I think cycling removes 1 degree of separation on average. The cycling community around here cuts a wide swath through the entire socio-economic spectrum. A lot of community leaders can be accessed directly through cycling events (our mayor actually holds a weekly ride from April to October, plus there are several other events where people can rub elbows with movers & shakers).

But even on a less grandiose level, I find that I'm meeting more and more acquaintances at the group rides. Friday's Critical Mass was fairly small by standards of CM rides in other cities; I think we had 80. But a guy that I work with showed up. I haven't really talked too much with him in the past, but now we have that connection.

We typically have 3 or 4 dozen people on our pub crawl rides, and I've closed the gap of separation with several people who post here on BF. I also ran into a woman that I knew in a totally different context previously, when she was in marching band with my son. I think that is one of the cool things about these group rides- they cut through generational barriers. People turn more of a blind eye to a lot of the traditional barriers like age, race, class, gender, when united by riding in a group.

At first I'd be quite surprised by running into people I knew on rides, now it feels normal.