When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells
How many of you can remember the moment your mom or dad let go of your bike seat and you were riding for the first time, completely free? For many of us, our bicycle was the first major step in our independence. When I get on my bike the sense of fun and freedom from my childhood is still nearby. I’ve been tapping into that childhood joy and sense of independence to embrace bike commuting. I begin my day lost in thought, but attentive to the rules of the road, with Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” on my Ipod shuffle while I cruise the Route 66 bike path towards town. The 45 minutes it takes for me to ride to work is my time to contemplate the world around me. The sense of motion and the free moments take me far away from the clamor of civilization. Author Christopher Morley deemed the bicycle “the vehicle of novelists and poets,” and Albert Einstein conjured his theory of relativity while riding a bike. Besides inspiring creativity, I like to think that if I keep up with this I won’t need Dick Cheney out there waging wars for my share of the oil.
Besides all of those reasons, riding a bike is just plain fun. I delight in the things I notice on my bike that I would miss in my car. Like the stink beetle with its rear end pointed towards the sky as a warning for me to keep my distance. Or the red-shafted flicker; wings outstretched, undulating in flight ahead of me on his own daily commute along the Rio de Flag urban trail. I savor the rich fragrance of the willow stands. I catch a raven drinking out of someone’s roof gutter. I discover a whole other world out there on a bike with the breeze blowing in my hair and a smile on my face.
And I find that I am not alone. I admire the myriad of personalities of the other riders—the professional lady in a leather jacket, the commuting dad with his kid in a trailer on his way to day care and the woman on a cruiser who calls out “You go girl!” as pass her. There is a camaraderie we share on the bike path that is not present between fellow automobile commuters. In my car I am impatient and other drivers are often my enemies, while in the biking world a friendly nod or a wave is common practice, as are impromptu conversations while waiting at a stop light.
A little more than half of all Americans live less than five miles from where they work, according to Bicycling magazine, yet only 1.67% of Americans commute by bicycle. The United States consumes 17 million barrels of oil daily and driving accounts for almost half of that consumption. Think of the difference we could make if even 10 percent of us opted for our bikes. Industrial world cities typically use at least one third of their land for roads and parking lots for motor vehicles. If more of us took to our bikes, imagine how much pavement we could replace with gardens and parks. It’s easy to conjure a better world from behind the handlebars of a bike, and more people are opting for that perspective. The number of bike commuters in the United States doubled between 1983 and 1990. In Flagstaff the there is an ever-growing biking community. This year 1,157 individuals participated in Flagstaff’s Bike to Work Week festivities—that’s over 50 percent more people on bicycles than in 2007.
I relish the freedom that I don’t need a car to get where I am going. At first the 15 miles round trip to work doesn’t feel like much in the face of global climate change, but as the summer wears on and I sink into my routine, the miles start stacking up. When I convert that to tanks of gas I didn’t have to fill, my pride and commitment deepens. And there has never been a more critical time in the life of our planet to feel the simple power of creating our own motion.
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