The Archangel on a Bicycle

And I imagine, bringing the Good News to the countryside on Easter morning. By Jean-Marie Pirot (Arcabas). Thank you, Alan Jacobs. And happy Easter, everyone.

On Supporting Bike Paths Which I Hardly Ever Use (a Reprise)

[In May of 2016, when the Woodchuck Bicycle Boulevard was officially opened here in Wichita--that's where the photo was from--I wrote a reflection about my involvement in promoting the construction of bicycle-friendly streets, through the construction of bike lanes, the redesigning of roads to accommodate designated bike paths, and so forth. Alex Pemberton of the Yellowbrick Street Team, a local tactical urbanist group, recently saw that old post and asked if he could print it on their blog. After I updated and edited it some, he did so here. I'm including the updated version below.]

The past few years have been good ones for bicycling in Wichita. Thanks to the efforts of many good people over a long period of time, several long-developed and much-improved bike paths, trails, lanes, and shared boulevards have been introduced: beginning with downtown lanes along 1st and 2nd Street, there is the Redbud Trail, Prairie Sunset, Chisholm Creek Park, and over on the west side of the city where I live, the Woodchuck Bicycle Boulevard, have all followed. (That's me at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Woodchuck, in the green shorts second from the left; being a member of Wichita's Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Board has its privileges, I guess.) More bikeway and path projects are on the way.

It's great to see so much of this slow-yet-steady development coming to fruition, and it's even better knowing the multiple other bicycling projects--re-purposing an old railroad bridge to get through the I-235/US-54 interchange, which otherwise blocks almost all north-south bicycle and pedestrian traffic on the west side of the city, is the big one, but there are many others--are slowly moving forward as well.

We're not fooling ourselves, of course; Wichita--like so many other Midwestern, Southern, and Great Plains cities--is profoundly automobile-centric. While there are a multitude of ways to measure such relatively underreported matters as bicycle commuting and other alternative transportation choices, a recent study by the U.S. Census, the American Community Survey which was completed five years ago, showed Wichita as having increased its number of bicycle commuters over the previous decade…from .2% of the workforce, to a whopping .3%. While bike and pedestrian counts, as well as anecdotal observations, point to continued recent increases in bicycle commuting in Wichita (the League of American Bicyclists pegged us at .5% in 2016), still, the facts are pretty stark. Attempting to find political support and funding and public spaces which can provide actual, practical logistical possibilities for  bicycle-friendly developments in light of those realities is a humbling prospect.

Still, we do our best. The turnout for ribbon-cutting events and other announcements of improvements and openings have been impressive, and it's always great to see large numbers of colorfully decked-out, serious cyclists heading out on these paths, calling attention to every step the city takes forward. I always have a pretty good view of those packs of cyclists as they head down these paths--because I'm hardly ever part of them, or ever on any of these paths, myself.

Cycling on the Street
Why not? Part of the reason--the main part, really--is, again, simply logistical. The bare-bones network of bike trails, lanes, and boulevards that Wichita has been able to slowly knit together over the years doesn't provide me with anything like a direct route to where I usually need to go--whether to work or running errands around the part of the city where we live.

But another part of the reason is simply a function of how I understand myself as a cyclist. While I still idly dream of someday getting my physical act together--as so many of my friends have--and actually doing some real riding (a century ride, perhaps, or even Bike Across Kansas), the fact is I own no bicycling gear (save my helmet, which itself is an old one that I've duct-taped together), and have never toured. I'm an urban commuter cyclist, and always have been--which means I always ride on the road.

Is that dangerous? Well, sure, but so is driving. That's a facetious answer, I know, but I don't know any better one to give. Yes, I've had a few close calls with an unthinking or angry or aggressive motorist over the years (more than a few, to tell the truth), and there are plenty of times and situations where I choose to get off the main road and onto a side street or sidewalk. But by and large, I simply expect everyone to recognize that bicycles can legally share the road with cars, and by and large they do. (Though my Idaho stop still regularly pisses some drivers off.)

True, by taking to the public streets rather than adjusting my route to take advantage of the bike paths I and so many others have pushed for over the years, I suppose I'm making it one person easier for cynics and cranks to complain that they never see anyone making use of these paths, so how can the city council possibly justify putting a single additional financial drop in the city's (otherwise resoundingly empty) bicycle bucket? But by being out on the streets, I see my presence as contributing to a different kind of impression.

The Cyclist One Lane Over
If you live in a place which, for any number of mutually reinforcing socio-economic or political reasons, has a culture shaped at least in part by broad concerns with health, the environment, and sustainability, then the presence of MAMILs ("Middle-Aged Men In Lycra") all over parks and bikeways, getting their exercise and traveling wherever they need to go, is to be expected. But absent that culture, when you're building whatever sort of bike-friendly resources you can a little at a time, such individuals greatly stand out--and to the extent that they pour themselves into maximizing the use of distinct bike paths and trails, they still stand out, but perhaps also stand out as something distant and separate.

But the cyclist who is dressed pretty much just like you, whose bike is right beside your car at the intersection, just one lane over: that's a difference which is not separate, but is readily and immediately present. The public nature of such cycling arguably invites a sort of democratic reflection and richness which may not be available in other ways.

