During the summer of 2012, I biked across the country with a non-profit organization called The Ulman Cancer Fund 4K for Cancer.  After that summer, I became extremely passionate about cycling. The following summer I worked for a non-profit in New York City called Bike New York.  During the summer on Randall’s Island, I worked with children from the South Bronx who were from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and I taught them how to bike.  This experience revealed to me the political structures that prohibit individuals from lower socioeconomic groups in New York City from having the access to biking, especially compared to individuals from middle and upper socio-economic groups.

Since I had developed several connections through my work at Bike New York, I was able to design senior anthropology project and pursue my questions of biking and combine some of my own experiences with the accounts of my co-workers.  By the end of my research, I found that biking in New York City is a much more complexly configured cultural activity than I had originally thought.