Bicycling, when it's not a subculture

From a New York Times piece on bikes at Stanford:

[F]ew people wear helmets, and everyone is wearing ordinary clothes — none of the sleek and gaudy costumes you see on cyclists pumping through the peninsular hills and whistling down Sand Hill Road to the Caltrain station. They are themselves on wheels.

Exactly. When riding a bicycle stops being countercultural and gains broad appeal (though: which causes which?), people ride as they are. We have to give up the exclusivity and the uniform to get there.

Also, it's funny how entrenched the Lyrca-warrior image of cyclists is in the Bay Area. Hence the almost surprised tone of the article.