That's not to say that there isn't good reason to harness the democratic support of a dedicated cycling elite to push forward changes in public spaces that add to the overall ambiance of life in the city. (A city without any bike paths whatsoever is far less likely to recognize the benefits which encouraging cycling can bring than one with bike paths whose use is greatly limited--which is basically true of pretty much every public amenity imaginable.) It's just that, as I make practical decisions about my regular biking routines, I've had more than enough experiences to convince me that, in a small way, getting out on Central or Maple Avenue is shaping Wichita's democratic culture a little as well.

Of course, the most recent experience I had with that shaping was someone shouting curses from their car window at me. But surely, that at least means someone was paying attention to their lived environment rather than their phone, right? It seems to me that, when it comes to matters of city structure, you have to think about short-term goals and long-term change simultaneously.

In the long run, someone who gets annoyed that he has to deal with some guy on a bicycle cutting him off as we negotiate road construction together could well turn into a someone who will carry that annoyance into opposing any kind of alternative transportation development, and into voting down any such funding options he can. But then again, he could also become someone who at least is conscious of the fact that bicycle commuting is a choice some people make.

In a city like Wichita, honestly, that may be half the battle right there.

Why I Strongly Support Bike Paths (Which I Basically Never Use)

The past week or two have been good ones for bicycling in Wichita. Thanks to the efforts of many people over many months, several long-developed and much-improved bike paths, trails, lanes, and shared boulevards have officially opened of late: Redbud, Prairie Sunset, Chisholm Creek Park, and here on the west side of the city, Woodchuck. (That's me at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, in the green shorts second from the left; being a member of Wichita's Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Board has its privileges, I guess.)

It's great to see so much of this slow-yet-steady development coming to fruition, and it's even better knowing the multiple other bicycling projects--re-purposing an old railroad bridge to get through the I-235/US-54 interchange, which otherwise blocks almost all north-south bicycle and pedestrian traffic on the west side of the city, is the big one, but there are many others--are slowly moving forward as well. We're not fooling ourselves, of course; Wichita--like so many other Midwestern, Southern, and Great Plains cities--is profoundly automobile-centric, with fewer than .3% of Wichita residents using their bikes in their work commutes regularly. Attempting to find political support and funding and public spaces which can provide actual, practical logistical possibilities for such bicycle-friendly developments in light of those constraints is a humbling prospect. And so we just think in terms of whatever small, patchwork improvements in local practises are realistic (for example, the target goal which the Bike-Ped Advisory Board has made for our encouragement of bike commuting over the coming years is still less than 1%). In the meantime, we do our best. The turnout for these recent ribbon-cuttings has been impressive, and it's great to see large number of colorfully decked-out, serious cyclists heading out on these paths, calling attention to every step the city takes forward.

I should note that I always have a pretty good view of those packs of cyclists as they head down these paths--because I'm basically never on any of them myself.

Why not? Part of the reason--the main part, really--is, again, simply logistical. The bare-bones network of bike trails, lanes, and boulevards that Wichita has been able to slowly knit together over the years doesn't provide me with anything like a direct route to where I usually need to go--whether to work or running errands around the part of the city where we live. But another part of the reason is simply a function of how I understand myself as a cyclist. While I still idly dream of someday getting my physical act together--as so many of my friends have--and actually doing some real riding (a century ride, perhaps, or even Bike Across Kansas), the fact is I own no bicycling gear (save my helmet, which itself is an old one that I've duct-taped together), and have never toured. I'm an urban commuter cyclist, and always have been--which means I always ride on the road.

Is that dangerous? Well, sure, but so is driving. That's a facetious answer, I know, but I don't know any better one to give. Yes, I've had a few close calls with an unthinking or angry or aggressive motorist over the years (more than a few, to tell the truth), and there are plenty of times and situations where I choose to get off the main road and onto a side street or sidewalk. But by and large, I simply expect everyone to recognize that bicycles can legally share the road with cars, and by and large they do. (Though my Idaho stop still regularly pisses some drivers off.) True, by taking to the public streets rather than adjusting my route to take advantage of the bike paths I and so many others have pushed for over the years, I suppose I'm making it one person easier for cynics and cranks to complain that they never see anyone making use of these paths, so how can the city council possibly justify putting a single additional financial drop in the (otherwise resoundingly empty) city's bicycle bucket? But by being out on the streets, I see my presence as contributing to a different kind of impression.

In an important 1990 book, Justice and the Politics of Difference, the political theorist Iris Marion Young discussed urbanism in a chapter titled "City Life and Difference." There is much in that chapter which I would take issue with (among other things, her dismissal of the ideal which some communitarians, localists, and socialists hold to of "decentralized, economically self-sufficient, face-to-face communities" as an attempt to avoid the hard realities of politics is too easy), but overall it's a vital exploration of how much "difference" broadly conceived is essential to the how we understand both the functionings of and the age-old appeals of urban life. That difference has a variety of characteristics, Young argued: it isn't necessarily exclusionary, it involve variable shared spaces, it has an erotic appeal, and it--and this is most important, I think--occurs in public view, thus inviting commentary and exchange. In a paper I heard presented last fall, a few scholars made use of Young's arguments as part of a consideration of whether encouraging bicycling also, on some level, encouraged democracy. I think they were on to something--but allow me to add my own urban bike commuter spin on Young's observations.

