The Schrader Valve Confederacy

The Confederacy was the flourishing relationship bikes and autos shared years ago without the negative influence of the human ego. In my mind, it was kindred and supportive, nurturing and family-like as they were born of the same genetic material, the same flow of thought, and the same industrial revolution inventiveness that gave form to the many marvelous ideas that help make life so colorful today.

Cut to today; there’s a conflict in the streets of America that’s been brewing for decades. A turf war between bicycles and automobiles that has had its fair share of casualties, fifty-one thousand injuries and six-hundred thirty deaths in 2009 alone. Most people just see what’s on the surface, cyclists in the road and cars having to, and sometimes failing to, avoid them.

THE SCHRADER VALVE CONFEDERACY sets out to show that the origins of the fight go much deeper than cyclists behaving poorly while riding. That beneath the asphalt veneer of the modern road lays the earliest cobblestones of our human evolution…the same cobbles that we’ve been prying up and angrily tossing at one another for millennia.

THE SCHRADER VALVE CONFEDERACY will help cyclist and motorists alike understand that the relationship doesn’t have to be like this and in fact wasn’t always like this. By taking a look at this conflict you’ll come away with a better understanding of yourself, even if you never threw a leg over a top tube or sat behind the steering wheel of the family car.