It is never possible to truly ignore war, of course. Worldwide, war happens. War is evil. War isn’t new. War is happening in places that don’t ever make the news. Wars have been happening in one way or another the entire time humans have lived on this planet, and certainly was ongoing the entire time we have hosted this event. Somewhere. Even in Ukraine.

But this was different somehow.

We always tried to leave external events out of this event.  This is about bicycles. This is about joy, period. Its about connecting people without pretense. People and their governments and their armies, after all, are not the same thing.

But the best part of this event has always been solidarity and the erasure of barriers no matter where you are – physical ones, cultural ones, language ones. While political upheaval might be going on, we tried to stay focused on bicycles and snow.

But the insanity of the war in Ukraine has turned this celebratory event into something else – like trying to plan a party while the neighbour next door is hosting a funeral.

It can’t happen the same way this year. It wouldn’t be the same. People in bombed out cities across Ukraine would love to ride with us, but they can’t.

We all loved seeing the pictures flow out, the friendly words of encouragement sent out to the world by people we’ve never met, working for organizations we haven’t heard of, thanks to translated social media messages and posters originally written in Finnish, or Turkish, or Russian, or Ukrainian, or Icelandic. We loved seeing the snowflakes drop onto the map in places like Lviv, Kharkiv, Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don. Each one representing a humble person wanting to express their love of winter and bike with the rest of the world.

We also loved the mock competition between invented entities and identities. Any event that plays on the ties between countries, between cities, is playing with imaginary lines and identities and ideas made up by humans. We know that. Nature doesn’t care about city names or country borders. Everyone who has ever participated in this event knows how absurd it is to urge people to sign up to ride for a made up event and then to declare “winners” in a “competition” between cities of vastly different sizes. Moscow vs. Traverse City? Croatia vs. Canada. Absurd. It never mattered. That was the fun.

We took great pleasure in seeing both Ukrainian and Russian people and organizations everywhere involved in this event from the beginning. We loved the ties that developed between bicycle advocacy organizations in a way that felt unique and beautiful.

Everywhere from Turkey to Spain, from Austria to Kazakhstan, we discovered people and organizations just like us – all with two basic things in common: We love bicycles and we love winter.

It is something we haven’t seen anywhere else, in any other event of its kind.

We would love to keep going the same way this year, but we just can’t.

Our hearts are broken.

All we can say is that war is evil. War is wrong. That much is true. We would go further if it was our place.

This year we are not cancelling the event. It does not deserve to be cancelled. But we are also not celebrating.

We still urge everyone to ride, together.

And, because some of us can’t, we offer them our support.

So instead, we are changing the call to action this year to a simple one:

Support #BikesForUkraine

Initiated by 6 Ukrainian NGOs, the #BikesforUkraine project collects money and bicycles to help Ukrainian volunteers and community services get around.

You can become one of dozens of advocacy organizations, NGOs, businesses and individuals who help bring more bicycles and parts to a place where the basic infrastructure for transport and fuel has made bicycles even more useful than usual.

AND

On Saturday February 11th, (or Friday the 10th.. whatever..) go ride somewhere. Wherever you are. Take photos. Share videos. Tell your friends. Do what you love. Do it while you ride. And lets get some more #BikesForUkraine so that one day in future, if this event happens the way we all still want it to, Ukrainian people (and maybe Russian people) can ride with us.

Love,

Winter Bike to Work Day HQ