Here’s last night’s MPR commentary, for those who have asked. I’d warn you when they’re coming, but I often find out after you do. (They’re prerecorded–thank gawd. Live radio is truly for the professionals.)
Bike Commuter
For the past five years, I’ve been a bike commuter. But last year was the first time I gave up the car entirely, and rode right through the winter. My coworkers find this astonishing and demoralizing. I tell them its just a matter of the right clothes-nothing high-tech or glitzy, just a lot of wool. And if you can get around in the snow with two-wheel drive, I can generally get around fine with one-wheel drive.
Being a good, modest Minnesotan, I would never say that I ride the bike to save the world. Nor do I ride to save against the high cost of gas, although I can appreciate that. I ride for purely selfish reasons–I like it and it’s good for me. And I don’t mean physically, although it’s certainly not bad in that way. The value of my ten-mile bicycle commute each day, each way is spiritual. As I ride down the old railroad corridor of the Cedar Lake bike path, dodging killdeer and jackrabbits, I often glance up at the I-394 overpass and see gridlocked cars coming in from the western suburbs. Honking, squeeling brakes, a slight hanging smog. I can feel the road rage in the air. I have to say, I sometimes laugh out a loud, a little wickedly. During rush hour, I can get to work about ten minutes faster on my bike–without ever losing my temper.
I’m sure scientists have been able to measure all the ways that exercise is good for a person, and the psychologists will tell you that it releases endorphins and adrenaline. Exercise can become an obsession because it relieves stress. It’s certainly better for you than drugs, alcohol, or shopping. For me, it gives me a half hour of time to clear my head, to transition from home to work. I suppose that would be possible in a long car commute. But I once lived in New York and had a two-hour commute into Manhattan by car and train–and I recall arriving at work feeling shattered rather than centered.
My family, like so many others, has always dreamed of living in the country. My wife Jessica and I both grew up on farms and in small towns, and we’d love to give our kids that experience. But work in the city, and home in the country means one thing: cars, every day. I don’t think I can do it.
A couple years ago, a widely cited study said that Twin Citizens commuted by bicycle more than any other American city of comparable size. At the time, I was skeptical. Riding the Cedar Lake bike path each day, I’d noticed one of those counting boxes with the black hose running across the path. I’d also noticed kids jumping up and down on that hose. I quietly kept this information to myself. Why would I want to ruin the happy story that hardy Minnesotans think so little of winter weather that we ride our bikes year around?
But in the years since then, I have seen the proliferation of bicycles around town. New bike paths have been painted and paved, million dollar bike bridges have been built. I even saw recently that the Univeristy of Minnesota is paying bike commuters a hundred dollars a piece to study our commuting patterns with a little GPS unit attached to our handlebars. If we’re not careful, we may become another Copenhagen, where almost ninety percent of the population use bikes as their primary daily vehicle. I say the more the merrier; I look forward to the day when bike traffic slows to a rage-inducing crawl around Lake Calhoun, and I’ll have to jump on the parkway–where they used to drive cars–to avoid the traffic.
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