ChiWhoBike #17
If I were to start biking in the city again (and this is the way that I would train my kids) I’d start by getting used to just riding a bike. Because I think a lot of times you’re getting comfortable with your bike and being able to know, I can stop in X distance or I can accelerate here and decelerate there. So I would try to find safer places to start getting adjusted to cycling, like on a trail, on a side street, or something like that. Then knowing which streets are safe to bike on is probably the next step. I would never myself bike on Western, I would not take my kids on Damen, things like that. You have your limits of what you know is safe. Generally I pick streets where cars are restricted. So I would say to get started, get to know your tech, what you’ve got, what you can do, what you can’t do, and plan out your route well because that makes cycling much more enjoyable when you’re not fearing death every minute. Then basically grow in that difficulty as you go.
I went to college at U of I, came back, met my wife, and she was a big cyclist at the time. And so we got into it together and I kept it going, but she, through pregnancies and such, kind of took major pauses, but she’s still an avid cyclist. We’ve learned that it’s faster to get around the city on a bike than anything else. So it’s our preferred mode of transportation if possible.
