Sarah Rebolloso McCullough works as the Associate Director of the Feminist Research Institute at UC Davis. She creates meaningful and respectful dialogue across boundaries that typically divide—between universities and communities, activists and researchers, scientists and humanists, workers and policymakers.
Her book manuscript examines how sensations such as fun and pleasure are produced in tandem with technologies by examining the origins and growth of mountain biking. This project began with a simple question: Why do people like to bike? This apparently simple inquiry led her to study the bicycling boom of the 1970s and its most important legacy–mountain biking. This blog emerged from this project, as did an online archival project and a video of her research.
She also conducts applied research on cultural adaptations to climate change with a focus on sustainable transportation through the Bicicultures project and has volunteered with and studied do-it-yourself bike repair spaces.
More information can be found on her main website: http://sarahmccphd.com.
To stay updated on her publications, events, and other happenings, sign up here or email rebollosoriding@gmail.com.
Riding Research 
I found your blog from a link on “Savage Minds,” and I just wanted to toss out something that I had found disturbing at the time. A year ago, I was talking with two Colorado state wildlife biologists, and the subject of various outdoor user groups’ reactions to temporary road/trail closures (in order to protect elk calving areas, for example) came up.
Which group was most obnoxious over having a trail closed and demonstrated the greatest sense of entitlement? Was it the “motorheads,” the ATV riders? The hikers? The trail runners? No, they said, it was the mountain bikers.
Surprising? Or not?
My experience is that mountain bikers are today quite vocal in working to prevent trail closures to mountain biking. I’m sorry to hear that they are now expressing the same sense of entitlement that they critiqued in the early years of the sport. Given the sport’s growth, I’m not surprised but hope that they work toward better cooperation with land management.
Historically, mountain biking was banned from many lands in a process where many mountain bikers did not feel their voices were properly considered. In places such as Marin county (where most of my research is based), they argued that hikers and equestrian riders refused to share the trails without considering the other perspective. As the sport has grown, so has the sophistication of their advocacy. They work hard to demand a seat at the table in any land management decisions, and this may at times come across (and be) obnoxious and entitled.
Have you seen the latest paper published in the Journal of Political Ecology by Ben Weil on bike cultures in Davis? http://jpe.library.arizona.edu/Volume20/Volume_20.html
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