by Miranda Hitchcock
I am, admittedly, not a big fan of “exercise.” I don’t like going to the gym, and get bored easily on equipment like elliptical machines. After awful shin splints and stress fractures in high school track I can’t run, and most of my fitness plans begin with the word, “tomorrow.” But recently I had an epiphany: my housemate has a bicycle. My office is close by. Parking is expensive.
And voila! Suddenly I’m a bicycle commuter, riding a bike to work every day that I can. This is good exercise (although the ride is short) but somehow it escapes the negative feeling I usually get with that word. My ride has a purpose and a destination- it takes me to and from my office, and I feel a sense of achievement with each ride that I never got on a stationary bike where you end, literally, where you start. My riding saves me money, since I don’t have to fill a meter with quarters (up to $8/day even without the expensive, likely parking tickets in Bethesda). Riding to work brings a feeling of “goodness” and “greenness,” since I’m not contributing to the belching of pollution and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from cars.
I get the exhilaration of passing cars as they wait in traffic while I zip by along the sidewalks. As these mornings get a little cooler I get the refreshing wake-up call of the wind to get me ready for work without the coffee and the caffeine. More than anything, I get a few minutes of sanity-improving un-connectedness. A product of my generation, I spend most of my time connected to technology. I’m listening to my iPod, playing on my smartphone, watching TV, surfing the internet… all day, most days. But for the time I spend biking to and from work I have only the physical world around me, and I’m convinced that these few minutes greatly improve my mood and my ability to remain sane throughout a busy workday. All of these factors sum up an important point about sustainability that people often miss- it’s about more than just the environment! Sustainability is about treating our environment well so that it can continue to provide for us in the future. It’s also about treating our bodies and our minds (and our bank accounts!) so that they can provide for us in the future. So while riding a bike to work may not “save the earth,” it has sustainable benefits in many aspects of life.
I don’t know that I will ever take up biking as “exercise,” but I’m certainly glad that I have the ability to bike to work. It’s good for the environment, good for my bank account, good for my health, and good for my mental well-being. That’s a lot of “good!” So until it gets too cold and dreary to ride (and let’s face it, I like “cold and dreary” even less than “exercise”), you’ll see me relatively-slowly but happily bicycling to work. Maybe sometime I’ll catch you doing the same!
Miranda Hitchcock is the Implementation Manager for the Maryland Energy & Sustainability Co-op.
https://nrgcoop.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/i-want-to-ride-my-bicycle/oldId.20100916060917259
Biking in Baltimore