Like I enjoy saying "drive a car, burn money and get fat...ride a 
  bike, burn fat and save money."

Not so fast. Cycling and burning fat aren't so necessarily closely correlated, much less causally related.

  So I had an image of what our fellow cyclists would look like when 
  my husband, son and I arrived in Castagneto Carducci for a cycling 
  vacation. They would look like Mr. Hampsten, who at age 45 remains 
  boyishly thin and agile, bouncing with energy.

  I was wrong. For the most part, our group consisted of ordinary-
  looking, mostly middle-age men and a few middle-age women.

  These were serious cyclists. One of them was Bob Eastaugh, a 63-
  year-old justice on the Alaska Supreme Court who said he rode mostly
  to stay in shape for his true passion, downhill ski racing.

  And our trip was challenging. The longest hill was 15 miles, the 
  steepest had a 15 percent grade, the longest one-day ride was 90 
  miles, and the terrain was never, ever flat. It is hard to imagine 
  that a group of middle-age adults could have handled an equivalently
  difficult 10 days of running. What, I wondered, made bicycling 
  different?

  It turns out that others, too, have been struck by the paradox of 
  bicycling fitness.

  “When I first got into cycling, I would see cyclists and say, ‘O.K.,
  that’s not what I perceive a cyclist to be,’ ” said Michael Berry, 
  an exercise physiologist at Wake Forest University. Dr. Berry had 
  been a competitive runner, and he thought good cyclists would look 
  like good runners — rail-thin and young.

  But, Dr. Berry added, “I quickly learned that when I was riding with
  someone with a 36-inch waist, I could be looking at the back of 
  their waist when they rode away from me.”[1]

[1]

The Bicycling Paradox: Fit Doesn’t Have to Mean Thin

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/health/nutrition/17essa.ht...

Ride 4000 miles a year and see if you don't lose fat.

I do about 2000 miles a year and I can tell you, you have to be very careful about not correspondingly bumping your diet if you want to achieve weight loss.

I might lose 5 pounds a season in a typical year, despite burning close to a thousand calories a day. But my bet is much of the reason for that is offset eating.

I specifically said lose fat instead of saying lose weight. I bet you are in better overall shape and your cardiovascular system is much better than if you had not ridden that 2000 miles. Weight alone is a poor measure of health, imo.

I'd make the claim that I don't lose much fat, either, as that would imply a corresponding increase in muscle mass (explaining the lack of weight loss), which doesn't seem to be the case. 'course, I haven't gone and gotten a caliper test done, so who knows, I could be wrong.

Of course, I agree wholeheartedly that I'm healthier at the end of a cycling season than before. You just might not realize it by looking at my physical proportions.

"And then there is the stigma that if your riding a bike, it means you obviously have DUI and/or other issues."

Here in Europe bikes become a lifestyle item. Just get yourself a real cool bike, with a carbon belt drive or one of those Titanium bikes, and dress accordingly.

I'm in Florida, too. I own a car and drive it once a month whether I need to or not. And I ride my bike about 4000 miles per year. The weather's great, it's flat, and I can always put my bike on any bus or train. My favorite part of every day.

> And then there is the stigma that if your riding a bike, it means you obviously have DUI and/or other issues.

How deep is this stigma in Florida? I guess that this stigma is regional. I definitely don't feel this stigma living in Western Europe.

Absolutely not. The bicyclists are all over the place down here. They drive in the speedo suits and are fully aware of their rights on the roadways.

In metro Atlanta you don't see many people in the suburbs commuting on a bike, if they're riding around it bike shorts then it's either for hobby or sport and they're usually in packs.

In downtown Atlanta most of the bike riders are younger people and they're rarely dressed for riding. They are however aware of their rights and usually ride with a chip on their shoulder.

Anecdotally, I've had abuse yelled at me from automobiles in Connecticut, California, and Pennsylvania. Not to mention rolling coal on me, peeling out next to me, and passing close enough to almost clip me with the wing mirror. Most American drivers in my experience are just annoyed at cyclists, but some of them are actively hateful.

It's a consistent stigma across most of America

That's really gonna depend on where you live. If you live in the affluent suburbs, you're definitely going to encounter that mentality. I was raised in what is possibly the most bicycle friendly town/island in the state of South Carolina and that mentality is still very much a thing. In cities that mentality is less present, but there is the hatred of bicyclists from drivers.

> If you live in the affluent suburbs, you're definitely going to encounter that mentality.

Counterpoint: many affluent suburbs are adding multiuse paths all over the place.

The trend around Atlanta is for the affluent to just build further from the city, not to revitalize or rebuild. The middle and upper middle class seem to be the ones doing the revitalization efforts as they try to move back into the cities away from the suburbs. It's leaving this ring suburban homes form the 60s-80s around the perimeter of Atlanta that are falling into disrepair.

I've never felt this stigma in Minnesota. I had no idea it was a thing. People hate on bikers for slowing down traffic, yelling things like "get a car, loser" but I've never heard anything DUI related.

I've never really heard the bicycle/DUI connection before, but I've always heard the moped/DUI one, so I can see the mental leap to that idea.

I suspect that is regional. It absolutely is not the case in Minneapolis/Saint Paul.

In most of Europe the land usage policies encourage people to live in cities and towns. Taxes, fuel surcharges and complexity in acquiring a driver's license make the barrier to entry in automotive ownership high. So public transit is more robust and bicycle usages is much higher.

In the United States, the land usage policies actually encourage people to move out of towns and cities into the suburbs. This is known as urban sprawl or urbanization and it makes public transit less effective and more costly to implement and maintain. The taxes are much lower on vehicles and fuel, and acquiring a driver's license is trivial. Thus vehicle ownership is much more attainable and appealing.

Because of the high vehicle ownership in the United States, communities have developed with distinct residential, commercial, and industrial zones that are often many miles apart. There are residential zones that touch commercial and industrial zones however they're often low income zones that are usually in disrepair or high in crime making them unfavorable.

Because it's so easy to acquire a car and communities are planned around vehicle ownership, not having one raises questions and if you're not living in a low income zone, it's often assumed that your lack of a vehicle is due to a restriction such as a DUI offense.

What do you want to say: it is hopeless to cultivate bicycle usage in the US?

No, absolutely not. In fact there is a growing trend away from single use zoning towards mixed use communities. With ride sharing services, people are finding less need to own a car and there's actually a lot of scrutiny of the poor public transportation situation. Times are changing but it's not going to happen over night.

The OP asked about the stigma of bike riding and I was providing some context to help him understand why the stigma exists. I wasn't trying to advocate for or against anything, just trying to explain the current state of affairs.

Apparently speaking the truth has become a punishable offense around here.