If you live in a place which, for any number of mutually re-enforcing reasons, has a culture shaped at least in part by concerns with health, the environmental, and sustainability, then the presence of MAMILs ("Middle-Aged Men In Lycra") all over parks and bikeways, getting their exercise and traveling wherever they need to go, is to be expected. But absent that culture, when you're building whatever sort of bike-friendly resources you can a little at a time, such individuals greatly stand out--and to the extent that they pour themselves into maximizing the use of distinct bike paths and trails, they still stand out, but perhaps also stand out as something distant and separate. But the cyclist who is dressed pretty much just like you, whose bike is right beside your car at the intersection: that's a difference which is not separate, but is readily and immediately present. The "publicity" of such cycling arguably invites a sort of democratic reflection and richness which may not be available in other ways. That's not to say that there isn't good reason to harness the democratic support of a dedicated cycling elite to push forward changes in public spaces that add to the overall ambience of life in the city. (A city without any bike paths whatsoever is far less likely to recognize the benefits which encouraging cycling can bring than one with bike paths whose use is greatly limited--which is  basically true of pretty much every public amenity imaginable.) It's just that, as I make practical decisions about my regular biking routines, I've had more than enough experiences to convince me that, in a small way, getting out on Central or Maple Avenue is shaping Wichita's democratic culture a little as well.

Of course, the most recent experience I had with that shaping--just a couple of weeks ago--was someone shouting curses from their car window at me. But surely, that at least means someone was paying attention to their lived environment rather than their phone, right? As us lost-cause supporters know full well, you have to think about short-term goals and long-term change simultaneous, and in the long run, someone who gets annoyed that he has to deal with some guy on a bicycle cutting him off as we negotiate road construction together is a guy who at least is conscious that bicycling is choice some people make. In a city like Wichita, that's honestly half the battle right there.

Six Months of Sabbatical (More or Less)

Yesterday was town-hall meeting for all Friends University employees; afterwards, our university's interim president invited me to serve on a summer committee involving various transitions which are underway here at Friends, but I demurred (even though some of those transitions are very important to me). As far as I'm concerned, yesterday's meeting was the last bit of academic business I'll have to attend to for the next sixth months. Of course, the next spring semester won't begin until January 13, 2015, so I suppose technically I could say my sabbatical is actually seven months and change in length. But then there'll be some advising stuff going on during those months, as well as some students who took incompletes in their classes that I'll need to deal with. And of course, I'll have to write my syllabi and order the books. So let's just say I've got six months to work on the sabbatical ideas that I first wrote about over a year ago, and nothing else. I'm going to think about, research about, talk to people about, and write at least a couple of papers (hopefully eventual chapters for a book) about the appropriate conceptual definition of, and theory of governance and sustainability for, cities "of a certain size"--which is on possible title for my overall project on mid-sized cities, like Wichita. How do I intend to do that? A few basic steps:

Reading: I have about 25 books (plus numerous articles and studies) siting on my desk or on their way to me, all dealing in one way or another with communities both large and small, both urban and rural, and the sorts of citizens they either shape or need, and all which I need to read or re-read all or parts of. Among them:

Mark Abrahamson, Global Cities
Gar Alperovitz, What Then Must We Do?
Benjamin Barber, If Mayors Rules the World
M.P. Baumgartner, The Moral Order of a Suburb
Daniel A. Bell and Avner de-Shalit, The Spirit of Cities
Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts Into Air
Harvey Cox, The Secular City
Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City
Brendan Gleeson, The Urban Condition
Alan Ehrenhalt, The Lost City and The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities
Peter Levine, We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For
Susan McWilliams, Traveling Back
Witold Rybczynski, Makeshift Metropolis
Richard Sennett, Together
James Shortridge, Cities on the Plains
Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy, and Liberty
Adam K. Webb, Beyond the Global Culture War
Thad Williamson, Sprawl, Justice, and Citizenship
Thad Williamson, David Imbroscio, Gar Alperovitz, Making Place for Community
Robert Wuthnow, Remaking the Heartland and Small-Town America
Sharon Zukin, Naked City

That's a lot of reading, but if I don't have anything else on my plate for the next six months, I can get through it, right?

Bicycling: Over the past eight years of regular bike commuting here in Wichita, I suppose I've put over 10,000 miles on my Trek 7100. That's an impressive feat for getting around a city that lags behind just about every other urban area of significant size in America's plains states (Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Omaha, and Kansas City are all way ahead of us, though thankfully we're still better than Dallas)--but unfortunately, the great majority of that riding has been along my commute, and no where else. There are all sorts of public parks and other open spaces in the great Wichita area that I want to explore--and, if possible, even do some documenting of (both written and photography), since I want to be able to incorporate into my research a fair number of on-the-ground observations, studies of land use, and perhaps even artistic depictions of the practices, both historical and current, which make Wichita the sort of city it is. This means getting out and getting around, visiting different neighborhoods, spending time on less-used (by a west-side resident like myself) routes, and getting a better, different feel of this city that we've called home for most of decade, and presumably will call home for at least a decade or so more, if not longer.


