Take a bike

The weather is starting to improve. It’s objectively getting better, warmer, sunnier. There aren’t many things I feel more strongly about than bike lanes. Because there’s an urgent need for more, way more, in big cities and small towns, midsize townships and quaint villages, peculiar hamlets and strange burghs. When you hop on an engineless two-wheeler, you’re saying to the world in a loud, crisp and clear voice, “I’m a good person. No, I’m a great person. You? Not so much.”  

Riding a bicycle is brave, heroic, courageous. You’re showing what’s possible to those married to internal combustion - a union that's the furthest thing from a love match. They’ll learn. They’ve simply got to learn one day. The bike lane situation around the globe is a nice, wholesome start. Yet we need more, way more. If riding a car is a conversation, then riding a bicycle is a lecture. In fairness, you’d think that someone would’ve created a more comfortable bike seat by now. Musk and company should forget Mars – this is the next item on the revolutionary docket.

Think of where the lanes are currently – on roads. Which are still the preeminent domain of cars. With any luck we’ll ban cars in a couple years and transform the most obnoxious vehicles like fire engines and ambulances into long, slithering tandem bikes. A change that would contribute greatly to my singular vision of the future would be pulling off the “ol switcheroo” – putting bikes in the proverbial driver’s seat and relegating cars to a single lane. This is right before they’re outlawed. No one needs a car. We’ve gotten so much out of the car that it’s time to retire them effective immediately. Road trips will change, but that’s okay. There’s no Kerouac-in-waiting, idling inside a Ford Raptor, crawling around the Lincoln Tunnel helix, dangerously writing the Great American Novel on his phone.

But where should we add these lanes? Everywhere. Bicycling should be the default human activity, second only to breathing. It’s just as natural. But why when someone pedals inside does it cause such a stir? Biking indoors gives interiors a higher purpose that's otherwise missing. Bikes belong on sidewalks, too. It’s pedestrians who must move. Bikes belong in malls, at airports, on planes, between subways, inside hospitals and in our homes. A hallway is a road. Without a bike it’s naked and boring. 

To alter the culture, we must hand out bicycles to newborns as soon as they stop shrieking. Graduation gifts should be bikes. And we should tip delivery drivers in helmets, knee pads and old Lance Armstrong back issues of Sport Illustrated.

The world is your bike lane. There’s no shame in running red lights when you’re living this green.