I rode my bike today. No big deal, do that quite often. The fact that it’s not a big deal sometimes feels like a big deal.
I mean, I used to drive everywhere. Dang near everywhere, anyway. I lived in a town 40 miles from work. I drove back and forth every day, freeway flyer during peak drive time. I did ride my bike a bit for transportation, hauling my toddlers in a trailer to the beach or grocery store. But the easy thing to do as I left the house to go somewhere was to pick up my car keys.
Moving to cut that drive time out of my life actually placed me in the location that got me started bike commuting. So in a way, driving led to biking and to an attitude shift about time.
We have a new car, an Ioniq 5 EV named either HAL9000 (by my Sweet Hubs) or Io (by me). For someone who no longer cares much about driving, I have to say I enjoy driving that car. It’s so quiet! And the safety technology doesn’t let me forget about the speed limit, how fast I’m going, and whether there’s someone in that righthand space beside me before I execute my turn. As a bicyclist I’ll always look to make sure I’m not right-hooking someone anyway, but that’s a reflex from experience, not something they drill into you in driver’s ed courses. It’s comfortable and shiny and lives up to the promise of the reviews and safety ratings.
And yet today, as I rode my bike I thought about how much more real it feels to ride than to drive. No pictures illustrate this post because I simply lived it as I rode it.
In a car, whether it’s the old 1998 Honda Odyssey (whose transmission is going to go any day now, hence the new car) or the shiny new one, I’m not in the real world. I’m inside a controlled environment. Much more controlled in the new car, with the seats that can cool or warm, the heated steering wheel, the rearview mirror that can show me a video version of what’s behind me rather than the actual reflection, the collision avoidance that will hit the brakes if I don’t as I get too close to something in front of me.
The car provides so contained and controlled an environment that I’m not really in the world. I’m observing it, boxed away, a bit like an animal inside the zoo cage looking at the people moving around freely outside a confined space. I mean, it’s a comfy cage and all, but I’m not truly free.
Midday I rode downtown to OlyPages, the cool new writing studio, for (Nearly) Silent Writing Club. It’s fall, the angle of the sunlight tells me, so I wore a cardigan and scarf over my Nuu-Muu Scoop and leggings. I left with plenty of time; it takes about 13 minutes to ride downtown using my favorite route along East Bay Drive. When I ride to town that way I stop at the Little Free Library, I look to see whether the water is up or the mud is up (our household description of low tide), I say hello to the corvid escorts accompanying me overhead and look for great blue herons fishing along the water’s edge.
As Tom Flood of Rovelo Creative succinctly expressed it, “Bicycles deliver the freedom that auto ads promise.” In a car I couldn’t stop at the Little Free Library (no parking). I couldn’t do much looking around me other than the environmental scanning that’s important for safe operation of a motor vehicle; I certainly couldn’t look up to watch the birds or gaze at the water level. I couldn’t tell whether the blackberry bushes still hold enough to be worth stopping to pick since I’d be going 35 miles an hour (until the speed limit drops to 25, at which point I’d be going 25).
Along the way on every bike ride I interact with other human beings. I smile and give a little wave to other people on bikes who wave back, acknowledging our shared community. I interact cheerfully with people walking. They have the right of way over me and I can slow and say hi or comment on the nice day as they cross the street, something I can’t do from the car. I can see flowers blooming as more than a blur of color.
When I got downtown I parked at the bike rack in the block on Capitol Way a few yards from the OlyPages alley entrance. No circling and looking, no having to navigate backing into a parallel parking spot. Whatever time someone else “saved” driving from my neighborhood to downtown (it’s not as if we can put the time somewhere in storage) they would need to find parking and then walk from their parking spot so we’d arrive at about the same time. Time savings jar emptied again!
Riding home afterwards I didn’t take the most direct route, for multiple reasons. One is that the direct route involves more crossings of streets that carry more traffic. It requires a steeper and more direct climb up from sea level to the ridge I live on. And it’s not as beautiful as that ride along the bay that I can fully enjoy, going as slow as I want to because there’s no speed limit pressure to keep up in the bike lane.
White sailboat masts stand like a small forest floating above and reflected in the waters of the inlet. In the background, the dark blue nearby hills and the lighter blue Olympic Range beyond frame the scene. Birch and maple leaves rustle in the light breeze, darker evergreens standing tall next to their brilliant fall palette. We’re only a couple of days from the equinox. Shoulder season is here; gentle temperatures make it pleasant to ride either with or without that cardigan.
I ride through Squaxin Park on my way home, noticing the moss-covered stones, the ferns climbing the giant old trees, the late-season roses blooming, happy people holding some kind of gathering in the picnic shelter. In a car I wouldn’t be able to take the shortcut, the soft-surface path that brings me out on the “dead end” of 26th Avenue (dead only for people driving) and up past another Little Free Library. I ride onto a wide shared-use path that’s sometimes decorated with sidewalk chalk art, turn right onto the low-volume local street the bus service runs on that I rely on much of the time if I’m not riding my bike, and take another right into my neighborhood loop. One more Little Free Library waits there, a recent addition, and then I’m home. I’ve felt the real world all around me the whole trip, and it has been delightful.
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