Some of you might be wondering why I keep taking pictures of bike racks. We all see what we are looking for. When my wife was pregnant, suddenly we saw all the other pregnant women, a phenomenon we'd barely noticed. Nothing had changed in the world, only in our heads. When we bought our first Subaru, we suddenly began seeing how many Subarus were on the streets of Anchorage.
[This first picture was at the Providence Hospital garage yesterday. I biked over (about a mile) to get my teeth cleaned. There were three bikes (one fat bike on the right) and two mountain bikes in this rack - mine's the fourth - and there were four in the other rack in the background. This is winter. I've never seen more than one or two bikes here in the winter before. These bike racks are close to full, again, in the winter. The summer is going to mean that Prov will need more bike racks for sure.]
Cars dominate life in the US and increasingly elsewhere. But in many ways they are the default status quo, bolstered by habit, by advertising, by city planning, and by our mental models that say we can't live without cars. But my personal experience is that using alternative transportation - such as bikes or walking or buses - when feasible is really liberating. When challenged to change, we think about what we're giving up, not what we're going to gain. Foot power not only saves petroleum, the air, and parking spaces, it also keeps us healthier, connects us to the world we usually whiz by - the trees, the flowers, interesting houses, new shops (old shops we never saw) and to other people.
It's NOT either/or. We won't eliminate the auto. That's not the point. We'll just use it less. If everyone drove 20% less, that would be a huge impact. So we just need to rethink some of the short trips. A mile walk is extremely doable. It shouldn't take more than 20 minutes once someone is fit. But walks of 3 miles - hikers do it all the time as recreation - are also very doable. But few people think about walking from downtown to UAA, but it's about a 60 - 80 minute walk. I don't have time for that, you say. But if you walk, you can skip the trip to the gym. When we talk about bikes, the distances we can go increases.
[This second picture was last night at Benson and LaTouche. The biker is in the white oblong. It would have been better in video as his head lamp and bike lamp both flashed on and off. These LED lights are making winter bikers much more visible to drivers.]
So, there are two reasons I do these posts:
1. To raise people's awareness that more and more people are biking, even in the winter, change people's idea of what is possible. It's not just fanatics who are on their bikes. It's normal, average people who have found that it works in their lives.
2. To document the changes that are going on as people do start using their bikes - some just making occasional use of the bike instead of a car when it's a short trip and others actually commute every day by bike, some doing ten mile round trips or more, even in winter.
It's the last day of the year. Even if you aren't going to write down any New Year's resolutions, this still is a time to reflect on how we've lived our lives and how we might do it better.
I urge you to 'see' all the bikers around you. I urge you to try to abandon your car for at least one trip a week - and either walk or bike instead. Start small. You're parked at Barnes and Noble. Instead of driving the short distance to Blockbusters for a video, walk there and back. Once you start making some small trips like that without the car, you'll start thinking about other times you could walk or bike instead. For some, you can start in January. For others, go ahead, wait until April when the snow is almost gone and there's more light. I promise you, you'll feel better.
The best running alternative this time of year is Old Glacier Highway past the high school to Twin Lakes. The highway is relatively low traffic and has wide shoulders and good sidewalks.
