Bike Motivation

I'm an active person, and while I occasionally have this fear of trails being overcrowded at some point the future, I am always and will continue to be excited and supportive when people want to venture into new areas of enjoying the outdoors. This goes for fitness, health, commuting and lifestyle. It took me a long time to reach past the idea that cycling was uncool, the view I seemed to have had when I was seven years old and felt silly wearing a helmet being carted around on family bike rides. Now I'm over that moment of childhood insecurity that would have (and most certainly did) manifested itself else where if it wasn't in the bicycling realm of things and I love bicycling as a fitness activity and as a way to get around.

I completed my "bike to work every day in May" challenge and it was amazing. I ended up having to drive a few days for errands and car maintenance purpose during the first week in June and quickly realized how annoying driving to work was. I have a 6.1 mile commute via bike path and I think the distance is pretty close to that in the car. I can make it work in 19 minutes on my road bike, 23 minutes on my old steel wanna-be 10-speed and between 12 -20 minutes in the car depending on traffic and the terrible intersections I drive through. For the enjoyment of being outside and my sanity, I'll give up that potentially extra 7 minutes, with which I probably wouldn't have done anything useful anyways.

I'm helping my boss and some other friends with the motivation to buy bikes for recreation and commuting purposes and am truly ecstatic that they are picking up the habit. It's a cultural change that needs to happen in this country, and I think that on some level, people are too scared to even try it. After arguing with people at my office following a Sustainable Transportation/Bike-to-Work presentation about all kinds of limitations to cycling as an effective solution, including this guy's argument that it doesn't do the world much good in terms of CO2 strain on the environment, I realized what is probably obvious to many of you; cyclists tend to preach to the choir. With that note, I wanted to share this post:
Bike Snob NYC: Get Over It
It addresses some of the stupid issues that probably keep people from riding.

So get out there, try a bike!