Jaws Was Never My Scene and I Don’t Like Star Wars
Today was hopefully a momentous day for me. (I say “hopefully” because those kinds of determinations can only be made in the future looking back.) But today, spurred on by the example of well-respected friends Justin and Holly, I decided to ride my bike to work!Today I performed this act (with hopes of continuing on into the future) for several reasons:
1) Even though I’ve lost an awful lot of weight, I still have another twenty pounds or so I would like to lose. In the last couple of weeks or so I have discovered the principle of adaptation. I was warned of this fact by nurses and my boss who is also an aerobics instructor. Essentially my body has learned to live with the torturous exercise of jogging I’ve been putting it through. I’ve got to mix up the muscles with different types of challenges if I want to continue to burn calories.
2) Can we be honest? Gas prices suck right now. Has anyone else noticed this? This is a way for me to lessen, not eliminate, my dependence on oil and the blood-sucking leaches- I mean, “completely reputable companies”- that sell it to me.
3) I like to be contrarian. This is a small way of doing that. Most people still utilize the internal combustion engine as their source of power for locomotion.
4) I’m all for being environmentally-friendly when I can. I figure a bike is less destructive to Mother Earth than my car. (In fact, it probably tickles her when people ride their bikes upon her surface like so many bed bugs.)
5) I have found in recent months that I need individualist projects like this to engage my mind and body. I need new sustainable things to do and think about and aspire to so as to feel fully human. The key word is “sustainable.” I am always trying to think in terms of the long haul for I do not want to be one of those people who are constantly leaping from one raison d’etre to another. Those kinds of people make me nervous.
6) The reasons not to bike to work (getting sweaty, being stuck in the building for lunch and thus the whole day, laziness, various minute details that I still have to figure out…) no longer held sway over me. I only live two miles from my office. It suddenly seemed to be a crime to NOT take advantage of that fact.
posted by Mike @ 9:24 PM
6 Comments:
Go Mike!
I too, have re-discovered the joy of bicycling over the last year. With the new kiddo, I don't get to do it quite as much as I was, but as soon as he's old enough, I'll be getting one of those pull-chariot things and we'll be off!
Riding is great just for the sake of it is great, but there is something quite satisfying about using your bike (and your body) to accomplish NECESSARY travel, like getting to work.
I like your philosophy behind it as well. When I first met Susan she wrote me something that has always stayed with me.
"I try to live in the balance between free-spiritedness and self-preservation."
www.stevenstarkmusic.com
way to go, mike! i'm so proud of you. justin would be too except that at the moment he is sweating it out on the freewheel right now.
steven, we have one of those bike trailers for our son and it is awesome! i highly recommend one!
Oh cool, Amanda!
Do you have a good one to recommend?
Steven-Go to this link. This is the one we have, except ours is in yellow (which is good so cars can see it). We also put an orange flag on it too for visibility. We got ours from a bike shop in Guthrie, but this link is to the one at Target.
http://www.target.com/Quick-‘n-EZ-Bike-Trailer/dp/B00006JHVN
Thanks so much, yellow sounds like the way to go!
2 miles is a forty minute walk
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