Meetings: Didn't I start this out talking about the meetings I intended to avoid for the next six months? Well, yes--but that allows time for meetings of a different sort. If I'm going to provide the bones of my theoretical reflections with any substantive meat, I've got to not just observe, but attend to what others with access to information, with ideas about the heritage and future of Wichita, and how it compares (in ways both good and bad) to other cities of a similar size, are doing and saying. I've long been at least somewhat engaged in our neighborhood association and various local events and arguments, but I want to use the time I'll have over the rest of 2014 to do more. I want to get out to as many of the meetings of the Wichita Bicycle Master Plan, the Community Investments Plan, and the Wichita City Council as I can, and get to know (and ideally interview) some of their major players, from the Mayor on down. Why? I mean, they aren't (or at least I assume they aren't) political theorists or students of comparative government or community sustainability. True--but they know a great deal that I don't know, about what has worked in Wichita and what hasn't, and they can offer at least as informed opinion as anyone could about whether they things that did, or didn't, work did so because of some particular human factor, or rather reflected something cultural, something systemic, something--and here is where my real questions begin--that might shed light on the specific political, economic, and environmental struggles which a large-but-not-metropolitan urban communities--cities of a certain size!--happen to face.

(I should add that, which obviously Wichita will be the inspiration and foundation for most of my particular observations, it's not going to be the only city I'll be looking at. This summer I'll be traveling with my family to my hometown of Spokane, WA, for a big family reunion. As Spokane is about the same size and is situated in its local natural and socio-economic environment much the same way Wichita is--large, but not metropolitan; the biggest and clearly the dominant urban area for more than 100 miles around, but nonetheless lacking in any self-understanding of itself as a major city--while there I hope to find the time to meet with and learn some things from people who work in their city government as well. And besides going all the way to Spokane, we're going to go even farther, to Portland, where I'll meet with some people who work in at the Urban Sustainability Accelerator at Portland State University, some of whose staff worked closely with Wichita this past year. So, while most of the meetings I'm talking about are right here, not all of them are.

Blogging: What does this blog come into it? Well, I'm planning to put up a continuing series of short posts here, continuing over the next six months, all focusing on as-yet not-fully-developed ideas that I will have picked up from my reading, from interviews with local leaders or involve citizens, and maybe even photos that I've taken. People have said for years the only real justification for an academic like myself to spend so much time reading and writing on blogs is if they can make use of the format so as to make it serve a storehouse of ideas, which in time might become a springboard for a stronger synthesis and better arguments. I've had ideas of trying that in the past, but never did it consistently. Now, I'm going to try.

So that's it--my sabbatical plan for the next six months. Of course, in those six months there will also be a garden to tend, a playhouse to repair, local events to attend, camp-outs to go on, movies to see, and much more. I consider this next half-year to be a test to see if I can actually re-discover and hold onto the kind of discipline and inspiration in my thinking which enabled me to become a quasi- (or at adequately, if not entirely satisfactorily, paid) intellectual in the first place. Wish me luck, my eight readers. Hopefully, this won't be the last you hear about all this.

Bringing the Idaho Stop to Wichita Since 2006

Many thanks to David Watkins of Lawyers, Guns & Money for bringing this superb article on the physics and practicality of making stops while bicycling along public streets to my attention. Like David, I'm a long-time bike commuter; like David, I don't live in an urban area which has much by way of bicycle paths, which means that for the majority of my daily commute I'm traveling down public streets alongside automobiles; like David, I sincerely want to be treated as just another vehicle on the street and thus obey all the expected traffic laws...with the exception of low traffic intersections, where I have, for years, regularly slowed down and then continued through if the coast is clear, rather than stopping; and finally, like David, I've always felt guilty about this--but not guilty enough to resist what my own commuting patterns have long clearly propelled me to do. At last, someone with some real science and common sense has explained myself to me:

While it's obviously reckless for [cyclists] to blow through an intersection when they don't have the right of way, research and common sense say that slowly rolling through a stop sign on a bike shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Some places in the US already allow cyclists to treat stop signs as yields, and red lights as stop signs, and these rules are no more dangerous--and perhaps even a little safer--than the status quo....Idaho has permitted it since 1982, which is why this behavior is known as the Idaho stop.

Idaho's rule is pretty straightforward. If a cyclist approaches a stop sign, he or she needs to slow down and look for traffic. If there's already a pedestrian, car, or another bike there, then the other vehicle has the right of way. If there's no traffic, however, the cyclist can slowly proceed. Basically, for bikers, a stop sign is a yield sign. If a cyclist approaches a red light, meanwhile, he or she needs to stop fully. Again, if there's any oncoming traffic or a pedestrian, it has the right of way. If there's not, the cyclist can proceed cautiously through the intersection. Put simply, red light is a stop sign....

Unlike a car, getting a bike started from a standstill requires a lot of energy from the rider. Once it's going, the bike's own momentum carries it forward, so it requires much less energy....A cyclist who rolls through a stop at five miles per hour instead of stopping fully needs to use 25 percent less energy to get back to full speed. This explains why many cyclists roll through stop signs so often....

