Courtesy of Rouler Bike Tours.
On tour with Rouler Bike Tours in Lafayette.
When Matt Mick was a student at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette in 2008, living in the Freetown neighborhood, his main mode of transport was a bicycle. Back then especially, “Lafayette [was] not an obvious place to be on a bike,” as Mick put it. The mid-sized city is designed, like many in Louisiana, for vehicular travel—not pedestrians or bicyclists—and is mostly made up of a network of high traffic, busy thoroughfares, many without safe bike lanes.
“But, as I started riding around, I pretty quickly got a sense of where the neighborhoods were and the comfortable places to ride,” said Mick. “And what I discovered is that ‘Wow, this is a really pleasant, beautiful place to be on a bike.’”
In the eighteen years since he first moved to Lafayette, Mick has gotten involved in bicycle advocacy, working with organizations like Bike Lafayette as part of a grassroots movement encouraging Lafayette government to invest in safe and accessible bicycle infrastructure and policies. Such activism has been effective; major revitalization projects with shared use pathways are in the works on Bertrand Drive and Johnston Street, with pedestrianism and bicycling access given high priority.
Professionally, Mick worked within the French language movement—as a teacher and then as a communications manager for the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), where he also got involved in Louisiana tourism. “We were really investigating the link between the French language and the tourism marketplace, and how French might be an economic driver in Louisiana,” he said. It was at this time that the idea of using bicycling to fill a gap in Lafayette’s tourism market first occurred to him. “I started to realize there might be some opportunity there.”
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In the last decade, and especially since the pandemic, major cities across the country have seen a sharp rise in cycling tourism—a trend explained by converging cultural factors like heightened environmental concerns, a rise in wellness culture, demographics shifts, and the increased accessibility offered by the adoption of e-bikes.
“There are at least three bike tour operators in just New Orleans,” said Mick. “And really, today, any city of a significant size is going to have a bike tour these days. I started researching and realized, ‘oh, this is maybe a combination of a lot of things I enjoy and am passionate about, and there is some real opportunity and unmet demand here in Lafayette.’”
Courtesy of Rouler Bike Tours.
Matt Mick, founder of Rouler Bike Tours in Lafayette.
A couple of years since that germ of a thought, and a lot of work later, Mick launched Lafayette’s first guided bicycle tour company, Rouler Louisiana Bike Tours, this past February. Simultaneously a tourism endeavor—an introduction for visitors to the city—and an effort to draw more local residents into the vision for a cycle-friendly city, Rouler (French for “to ride” or “to roll”) guides riders through the neighborhoods at the historic core of Lafayette, hitting local landmarks and fostering conversation about culture. Guiding the Rouler fleet (bicycles and helmets are provided), Mick and his tour guides take their guests to places like La Place de Creole, or Fightinville, which spurs conversations about Creole history and identity. They stop at the Blue Moon Saloon, a local institution, and point out all the best plate lunch spots.
“I want to show people, from behind the handlebars, that this is something you can do,” said Mick. “Getting people on bikes in Lafayette can sometimes be the most difficult challenge, convincing people that it’s something worth doing, that it’s not crazy to ride a bike in this town. And I actually think it is a really exceptional, unique way to experience Lafayette.”
Learn more about Rouler Bike Tours, and book yours, at roulerbiketours.com.
