One city, two wheels

Tulsa poised to reap far-flung benefits of bicycling

The nexus between cycling and modern urban places, contemporary life, health and sport has changed radically over the last decade — across the nation and certainly in Tulsa.

Our city has become a top-flight spot for competitive-sports cycling, thanks to the phenomenal growth and popularity of the still-young St. Francis Tulsa Tough ride and race. But Tulsa’s bike-centric potential doesn’t end there. With our increasingly comprehensive bike-trail system, as well as initiatives such as Tulsa Hub that provide bicycles and related services to lower-income folks, the foundation has been laid for cycling to help meet a host of challenges, from transportation and environmental issues to matters of health and medicine, including cutting-edge biomedical research.

In light of this ever-evolving landscape, cycling leaders, advocates and stakeholders will gather in Tulsa for the Oklahoma Bike Summit Jan.17-18 at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame.

They will exchange ideas, discuss plans and evaluate results of state and local cycling initiatives.

I spoke recently with four cycling leaders and summit organizers — longtime cycling advocates Peter Kramer and Mary Casey, Oklahoma FreeWheel Director Joy Hancock, and Tom’s Bicycles owner Tom Brown — about the issues they hope to tackle at the event.

The new cyclist
Kramer said the goal of the summit is to give citizens, politicians and business owners an overview of cycling's outsized health and recreational yields, and to trumpet the underappreciated role Freewheel Oklahoma and bike tourism play in small towns in Oklahoma each year.

Kramer painted a picture: Most cyclists in America are white males who participate largely for exercise or competition. But leading national bike confederations and others in the movement are pushing an equity/health agenda in an effort to get more women, families, older people and folks of color more squarely into the ranks of avid cyclists. The League of American Bicyclists’ goals synch up nicely with some of America's transportation challenges, and might get at the pervasive cardiovascular and obesity challenges faced by a whole range of citizens in Tulsa, particularly children and people of color.

Economic surge in high gear
Then there’s bike tourism. Every year, the average Oklahoma FreeWheel rider spends about $40 in each of the dozen or so towns that serve as stopping points for the cross-state event. This makes the FreeWheel tour’s economic impact akin to a typical business conference, with attendees spending for accommodations, food supplies, water, drinks and mechanical repairs for bikes and other gear. Some states, Hancock told me, have developed entire tourism campaigns around the towns that are selected as waypoints for such statewide, multi-day biking events.

A leg up in medical research
Cycling also has a potential role in pioneering medical research being done in Tulsa. A reimagined “hyper-connected” medicine (which OU-Tulsa President Dr. Gerald Clancy and others call the "phonemics revolution") is a roiling convergence of smart-phone technology, giant healthcare data sets, computing power, and genetics that looks likely to deeply alter medical practice, doctor usage, and the costs of many facets of medicine.

Tulsa's biomedical community is involved in an array of demonstration projects in medical practice, healthcare information systems, physician usage and the way preventive services are delivered to people, especially to modest-income children and families. Cycling has a special role to play with these emerging practices: Some of the most compelling avenues for monitoring human performance, health, and wellness have been perfected in bike training and racing teams. St. Francis Hospital's sponsorship of Tulsa Tough is a tangible example of the braiding of the medical and cycling communities.

Some key observers believe we are entering a new era in American medicine. Some call it the "Quantified Self" revolution. Stephen Wolfram, a computing and physical sciences guru, told MIT's Tech Review that he "wants to apply the same techniques to people's personal data that others have used for analyzing particle streams, doing molecular chemistry and other work." Wolfram is working on some of the software in question. OU-Tulsa Dr. David McKendrick and others associated with Tulsa's MyHealth project are working feverishly with Tulsa-area hospitals, clinics and medical academics to create a multiple-use database that could be highly instrumental in this work.

Imagine being routinely tethered to an array of biosensors and remote-sensing gear, together with smartphones, that continuously track blood pressure, heart rate, and blood chemistry, as well as a set of simple brain metrics, continuously sampled and recorded. Imagine further having an interactive, vibrant connection to healthcare counselors, doctors, and to nutrition and fitness consultants, also tied into this data sea.

There are several Tulsa cyclists, some associated with the Tulsa Wheelmen, who are an active part of this movement. Some analysts believe this "space" could become a multimillion-dollar track of the sports medicine and biosensors industry within the next 4-5 years. Because the whole arena is new, Tulsa could be first in the maturation of these new economic currents.

Making tracks
Finally, there is the crackling arrival of a renewed push toward “making” — as in, an effort to bring the production of things back to U.S. shores. The largest leaders in this movement include GE, Apple, Intel, and a host of fashion, lifestyle, and shoe firms. Part of the energy comes from the rapid pace of 3-D printing technology. 3-D printing reduces the scale, the cost, and the complexity associated with producing physical objects in inexpensive "maker" spaces that bear no resemblance to mass-production sites we associate with classic automotive or aircraft production.

It's now possible for a relatively tiny entity to produce many of the components of a mid- to high-range bike in a small production facility, without need for major domestic or offshore manufacturing operations.

In fact, the new, do-it-yourself technology frisson has already hit the cycling world: Trek is using 3-D printing and prototyping to craft new bikes and, excitingly, a small group of new-bike production companies in the U.S. and abroad.

Tom Brown, owner of Tom's Bicycles in Tulsa, told me he’s watching 3-D printing closely. He believes it may offer options for both the low and the high-end of the biking business that are nothing short of amazing.