World Cycling Day is coming

There are days when you open your email and you think “wow, someone out there is actually reading my blogs!” I mean, nowadays it’s not easy to be heard, with so much noise and selfies to be looked at, and so it’s not often that an idea I’ve written about gets legs.

But today is just such a day. One of the newsletters that I get, from the European Cycling Federation (ECF) – a body that is working very hard to improve cycling in Europe and to a much lesser degree worldwide – published this: “The World Cycling Alliance Appeals for the Designation of a UN World Bicycle Day”.

So what’s the big deal? Well, the big deal is that last June I wrote a blog with exactly the same proposal.

It was called International Cycling day/month/decade in which I light-heartedly poked fun at UN bureaucrats and the variety of UN days/months/years that they have introduced over the years, such as the World Day for Laboratory Animals, awareness month for such causes as Prostate Cancer and the National Novel Writing Month. Do not get me wrong, I am all against animal testing, a candidate for prostate cancer, and I love novels. And I am a believer in supporting UN’s efforts. Just take a look at my recent blogs on World Water Day and International Day of Forests.

It is just that somehow the poor bicycle, considering how much good it does and how much more it can do, is simply not getting the attention it should.

So I am overjoyed that such an important body as World Cycling Alliance (WCA), which is an initiative of ECF, has decided to take on the project and advocate on behalf of cycling at the UN.

To be really frank, I am actually under no illusion that my blog had anything to do with the WCA initiative. There are many other people out there who noticed the same thing as I did, and rather than write silly blogs, they actually decided to do something. So I want to congratulate them on the initiative and I hope that, in case someone is actually reading this, to please spread the word. It is about time we had a World Cycling Day.