For drivers, the idea of cyclists rolling through an intersection without fully stopping might sound dangerous--but because of their slower speed and wider field of vision (compared to cars), cyclists are generally able to assess whether there's oncoming traffic and make the right decision. Even law-abiding urban bikers already do this all the time: because of the worry that cars might not see a bike, cyclists habitually scan for oncoming traffic even at intersections where they don't have a stop sign so they can brake at the last second just in case.

That last quoted paragraph--but truly, read the whole thing!--is the real clincher for me; all around, through the residential neighborhoods which surround Friends University, there is a patchwork of thru-streets and one-ways, and it is nearly a daily occurrence for me to move with unnecessary slowness through the intersections, never really certain of which cars will be looking or will give me the right-of-way or will stop. To allow it to be understood that, yes, as I cyclist, I am looking both ways, and I can respond to last-minute threats with much greater efficiency than an automobile, so please let me go my way, would be a great commuter blessing to me. So Idaho, since I can't count on the great state of Kansas being willing to tax itself sufficient to actually start making it's roads at least as bike-friendly as, oh, Tulsa, I implore you: send your law this way as soon as you can. It only makes legal what everyone is always going to do, anyway.

Holy Crap, Ayn Rand is Alive and Well and Has an Office at the Wall Street Journal

New York City, the wealthiest and most powerful city in America, cowers in fear and lays helpless before the all-powerful and totalitarian bicycling lobby. Behold the once glorious libertarian paradise that was Gotham! Now, pedestrians and motorists will be occasionally obliged to negotiate around bike-sharing racks! Which are colored blue!! Truly, what a sad, sad day for American freedom.(Via David Watkins.)

Five Years and 8000 (or 10000, or More) Miles on my Trek

I took my bicycle into Bicycle X-Change, the place where I've always taken it to get it fixed up, last week for some minor repairs. My rear fender had come loose, jamming up the rotation of the tire, and my brake pads had worn down and needed to be replaced. While there, Mike Scanga, the sagacious owner of the store, asked me if it was one of theirs. It was, I told him: some months after moving to Wichita in 2006, once I'd realized the kind of commute I'd have from our west Wichita home to Friends University, I decided I needed a different kind of bike, traded in my old mountain bike, and bought a brand new Trek 7100--hardly a serious long-distance bicycle, but one perfect for regular street commuting. I had a memory of riding my old bike down Wichita's streets in the snow, so I thought I probably hadn't bought my Trek until the spring. But Mike looked up my bike, and there is was: November 2006. So I guess I've hit my fifth anniversary with it. There are, as I understand it, marriages that don't last that long.

I don't have an odometer on my bike, though I suppose I ought to, given how much time I've spent trying to figure out how many miles I've put on it over the last five years. A six-mile commute into work and then back home again, basically five days a week, basically twelve months a year (yes, I come into work during the summer; Melissa hates me working at home), for five years? That adds up. But of course there are vacations and holidays, there are days when I'm running late or sick, there are days when the rain is pouring down or there's snow on the ground...and the truth is that while I've commuted on my Trek on all of those sorts of days at one time or another, there have been many more when I haven't. So what's the likely total? Almost certainly over 8000 miles by now; perhaps even 10,000, or 12,000, or even more. Enough to have traveled from California to Maine and back again at least once, maybe even twice. Not too shabby, methinks.

Anyway, I love my Trek, and happy that's still in good working condition. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it that way for years and years to come.

The Bicycle: "An Instrument of Experiential Understanding"

Being the verbose, overtly intellectual loudmouth that I most assuredly am, I've tended to get long-winded when talking about my bicycle before. (That's my wonderful, humble Trek 7100 to the right, upon which I've now put over 6000 miles of urban and suburban commuting.) I've even gotten all academic about the topic on occasion. Fortunately, there are better writers than I out there--and I've just run across one of them, thanks to Lee McCracken (who has just started using CapitalBikeShare in Washington DC to help him get around, and he loves it). He links to an essay, "The Real Reason Why Bicycles are the Key to Better Cities", and the author gets it exactly correct:

We all know the talking points. The benefits of bicycles have been tirelessly elaborated upon; bicycles improve health, ease congestion, save money, use less space, and provide efficient transportation with zero fuel consumption and zero carbon emissions....However, none of these come close to the most meaningful aspect of cycling, a factor that cannot be quantified but has endless value to those fighting to improve their communities. The most vital element for the future of our cities is that the bicycle is an instrument of experiential understanding.

On a bicycle, citizens experience their city with deep intimacy, often for the first time. For a regular motorist to take that two or three mile trip by bicycle instead is to decimate an enormous wall between them and their communities....I cannot approach the average citizen and explain the innate intricacies of land use and transportation relationships, how density is vital to urban sustainability, how our sprawled real estate developments are built on economic quicksand, how our freeways shredded the urban fabric like a rusty dagger, how deeply our lives would be enriched by a collective commitment to urbanism. Aside from glazed eyes, I will be met with outrage. No one wants to be told that they must radically alter their lifestyle, no matter how well you sell it.

The bicycle doesn’t need to be sold. It’s economical, it’s fun, it’s sexy, and just about everyone already has one hiding somewhere in their garage. Invite a motorist for a bike ride through your city and you’ll be cycling with an urbanist by the end of the day. Even the most eloquent of lectures about livable cities and sustainable design can’t compete with the experience from atop a bicycle saddle....Suddenly livability isn’t an abstract concept, it’s an experience. Human scale, connectivity, land use efficiency, urban fabric, complete streets… all the codewords, catchphrases, and academic jargon can be tossed out the window because now they are one synthesized moment of appreciation. Bicycles matter because they are a catalyst of understanding--become hooked on the thrill of cycling, and everything else follows.

