ChiWhoBike #72
I’ve been biking in the city since about ‘09, and I got into it because I was a mover at the time. I was sitting in traffic all day, driving this giant truck, and I wanted something to help me feel more small in the world, more nimble. So I bought a bike to start getting to work and getting around and it felt very freeing to not be stuck in traffic or stuck in behind the wheel of a car and able to go wherever I want.
I use my bike mostly to commute, and I work in high schools around the city, so I can commute from my home to up to about 25 different high schools regularly. So I use it to get around, but then I also started bike camping recently, and also recreationally, to just hang out and have a good time.
When you’re on a bike, you can’t take any street you want. Even biking for 16 years, there’s routes or streets that I know that are safe or fast, and there’s streets that I will not take, like Western or Archer or Cottage Grove, because there’s too many cars, they go too fast. So some of the main streets that people use to get around by car are inaccessible. It makes it so you have to think about how are you going to get around under the expressway, how you’re going to get over the river, how you’re going to get around this train yard. So you have to think a little bit more about what you’re doing and then know when that gets blocked or when there’s something that you have to go around, what to do next.
The biggest thing with biking is it feels good to be in your body. It feels good to be able to see things, and see people, and talk to people. Like being able to approach somebody who has a cool bike and say, ‘I like the way that looks’, or ‘you’re really fast’. Because you’re not blocked off by a chunk of metal and a sheet of glass. It’s a way to bring people together and a way to be more in the world that I think we’re missing a little bit today.
