A New Year's Resolution

I am not a man who makes resolutions. I find my attention span fickle, my interests varied, and my discipline lacking. I was never one to make a promise to myself, or anyone else for that matter, that I will attempt to better myself this upcoming year. To do right what I once did wrong. To be more healthy. To drink less. That's not me. I'd surely cave and feel like a hypocrite. I enjoy drinking, I find unhealthy food to be delicious, and working out at gym feels like masturbation, feels artificial.

This year was different. It wasn't a spur of the moment decision. It was a gradual progression towards the concept with painstaking preparation to be ready on the day in question, New Year's Day. For my birthday last November my wife bought me a rack and a head light and tail light, gifts I had been more than hinting at for sometime. I already had a great bag and a raincoat. Ever since I got my new one back in September, I had been planning on making biking my primary form of transportation.

It wasn't a decision I made lightly. In fact I had to bike quite often two years back when I totaled a brand-new car, but even then I had my wife drop me off at work and I pedaled back. That wasn't about laziness, it was about necessity. I get up at the crack of dawn, and, depending on the time of daylight we happen to be saving, it's black as pitch on my way to work. A helmet was the first thing I bought. A new/used car came along and I hopped back behind those horse powers.

I seem to remember being discouraged all my life from any form of transportation other than vehicular. In elementary school we lived across the street from our school. My father would not let us walk there or ride a bike because there was a busy street disconnecting our neighborhood from it. In my brother's final year there, fifth grade, he did indeed ride his bike to school, and I assumed the same privilege would be bestowed upon me when I got to his age. I was asked to continue to ride the bus with my little sister, who never like bikes anyway.

I never stopped loving bicycles. I remember my brother riding down the street when he was 8 or so, making me 5. He had a blue bicycle that one day became mine. I had training wheels on it until I was 7, a fact my cousin teased me to no end on account of. I remember desperately awaiting the day when our parents would allow my best friend and I to bicycle down to the local K&B to read comic books for hours. I remember learning how to calculate speeds on a bike, multiply the number of gears on the pedals by the number of gears on the wheel, - my first example of combinatorials - and it seemed the more the better. Again, I was covetous of my brother in sixth grade when he got a 21 speed bike with a grip shift built into the handle bars, it was so cool!

High school was a blur of engine exhaust. We were so excited to be allowed to operate a vehicle that bikes seemed like a child's thing. For all of high school my mother, who worked there, and we took separate cars to school - which was also across the street. That had to stop my brother's senior year when I got detention for tardiness because my brother overslept and made me late too often. After that I took the bus until I was old to drive myself, which I did.

I never considered a bicycle to be a legitimate form of travel until college. My godfather, who is my cousin maybe 10 year older than I am, has always been great to me. He was an avid cyclist and willed me his old bicycle, a hot pink road bike from Allez. It was glorious! It was dubbed the pink hotness. Allez is french for "you go" using the formal "you". It is also a damn good bike. The road style took some getting use to, but now I can never go back. That bike was fast. It allowed me to move off campus, where it is cheaper, and still get to and from campus, where I worked and schooled, in a timely manner. Sadly, the pink hotness was stolen. Taken from a rack which I foolishly left it chained to for a long, lonely weekend. As a poor college student I could never afford a bicycle that nice again, and probably still cannot.

Since then several used bikes have come and gone. I made half-hearted attempt to bike around for recreation, but it felt too forced. I don't want to be one of those guys who rides through crowded street paths in biker shorts shooing people out of my way, or one of those clumsy people who bike a short distance and turn around suddenly and head back to where they started from. If I wanted to experience the full joy of cycling, for me, my rides had to have purpose. I can make it to the store, I've done it before. I can meet friends at local restaurant, my wife and I have made the trip often. One reason we live here in Mid-City is the connectivity and we have taken advantage of that in the past so why not full time.

I am a creature of proximity, and what gives you more proximal development than getting from A to B with your two legs and one of the most efficient machines mankind has ever built. With a few new tools by my side and more as I see the need, I can make this resolution stick. I drive with my wife in her car often. Long distances are often cut by a dangerous road. I am not cutting out driving all together. My resolution is not to bike more, it's to drive-less. There's no reason not to.

Since the beginning of this year I have driven my personal vehicle once, to move it out of the way of the trashcans on the street.