Become hooked on the thrill, and everything else follows--yes! That makes as much sense as my theorizing ever will, as much as I might believe that there's something to all my connections between the bicycle, technology, simplicity, sustainability, and "socialism" (or as my friend John Buass has put it, "autarchy"). What really makes us bicycle commuters passionate (passionate, I think, usually in a rather different way than competitive sports cyclists are, though there is some overlap there all the same) is this experience of what the author of the above piece calls "enlightment"--or what I called "arriving at place where independence is connected to more people being equally familiar with their place and their capabilities, thus making civic life even more meaningful and fair". It's downright transformative, the bicycle is.

Anyway, had a great ride in this morning: blue sky, bright sun, cool wind, colors of growth and business and daily life all around. Looking out my window, hearing the sound of the lawn mowers and the birds, I'm already looking forward to the trip home. I suppose you can and do get all that sometimes in a car...but not nearly as often, I'm sure.

Bicycling and the Simple (Socialist?) Life

[Cross-posted at Front Porch Republic]

Nearly two years ago, John Buass, an intrepid fellow blogger and bike commuter (more: a genuine cycling activist) here in Wichita, shared with me an invitation he'd received to write something for a book tentatively titled "Bicycling and Philosophy." I ended up sending in an abstract, because the notion of writing for one of these "[Blank] and Philosophy"-type volumes that I see all over the place appealed to me. As it turned out, the editors liked my proposal, asked me to turn it into an essay...and now, at long last, the book is available at your local Borders. I kind of feel bad, because I only learned about this whole project through John, yet his name is nowhere to be found in the final volume. (Let me give you my complimentary copy John, at least!)

If you absolutely can't wait, you can read my chapter here. Not the best bit of writing I've ever done, I think, but not bad overall. This passage is probably the heart of my claim, which is that choosing to make a bicycle one's primary mode of transportation (which, of course, also means organizing one's life around, and getting involved in one's community so as to make possible, such a choice in the first place) is, in the complex and automobile-centric societies in which nearly all of us live, a complicated one...and yet that very complicatedness is part of what makes simplicity possible:

What’s the point of trying to live simply? I would say the point is to exist in an environment which isn't likely to multiply out of one's control, making one simultaneously dependent upon and divorced from those complex forces, actors, and decisions which shape one's options. That is, a world where one can see clear through from basic personal choices to more or less dependable results, both personal and public. Of course, the world is never really going to be like that: human life is an often random, frequently tragic, always unpredictable existence....But nonetheless, some environments lend themselves to being "enclosed" more easily than others, and said enclosure doesn't just mean retreating from reality: sometimes it means cultivating the better parts of it.

For example, look at your bicycle. It is, to be sure, an impressive and demanding piece of technology, with brakes and sprockets and derailleurs all needing to be properly tended to. But that finite number of parts are all available in open sight, requiring but also readily responding to simple, everyday, basic acts of maintenance. Compare that to the kind of complex, often hidden mechanisms which lay buried, sometimes inaccessible, under the hood of a car, requiring expert (and expensive) work to keep in running order....This is not to say that the mechanics of the internal combustion engine cannot be “enclosed,” to a degree mastered, and thus made reliably responsive to the engagement of any given driver; cars, too, can be made “simple.” But it is much more difficult, and thus much more unlikely, that the typical driver will be able to reach that point. With bicycles, simplicity, the ability to see a project through from beginning to end, is much more in reach.

I've written a great deal about "simplicity" over the years, some of which made it into this essay. As the years have gone by, it's become more and more clear to me that while my ideas about simplicity are certainly grounded in a kind of aesthetic appreciation of the freedom a life only minimally-troubled by complexity makes possible, as well as an environmental desire to avoid the anticipated and costly impacts which ever-expanding (and usually ever-commercializing) complex economic systems involve, my real motivation is strictly political. A simple life, in my view, is one that is, as much as possible, self-sustaining, in a word sovereign--meaning not wholly dependent upon forces and actors (technological, economic, social, etc.) beyond oneself and one's own immediate community. A bicycle doesn't automatically bring such a life into existence. But I'm not the only one who has taken to riding a bicycle and grasped the connections which it reveals.

