ChiWhoBike #39
I’ve been biking since I was probably like seven or eight years old. I just have always ridden via bike as a kid, like all my friends on my block where I grew up also had bikes and we all lived close together, so that’s how we rode around our little town when we were younger. When I was 16 I ended up ditching my bike for a car just ‘cause I thought it was so much cooler. And I had a car for a very long time until I moved to Chicago, and when I did I found that I didn’t really need a car that much. So I got rid of my car and a combination of Covid and then my partner and a good friend of mine showing interest in biking just got me to commit to buying a bike. Covid because of just how bad the CTA has been. I was relying on the CTA for a long time, and it got worse and worse. And then people in my life wanted to bike and I was like, ‘Hey, let me just get a bike here.’ I’ve just absolutely become totally obsessed again.
I just like riding around, for the most part. I don’t commute because I work from home, so I love just exploring Chicago. That is my favorite thing to do on my bike, ride places where I’ve been all the time, ride places I’ve never been to. I think the biggest thing that I have realized that biking helps me with the most is my mental health. Since Covid, I realized how important mental health should be and biking will just melt away any sort of anxiety or depression that I might be going through. I know a lot of people don’t find it enjoyable to bike in traffic, but I find it a little therapeutic, just because I have to be alert and whatever else is going on in my life, it just melts away and I get to focus on the present, and that’s a great thing for me personally.
