This is a public apology to a guy we angered. His anger is not without merit.

Through no ill-will or bad intent, he became the target of jokes at P2P — simply because he got a good deal on a used bike part at the P2P garage. That’s the extent of his action here. Through shop talk and working on bikes and fussing and bs’ing, the deal he got became blown into a unkind and unfair attack on him, a guy we barely know.

I (John) am ultimately to blame for this.

Tonight, the episode culminated into a confrontation that I perpetuated.

That sucks. And I’m sorry.

But I also am indebted to this guy for calling me and P2P out on this. He called me an elitist.

As is often the case when your called out, and called out honestly, you are defensive. It took me the ride home to realize that his charge certainly has an element of truth. Actually it took me a couple blocks to see that, and the rest of the ride to think about what to do.

I’m not 100% sure what to do with this information yet. But I do know, after listening to him tonight that he loves bikes. And if our goal is to get as many folks on bikes as we can, then alienating the people that already love bikes will not get us very far with our goal.

We can not have an attitude or perception of exclusion. We must fix this.