If I could write the essay over again, I would definitely remember to include a quote which I left out before: "Socialism can only arrive by bicycle," a quote attributed to the Chilean socialist politician Jose Antonio Viera Gallo. What he could be talking about there? Maybe the same thing Gandhi was talking about when he described the spinning wheel as the crucial tool of political independence for India. Developing and institutionalizing a broadly available and generally basic means of production which was entirely capable of being managed by ordinary people would have dramatic consequences for the economy of India, which was then essentially just a component in the larger complex system which was the British Empire. Similarly, turning to a technology and an attendant way of organizing one's transportation needs and one's places of work and living which is, on the one hand, enormously empowering for the poor, but on the other hand, also not so easily dominated by all the industries and interests and commercial imperatives which our car-dependent societies demonstrate well...that would be radically simplifying as well. Complicated, to be sure, and given the compromises which come along with modern bourgeois life, never likely to be complete. But every bit helps. Not to help bring into existence a state of bicycling fascists, but to help bring into existence a society where more people can get along and get to where they need to go without traveling so far, so expensively, so riskily, so congestedly--and, when one's car starts making that little pinging noise which drives you crazy and you have to take it in to the shop and you get the bill afterward for some seemingly (but not nearly) simple problem, so frustratingly! If that's socialism, well, sign me up. Call it "autarchy" if you will, but in the end, whatever the different philosophical routes involved, the results are much the same: you arrive at place where independence is connected to more people being equally familiar with their place and their capabilities, thus making it even more meaningful and fair. With some smart civic planning (some bike lanes and paths, some closed off city centers, and maybe, just maybe, some bike racks at public places for Pete's sake!), some personal commitment, and some luck, it's possible for people to get away from automobile dependency, to rediscover the virtue of walking to school or work or church and almost anywhere else. And, when those things are a little too far away, despite your best efforts...that's why God invented the bike (and why smart countries make as much use of it as they can).



Of course, in framing my fondness for my bicycle (I'm pretty certain I've passed 5000 miles by now in my regular commute from home to work over the years here in Wichita) in these "foreign" and "socialist" ways, I risk losing whatever gains bicycling has made in the U.S. by sending up (literal?) read flags, bound to attract defensive and ignorant attacks against the idea of making America more "European" and therefore less attached to its supposedly God-given (and destructive) car-culture. Well, look. It's undeniable that, in a country the size of the America, bicycling is going to remain a minor component in the lives of the great majority of families (we certainly haven't put as many miles on our bikes as we have on our Toyota Sienna!). So what is the harm of recognizing that if, in certain times and certain places, you have enough people who recognize the appeal of a simpler, less expensive, more self-sustaining way of life, choose to adopt it, and want to make it easier for others to adopt as well. None at all, I think. To shy away from such confrontations isn't just ideological cowardice; even aside from such "culture war" concerns, the truth is unless people stand up for the compromise which bicycling promises, the bureaucrats will win (keep up the good fight, Jacob!). Very simply (in more ways than one!), the bicycle works. So read the book, and if you live somewhere you can ride, do so. Who knows? Could be your happiness depends upon it.

Biking in the Heat

Or, more specifically, bicycle commuting in the heat, because that's what I've been doing lately.

So, when I used, a few weeks ago, my perch at Front Porch Republic to praise David Byrne's review/celebration of Jeff Mapes's new book, Pedaling Revolution, I summed it all up by simply writing: "David Bryne tells us to Ride our Bikes". Having done so, an old friend of mine demurred. He lives in Dallas, and he pointed out that Mapes, who lives and bikes to and from work in Portland, and Bryne, who speaks of tooling around New York City on his bike, have to deal with median July temperatures in the 70s and 80s, not the upper 90s which he has to confront. Isn't it likely that their enthusiasm for a bicycling revolution is a function of where they live?

Very likely--it's undeniable that having mild temperatures and well-tended bike paths and well-placed bike racks and local traffic norms which support bicyclists on the road can make all the difference in the world. However, I refuse to concede that such differences necessarily control the option of bike commuting in the first place. Not to blow my own horn, but I will present myself as evidence for the other side: I live in Wichita, which is not a bike-friendly town (though, thanks to people like John Buass, it's getting better), I commute six miles into work (and then home again) along sidewalks and city streets, and lately, I've been doing it while a heat advisory has been in place for central Kansas. And to tell the truth, I kind of like it--it's sweaty, thirst-inducing, and sometimes more than a little uncomfortable (especially when the regular temps go over a hundred, and with the humidity the heat index starts topping 105 or more), but it's my kind of work-out. You're outside, you've got the sunshine and the blue skies, and you're in control of where you're going, rather than just exhaustively testing yourself against a red digital display on the front of your bicycling machine. What's not to like? Does the fact that I can make it work for me mean that anyone, in any work situation, anywhere in the country could do the same? Not at all. But it does mean, maybe, that I might be able to make some suggestions which could prevent people from giving up on the bike commuting option for the summer (or year-around, for that matter) too soon.

First off, let me make this clear: I'm hardly a physical Adonis, and I'm not saying anything here that should be used as the basis for some doctor-approved physical regimen, or as an excuse to get out of such. I'm not a competitive cyclist; I just ride into work and home again, pretty much all the time, because I like it. If you're in the same camp, or at least are open to giving such a try, here are some recommendations:

Pick your battles. Just because you're looking to ride your bike in the summer sun doesn't mean you should necessarily take it on at its worst. If you can commute into work early, before the real heat hits, do so; if you can stay late, and not leave until the heat begins to wear off around 7pm or later, try that also. Pick your routes too. If you can, make use of bike paths, even if they may add some distance to your ride. If paths aren't available, try to avoid main thoroughfares, as they'll always radiate greater heat as the day wheres on. If you have a route which takes you alongside or near bodies of water, or even some sprinklers that you know will be going off, that's worth considering too.

