ChiWhoBike #57
Biking is just faster sometimes. Obviously like grocery shopping, you can’t carry as much, but I think it’s faster. I think about my route, when I lived in Avondale, to go to Aldi I would just take a side street directly there. I didn’t have to park, I didn’t have to repark at my place. With biking, it’s so quick. So I think a lot of times it just cuts out a lot of those details. And commuting too. I just go from point A to point B, I can leave when I want. I’m not waiting for a bus, I’m not looking for parking. It’s completely under my control.
I think biking is how I learned the city. When I first came here, I was 22, and it was 2010. So the recession, and none of us had jobs, none of my friends had jobs. We were unemployed, we moved here with no jobs. And it took me, I think all summer into fall to get one. So I was just biking everywhere because I didn’t know Chicago, so I was biking like from Bucktown to Edgewater and also South to the kind of industrial West Town stuff and Logan Square. That’s how I learned Chicago. And that’s how I’ve over time learned all these little side streets. I love learning new routes, just new, less obvious but more peaceful ways to get places. So I like that that, it’s kind of like a map.
I think people are afraid of getting hit. I’m just like, I’ve been hit before and I’m still here. I’ve been biking in Chicago for 14 years and I’m still here, I still have a bike, nothing’s broken. So I think people are scared of that, but a lot of times when you get hit you know what’s gonna happen, so you slow down or it’s happening at a slow speed because someone’s turning. I’ve been hit on the way to work and just got back up and gone to work. Only one time was really bad, but that was my fault and I went through wet cement. So that was bad. But with the cars, you can usually see it happening and slow down, and then you’re really just falling at like three miles an hour.
