WEEK 9: Requiem for a Way of Life

How different life is these days. You never stop to think about it while you’re on the go, but your chosen method of transport has a dramatic effect on your day. You can sit in an air conditioned box, shunting a few feet at a time down a queue of traffic a mile long, picking your nose, listening to the radio, feeling the cramp spread through your left ankle, slowly getting more and more agitated about how late you’ll be when you finally arrive, and how sick you are of spending you life sitting in a car capable of 140 miles per hour but which rarely tops 25 in the rush hour. Or, you can sit in a bus and think much the same thing, except you can’t pick your nose and your agitation is compounded by a vicious, deep seated loathing of every old biddy who spends 10 minutes boarding the bus and half an hour locating her money or bus card whilst suddenly, as if on cue, the traffic begins to speed by and then, finally, just as your bus pulls out into the road again, the lights turn red. And so does your vision.

Or you can adopt the most efficient form of transport known to man. You can cycle. It really is the most efficient way of getting around. A bicycle is a beautiful piece of engineering built around simple, robust and proven concepts. Like computers, 90% of problems are caused by the User. Unlike computers, a well kept and properly maintained bicycle will function for 90% of the time without a problem. And even when it does breakdown, whether it’s a puncture or a broken chain or a blundering pedestrian, you can pick it up and walk it home again, and most of the time you can repair it yourself. The only thing that I don’t understand about bicycles is why more people aren’t riding them more often!

The only other thing I didn’t understand about bicycles is how easily you can take them for granted. How you miss their easy freedom: hey, I’m a road user! Now I’m a pedestrian! Now I’m a cross country recreational vehicle! Now I’m “parking” in the garage or the shed or the hallway or anywhere else that’s convenient and I don’t have to pay road tax, parking fees, insurance or inflated petrol prices. Now I’m super fit in a way that months of gym bashing never achieved, because cycling as exercise motivates you in a way that a gym coach screaming down your ear while you abuse a tread mill cannot match: if you stop peddling you’re spending the night by the roadside, sunshine. Plus, the view is nicer. Even the ride to work is nicer than spending 30 minutes staring at the sweaty, heaving backside of the over-weight middle-aged woman on the treadmill in front. The ride to work has trees and some grass and relatively fresh air, not the musty, acidic rank of nylon drenched in body fluids in a crowded and badly ventilated space, the pleasure of which you pay for by monthly subscription!

No thanks. I’ll take the open road every time. No matter idiot drivers still suffering from last nights binge, unpredictable lorries with drivers half-asleep at the wheel, insane cycle paths that lead you under the wheels of buses or clueless pedestrians with glazed eyes who step out in front of you without warning. At least you’re wide awake when you arrive in the morning, unlike the rest of the office fodder who’re still REM-ing when they get behind the wheel. And here is, perhaps, one of the biggest bonuses. It makes you ten times the driver any of these caged animals are. You will develop keen observational skills, learn how and when to give way in all circumstances, read the road as carefully as the instructions on powerful medication, anticipate and plan ahead. And when you next climb into a cage yourself, you’ll be a better driver for it.