Psyched for Bikes

People in Peru love their bicycles too.

Being Slow

Yesterday was World Carfree Day. I had no idea until late afternoon, but when I found out I felt pretty smug that I'd ridden my bike to work.

I’ve been doing that a couple of times a week for about a month now. I only learned to ride a bike about two months ago, so I feel a bit conceited about my dedication. I met a guy once who had been vegan and gave it up. He said he didn’t really feel bad about eating eggs and milk again, but he missed being able to feel morally superior to everyone else in any given room. That’s sort of how I feel about it.

My commute is eleven miles each way. It gives me plenty of time to think about the process and why I am putting myself through this grueling ordeal day after day. I’ve drawn several conclusions:

1. Tire inflation actually does make a difference. If my legs can tell, so can the engine of your car.
2. It takes a lot of energy and effort to move the weight of my body and bicycle eleven miles. Add half a ton of plastic and steel and you can start to appreciate the work that gasoline is doing for you.
3. Really, nobody should live more than five miles from where they work. More than that extends us beyond our means to travel without the assistance of fossil fuels. Sure it can be done; I’m happily doing it and so are many others. But the greater the distance, the greater the effort, the greater the time commitment, the less the average person is willing to make that commitment.

Making myself do this day after day has also made me think harder about other choices I make, and as I find the small joys in my commute that I wouldn’t have noticed in a car—watching the cranes in the hayfield, catching the fleeting scent of some unknown flowering thing, noticing the wind direction—I am more willing to change other things. As I make choices that are increasingly consistent with what I believe, I find that not only do I feel good about it, there are almost always unforeseen rewards.

None of this is easy. Despite the ubiquitous list that promises “small changes that make a big difference” or “ten surprisingly simple ways to green your lifestyle,” committing to a life that is less resource-intensive takes just that: commitment. It isn’t just buying products that are labeled “environmentally friendly,” it’s questioning whether you need to buy them at all; it’s not only owning a fuel-efficient car, it’s making decisions about how often and how far you really need to drive it.

The answers frequently require more of us: they take more time, forethought, and planning. They are complicated by a society that has built shopping centers away from residences and shunned public transportation. They risk being labeled a whack-job by neighbors Mr. Fastidiously Manicured Lawn and Mrs. Always Takes The Minivan.

We want everything to happen so fast. It’s the way our world is structured. We have no time for ourselves or each other (which begs the question: just what are we spending our time on?). But just the action of getting on that bike in the morning, planning my day to include that time, has forced me to slow down. Once I did, I found that there was a whole new opportunity: it’s not only about getting to your destination; everywhere you go has a journey that gets you there. It’s up to you to use or forsake the adventure of it. I like the slow way. I notice things. I have time to reflect, time for myself. I'm starting to think that the wasted time is the 20 minutes it takes in a car; the 50 minutes on the bike is an investment.

Oh, Dorky Singing Scientists...

You've just got to love someone who can put a tirade about climate change to the tune of "Proud Mary."

A New Recipe for Parental Pride

I think this year my parents have become prouder of me than ever before. What have I done to deserve this? It's kind of a mystery: I have not secured myself a high-paying job, I haven't gone to graduate school, I'm not saving dying babies in Africa, I've done nothing that many parents would consider all that remarkable.

But it's all about expectations.

Recently I was having dinner with my friend Rob, discussing family and growing up, our specific histories. "I want to show you something," he said. "This is one of my favorite pieces of paper in the world." He handed me a roughly sketched graph. His father had drawn it when Rob graduated college to instruct him in choosing a career. High up on the positive side, "10" on the y-axis, was a corporate job: lawyer, business man. "Government" was the next category down, including a list of administrative jobs in various sanctioned government departments. Lower, but still barely within the range of respectability fell "Foundations." Then the x-axis. Below the x-axis (arbitrarily "-80") was a scribbled list: Nader, Greenpeace, ACLU, Sierra Club.

I laughed. Rob laughed. We've both spent the better part of our working lives in the section below the line. Fortunately, not doing so was never an expectation for me.

