Bicycle Fixation Weblog
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12/30/2008: "Bikes, Health, and Public Perception"
This ad for Kaiser-Permanente pleased me to no end when i saw it, and not just because I like Kaiser as an organization. (It's a non-profit HMO, owned and operated by its doctors and other staff.) Of course what I saw was bikes, promoted as an emblem of health, and showing not Spandex superheroes but ordinary-looking folks engaged in what appears to be transportational cycling: two with loaded front basket, one towing a clot of balloons, so probably heading to or from a party.This is what we need: not cycling presented as a playtime-for-daredevils sort of activity, but as a part of daily life. Cyclists who are just folks going somewhere, using workaday bikes on regular roads. Maybe things like this only reflect what is already happening, maybe they encourage it to happen more; I'll take it either way.
More to Kaiser's credit, the ad links not to a come-on for more members, but to a page promoting a variety of healthful activities, including socially-healthy stuff--one link in it is titled "Create Healthy Communities," and includes sublinks to such topics as "Create a Greener World."
Well, since I've made you see the ad, you might as well check out the Kaiser Permanente Thrive site too.
We'll be back on Kaiser in January ourselves, thanks to changes at Gina's workplace, and we're glad. it's about as good as healthcare is allowed to get in the USA.
Off to South Pasadena now--38-mile round-trip, on a glorious warm winter day in Southern California, to have coffee with Velo-Retro's Chuck Schmidt at Buster's by the Gold Line station.