Slow but steady. Unless you just can't manage to pedal your bike at more than 2mph, or happen to live somewhere with 100% humidity and temps over 110 degrees--in either case of which, you almost certainly shouldn't attempt to bike commute at all--then you'll be generating your own breeze as you move along. That breeze will evaporate your sweat, and keep your body cool, fighting off the baking heat. The problem comes when you have to stop, particularly at intersections with heavy traffic; that's when you're really going to feel the sun pressing down. So, following with the above recommendation, try to plot a route with as few stops as possible. Set your bicycle on the lowest gear you can comfortably maintain, and develop a slow and consistent pace. Racing from on stop to the next, or up and down hills, will wear you out, and increase the likelihood of heat exhaustion. If, instead, you can move along steadily, without pushing yourself and with minimal stops along the way, your body will probably be able to maintain a safe temperature throughout the ride.

Check the bike over before you leave. If you're a seriously cyclist, then your probably have check-over routines that you follow by heart, and regularly get your bike tuned up anyway. But if you are, like me, just a commuter and pleasure rider, then sometimes you forget to double-check your tire pressure or gears before you're on the road. This is always a bad idea, but it's doubly bad when the outside heat is in the upper 90s or more, because a flat tire or whatnot is going to require you to stop and squat and patch and pump right there along the street. Maybe you'll be able to find some shade or shelter to do your fix-up routine in, but in any case you will have lost your momentum, and you're going to have to start up again, while the sun burns you up. You're not always going to be able to prevent this, obviously, but extremes of weather, heat or cold, make the pre-ride check-overs all the more important.

Water, water, water. You're probably going to sweat like a pig on the ride, and that's a good thing; that's your body regulating the punishment which your muscles and the sun is putting it through. So make sure you can replenish that perspiration: drink deep before you leave, make sure your water bottle is filled up, and drink often (small drinks, but frequent) as you go. Do not go biking in serious heat without water available to you. The sickest I've ever been from commuting on my bike came a couple of years ago, when I forgot to fill my bottle with water before I hit the road when it was 103 degrees out. By the time I got home, my body was shaking and I had a miserable headache. So don't forget, okay?

There you go: Russell's Advice on Bicycle Commuting During Kansas Summers, hopefully applicable to your own situation, wherever you may be. Now tune that bike up and hit the road, and don't let the heat get you down!

Cycling Commuters, Unite!

Well, those in Wichita, anyway. Everyone else using their bicycles to commute elsewhere should unite also, of course, but you've got to start somewhere.

For us around this part of Kansas, the best place to start is with the new, wonderful Cycling in Wichita blog that John Buass has started. John's a better blogger than I--he's more consistent and though in his thinking and his writing, and it shows on his latest blog. Not only does he have all the essentials for cycling commuters and just plain recreational bicyclists living in Wichita--beginning with a link to the knowledgeable folks at Bicycle X-Change, which is where I go to get all my work on my bike done--but he's quickly networking to the larger cycling commuter world, particularly in this part of the country. And here in Kansas--and Wichita in particular--it is networking that we need; those who use bicycles to commute to work around here constitute a very distinct minority. Anyway, I'll be checking it out regularly, as a way to supplement and enrich my bicycling lifestyle.

"Lifestyle"? Well, maybe that's a bit much...or then again, maybe not. I've never cycled professionally, never raced, only ever used my bike to get to school and now to get to work and in between, when times and circumstances have been amenable to it, to go on rides with the kids or to get some shopping done. When all is said and done, I guess that does add up to making me a fairly serious cyclist. Here's the six-mile route I ride pretty much five days a week, rain or shine (the link says 5.5 miles, but I've clocked it, and I think the difference comes in the bike map's inability to accurately calculate my path through Town Square West's huge parking lots), and here's the bike I use, all ready to leave our driveway this morning:


It's a Trek 7100 which I bought new in 2006, trading in an old mountain bike that I'd rode the life out of over the previous 12-15 years or so. (No, I was never into mountain biking, but I was living in Utah back in the mid-90s, and everyone was buying mountain bikes then.) It's a fine bike for working the main roads and sidewalks and bike paths and parking lots of Wichita; I'd say I've put close to--or maybe even more than--4000 miles on it in the nearly two years that I've been here. And yes, I do commute year-round--biking in the cold isn't usually a problem, if you've got the gear for it (I've biked to work when it's 20 degrees out); the only real difficulties in Wichita weather-wise are the occasional patches of snow and ice on the roads (very hard to get through, depending on one's tires) and the high winds (slows you down and can make navigation a pain). When things really don't look good out, or I'm just feeling beat, Melissa and I will work something out with sharing the car (yes, we only have one car, for both economic and environmental reasons), or--very rarely--I'll take the bus. Overall, we've been able to make it work.

My commuting has gotten me some notoriety here at Friends; on bad weather days, my students will make jokes or express disbelief that I rode in that morning, and my leaving meetings early so I can manage the 25-35 minute ride home (depending on traffic and weather) before, say, one of the girls has to be taken to piano lessons have attracted a little envy from other faculty members occasionally. All in all, I guess it is a "lifestyle," or at least a regular enough part of my life that I can't imagine myself getting along without my bike. I hope to be able to continue to ride here in Wichita and elsewhere for decades to come. And thanks to John's new blog, accomplishing that goal has become a little easier. So John--thanks.