ChiWhoBike #7

Published October 9, 2023
A family of three, a woman, man, and a young child, stand on the road with two bikes. The mom is on the right in jeans and a t-shirt, and has short cut brown hair with blonde highlights and light skin, with a sky blue Dutch style bike that has a front basket with flowers and a pink seat cushion on the back. The husband stands on over his black Dutch style bike with their child on the back seat. The father has short curly brown hair, light skin, and round glasses, and is wearing shorts and an open flannel over a white tshirt. The child on the back is wearing a bright red shirt that reads

I can tell you when I lived in Amsterdam, when you’d ride on a bike lane that was grade separated (which I don’t even think we have here) where it’s up the curb and maybe behind parked cars, you get a sense of just ease, where your stress level is so low riding a bike that it’s like walking. Which doesn’t mean it’s zero, you still have to be aware when you’re walking, but that to me is why we need protected bike lanes. It makes the decision to ride a bike a lot easier when you don’t have to be always on guard, always every intersection scanning, scanning, watching, near misses stressing you out, it doesn’t make it a pleasurable experience. When you’re separated from your biggest danger, which is cars, all you have to worry about is other cyclists.

When I pick him up from camp, he wants to go to a different park every day before we get home. So today we just jumped on the 606 from Leavitt and Milwaukee, and we just went in one direction, looked for a park, didn’t find one, flipped around and went to the end of the 606 on the other side and went to Welsh Park, and it was just like nice and easy, you know. It felt good.

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