Amish Nappanee: Bikeist Town in America!
Last summer I spent a few hours wandering around Nappanee, a small northern Indiana town populated by a lot of Amish and Mennonites. A good half of everyone there rode bikes. I’d never seen so many people on bikes as part of daily life in the United States. In town and for maybe five miles out. Men, women, children, babies…all aboard the quiet wheel. I’d say the scene was equal bikes and cars. What a ratio!
I hereby nominate it as BIKEFRIENDLIEST CITY IN AMERICA! And I bet it does it all on its own. I bet it doesn’t get any bike advocacy grant-program enhancement facilitated attention whatsoever. Making it a better bike city than one that does, by definition.
And even though many urban areas are better situated for bike use than such a rural place (with so many miles between destinations) Nappanee takes the cake.
I looked and I asked around and pretty much see that all the bike stuff is el-cheapo standard issue. Not one bit of carbon or titanium. Not one iota of fad efluvient. Everything specialmade is local-made and local-maintained-like the fine, husky riveted aluminum trailers I saw being used left and right in slight variations. Furthermore, there was probably no excess cash available to begin with: this is not a bike scene generated by proximity to a moneysoaked, youthculture American university. All age groups seemed equally represented, with no false economic input biasing the equation.
Integration of the bike in with daily life and home life looks to be complete there in Nappanee. A done deal. Like every other aspect of their observable life. I suppose this scene is repeated anywhere in the world where the bike is part of an actual culture. -Where life is composed of an awareness of necessity, a lack of indulgence and a submission to ordinary duty.
An interesting thing about the Amish (and real culture in general) is that it’s not about resistance per se. Resisting is as involved with something as doing it. Cultures don’t react-they do. The Amish ignore modernism. The things they have in their lives are there because they verify spiritual truths. Since spirit is practical, the things they have work well. They aren’t against cars. Cars just can’t help them in their personal quest, based on the path they’ve chosen, so they don’t use or think about them. But the Amish aren’t silly. They use cars when they have to or choose to (taxis are quite popular!) or for an emergency. But they don’t own cars because ownership brings a duty to use for spiritual growth. They decided they can’t do it right with cars.
It might go without saying that I didn’t see a single athlete among em. Everyone was using the power of the wheel simply for transport. (No hour records here…or maybe there are!) I did see effort into a headwind and urgency to get somewhere (to birth a calf?). Also, I didn’t see a single chubba among any of these people. On the contrary, I saw the leanest, sturdiest, tannest, most polite, clearest-eyed people I’ve seen in awhile. Men, women and children alike. These people were paying every inch of their way, from scratch-which does something to the steadiness of the gaze of anyone, I bet.
These folk get respect from motorists because of *who* they *are*, not for the laws they pass, or city hall meetings they shout at, or courts they sue in.
So here’s the winning breakdown for this town’s nomination: Greatest use of the bicycle…despite long distances…and lack of government support or outside bias or influence; best environmental use of bicycle through local sales, fabrication and maintenance, zero use of exotic material, and no hemorrhage of energy due to sportsterism; total integration of bike with culture; no expressed animosity or resistance to anything obvious: victory through simply riding bikes.
And I’d never even heard of them before. Just stumbled across this town on a road trip. Didn’t even know Amish and Mennonites were allowed to bike. Maybe there are other bike towns like this, but it was a first for me.
I say that bike advocates everywhere should take these folk as their heroes. But the funny thing is that imitating them might not bring a single dollar into a single bike-advocacy program. I know that bike bureaucrats do good; I don’t mean to put them down–just into perspective. Who’s on top are the ones who do the most with the least in the quietest way. Somehow there’s a lot of weird self-perpetuating behavior going on in car/bike tension…a situation that these Amish seem to have resolved with their rickety Free Spirits.
JP
