room,” he said. “Unfortunately, the five percent who don’t do that behave very dangerously.”
When it comes to promoting safety, he found that some cyclists are no better. He felt drivers and cyclists alike needed education, not just on safety but also on how bicycling can positively affect health and the economy. Cycling, he explained, not only makes people more fit but also has the possibility to bring in well-heeled tourists. This is not to mention the fact that an increase in cycling can decrease this county’s dependence on oil. All of these reasons, he explained, are what prompted him to begin BicycleHaywoodNC. The idea had actually been floating around the cycling community for a long while before Claudia Nix, the representative of the North Carolina Department of Transportation Bicycle Committee and co-owner of Liberty Bicycles in Asheville, brought it up to him.
“Everybody said we should do it, but nobody had taken the bull by the horns, so to speak,” he said. “I said, ‘I’ve taken a few bulls by the horns, so I’d do it.’”
The council isn’t encouraging sudden, drastic changes but gradual ones, he explained. It’s not that he wants motorists to give up their cars. He simply wants them to try using a bike a little more often, perhaps for those short trips to the store or the post office. There’s no reason, he feels, not to see the county on two wheels.
“Truly, if you’re riding through it with your windows rolled up in a car, you miss it,” he said.
Janet Bottoms seems to have already gotten the memo. While the 12-year biker she said she has no problem tackling “piddly” errands on her bike, she was glad to take part in the council’s group rides. Because she usually bikes on trails outside of town, she liked being guided around Waynesville and learning of some its safe riding spots. Not having to navigate allowed her to focus on what she really loves about being on a bike.
“When I’m riding, it’s the one time I don’t have to focus on work and bills and what I have to do,” she said. “It’s the one time I can really just focus on being outside.”
For other cyclists, such as Michele Trantham, the rides represent a gentle re-introduction to biking. A recent group ride was Trantham’s first time on a bike since she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2009. Though now cancer-free, the 12-year cyclist is still getting her strength up and testing to see how far she can go. The ride gave her the space to do just that.
“Instead of looking back, you just keep looking forward,” she said. “And that’s my goal, to start riding long distances again.”
Her husband, fellow cyclist Bryan Trantham, was by her side during the ride. The couple have been cycling together since the day they met at a Blue Ridge Bicycle Club ride a dozen year ago.
“I’m proud of her,” Bryan Trantham said.
These are the kind of stories that let Yount know that these rides are making a difference. He feels there’s still a long way to go, however, before bicycles get the respect and consideration they deserve. That kind of shift, he explained, requires a “cultural change.”
“And cultural changes don’t happen quick,” he said.
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