ChiWhoBike #70
I’ve been biking my whole life. My parents were really into mountain biking, so I grew up into it and started racing mountain bikes when I was 13, and I did a lot of racing all throughout high school, but then kind of stopped when I went to college. And it wasn’t until I came to Chicago that I actually just started biking for fun with groups of people and friends my age.
I use my bike for everything. I usually bike to work in the winter, I like to bike to little coffee shops, and I think it’s probably the fastest way to get around the city, especially with all the CTA delays. And it’s also for building community. I started biking with the UChicago Velo Club, and it’s just this really awesome group of people and we go out on rides a lot, and I feel it redefined my relationship with biking. When I was super competitive in high school, it kind of sucked the fun out of it a little bit because you were riding your bike to win a race. And it wasn’t until I got here and started riding with these people that I actually started turning my head left and right as I was biking, seeing the city and realizing that biking isn’t just about like getting from one point to another point in the fastest way possible. It’s also just about enjoying the journey and talking with people as you bike. And I’ve made some really awesome friends through biking and I’m really grateful for that here.
With the bike club we have regular rides and we’re keeping them going as long as possible, weather permitting. So we’ve gone out when it’s pretty cold, and if you bundle up, you’re chilling, and then you just need a face covering. That’s the biggest thing, because my face gets really cold, and then really good gloves and shoe covers, because it’s always the extremities that go first. And we really like to go riding in the snow. We have knobby tires on some of our bikes, but sometimes people will come out with us just on skinny tires, and they’ll be slipping and sliding. But it’s still fun, because it’s not like we’re trying to go fast, we’re just enjoying biking in the snow. And yeah, we’re falling over, but the snow’s soft so it’s all fun, and we wear helmets and it’s great.
