Bicycling is the Answer, Part II

I now buy the frozen, canned orange juice concentrate. It's lighter and smaller than the gallon jug.

It's taken me ten months, from the time I posted the first part until this week, to actually reduce my car trips and bicycle to town.

It's 12 miles round trip with a few tough hills, but it's mostly flat. The reason why it's taken me so long to get around to actually riding my bike in a utilitarian way is because most of the trip is along the bike lane of the two-lane highway 305. Cars and trucks whiz by at plus or minus 55 mph. A couple of months ago I baby-stepped this fear by walking to town along the highway. It probably wasn't any safer, but it seemed like it was a good idea at the time.

It's not such a big deal. Any morning you can see dozens of bicycle commuters in the road's luxuriously wide bike lane. But it did take mental leap to do for the first time this week.

I met a friend for coffee this morning and told him I rode to town. He bikes regularly around the island, but when it came out I took the highway, he blurted out, "Jesus! Don't ever do that again!" He favors the longer, more hilly scenic route to town that has narrow or non-existant bike lanes but slower traffic.

At the risk of sounding righteous, I think biking down the highway is a political act. What let me take the risk was seeing others do it every day for years. When someone sees me huffing up a hill, I hope they think, "Damn, if that fat slob can do it, so can I."

What I find surprising about biking to town this way is that it doesn't really take that much more time. Driving to town takes 10 to 20 minutes, depending on traffic. Biking there takes a half hour.

Also surprising is what people cast out of their cars. I rode around a pair of knee-high tan leather boots in the bike lane.

I hope I can keep it up. It's easy now. Lots of daylight, not too hot or too cold, not much rain.