What I've done to make my parents proud is become more like them. This year I accomplished two things symbolizing that I'm moving in the right direction: for my mother, I planted a garden; and for my father I learned to ride a bicycle.

Mom's always been an almost obsessive gardener, and along with it, she freezes, cans, dries flowers and herbs, enters county fairs. I always maintained that I had no real interest in gardening, but then I bought a house. I found that I wanted to make my land do something, produce something. I wanted to turn soil and sunshine into food. So I called my mom and she talked me through it. She sent me seeds, and book after book on growing and preserving food. She has been wanting to do this for years; I finally gave her a window.

My father firmly believes that humanity's two best inventions are the hot shower and the bicycle. Yet, somehow, he never taught his only daughter how to ride a bicycle; that inability has stood as a monolith of failure in the middle of our relationship for as long as I can remember. This summer I decided I was done, done with the guilt, done with the embarrassment of not being able to do something that everyone over the age of 6 can do. I borrowed a bike and got a friend to go to an empty parking lot with me for a couple hours as I teetered around, and pretty soon I was riding whole miles all by myself. When I told him, Dad said "Well, it took you long enough," but I knew he was pleased. We now talk about what bike paths we'll take when I visit, and how much grocery shopping you can do with a backpack.

So it seems that my years of rebellion, of trying to take as distinctly opposite a path as my parents', are over. I've emerged as a product of both of them. As the child, it's hard to look in a mirror and see mom and dad, to hear them speaking through you as you talk, to sometimes catch their mannerisms controlling your movements. But as a parent, I can only imagine it's the most you could want: to see in your son or daughter all the elements you love most in your spouse and in yourself; even better, to see some of the least attractive parts jettisoned.

I'm not saying I'm there yet. I still have a long way to go before I can embrace all of my parents' best qualities as my own, and ridding myself of their particular shortcomings and follies is daily a challenge. But in my rebellion, I tried to become part of the "normal," the America that's on TV, where people shop at malls and drive everywhere and live in the suburbs with perfect lawns and have endless meaningless conversations, and I found it empty. I'm going back to an earlier time.

On Ethical Dilemmas and Old, Shitty Houses

If I could have had a superhuman power, this past weekend it would have been time travel. Nothing could have made me happier than to visit the previous owners of my house thirty years ago. If only I could have convinced them not to fuck up the house -- especially not to cover the second floor and stairwell with wall-to-wall carpeting. Most especially not to glue it to the floor with thick smears of yellow paste. The beautiful hardwood floor.

Alas, time travel is not within my repertoire of miracles.

The first thing I did upon buying the house was rip up their stained carpeting. Even in its heyday, this particular carpet would have been an unwise decorating decision. An abstraction of yellow and brown, it made your eyes twitch if you looked at it too long. Tearing it off was cathartic, like I was liberating the floors, freeing my house from the oppression wrought by previous owners.

Underneath I found the glue. Heavy gobs of hardened glop, tan and gray, whose job it had been to hold that awful carpet in place. It was the barrier between me and my dream of beautiful hardwood floors. In a harrowing battle back in January, I reclaimed the wood on the second story. This weekend it was time for the stairs.

Instead of time travel, I have to resort to toxic chemicals.

The thing about working for an ethics-based organization is that everything becomes an ethical dilemma. Chemicals scare me. I have a bad habit of reading the entire warning label from start to finish and it's paralyzing. Sentences like "Cannot be made non-poisonous" and "Known to cause cancer in the state of Californa" -- thankfully I'm not in California -- keep me awake at night. What am I doing to my body? What does this stuff do in the landfill? What about the poor guy in Memphis who works at the factory where it's made, taking it home on his clothes and skin to his children every night? Does he not even realize?

My friend Steve, one of my many gurus in do-it-yourself home repair, dubiously lent me his sander to attack the stairs. "You really should use a stripping chemical," he said. "This going to take you forever."

I told him that stuff scares me. And why do we go to all the trouble of making good-for-you choices like eating organic vegetables only to bring even nastier chemicals into our homes and spread them around on the floor? I just can't face doing it.

"I know," Steve said, "but it's because we go and buy these old, shitty houses."