East Bay Bicycling Coalition's (ebbc.org) February '03 newsletter introduces a fella named Joe Breeze of Alameda, who's marketing European style bicycles all outfitted affordably and practically, with the menu of accessories needed to handily and safely jump on a bike, run errands, and live Car Free! His BREEZER bikes, most of which include hub alternators to sustainably and automatically provide head and taillights, are on sale at Berkeley, California's Missing Link Bike Shop (On Shattuck next to McDonald's at University). Several of the Breezer Bikes are specifically designed for ELDERS WHO MAY FIND IT DIFFICULT TO CLIMB OVER A HIGH BAR/FRAME TOP TUBE - there are now many brands of bikes available that are as easy to mount as a scooter. And remember gas or electric powered scooters trash the environment with noise, fumes, toxic waste batteries as well as denying you precious exercise. If you are unfortunate enough to live in Berkeley's earthquake slide and fire zone known as the hills, electric assist could prove necessary. (Of course one of the keys to success in living car free is residing close to where you need to work or be; other keys include taxicabs, buses outfitted with bike racks, and the new CITY CARSHARE program, with PODs at Gaia Building, Rockridge, and Berkeley Way civic center parking lot. BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, subway) plays a big role too. RECOGNIZE that A SINGLE CAR PAYMENT or CAR DOWN (THE DRAIN) PAYMENT will likely cover a year's public transit fares and rental car costs. AND YOU'LL BE SUPPORTING THE STRUGGLING PUBLIC TRANSIT SECTOR instead of subsidizing Oil Wars and Detroit.) Getting around town with 2-6000lbs of Steel, plastic, chrome, glass and a fuel tank with you wherever you go is becoming an endangered pastime. It really is not necessary to take a 4,000lb station wagon to the Post Office to pick up a four ounce package of Styrofoam peanuts. Bicycling is a win, win, win: You win independence from fossil fuel, you win improved health, stamina, and clearer thinking from improved circulation and fewer fumes (note bicyclists actually enjoy much cleaner air outside the cars around them than the insidious fumes trapped inside every car; see California Air Resources Board study, INDOOR CAR AIR), and you win at saving our, and our kid's own futures by combatting global warming! I recognize biking is an acquired taste, like coffee. Hardly anyone feels right about drinking coffee the first time, it's spat back out! Don't expect to fall in love with bicycling on your first ride, it takes a bit of time to get used to how much fun it is, how much safer it can be to be doing 10mph in fresh air rather than 0mpg in gridlock fumes....and mastering the gyroscopic reality of bicycle inertia staying upright by the laws of physics when rolling, It takes some time and experience to recognize how well biking can actually work, and of course to rebuild the stamina and strength your body has lost to the brake and accelerator pedals. MOST BIKE TRIPS I MAKE IN BERKELEY TAKE ABOUT AS MUCH TIME AS MOST FOLKS HAVE TO ALLOW FOR FINDING PARKING AFTER DRIVING TO A DESTINATION IN BERKELEY. Within one season you'll be enjoying biking so much it won't take hardly any coaxing to realize with a bit of waterproof and or insulating clothing, bicycling in cold or wet weather is really no problem either, exercise will tend to keep you warm no matter what! I find it's easier to be too warm than too cold! What follows now is my fundamental bicycle life story, explaining in part how I became such a staunch advocate of bicycling. In October of 1999, a particularly ugly auto accident hurled me into becoming car-free. I used to own as many as four cars at one time, for various reasons, paying separate insurance, taxes, maintenance, body repair, engine repair, storage, tolls, gas, cleaning, tickets, towing and assorted other bills on each one. Finally by way of an auction where I got half the money I’d hoped to from the sale of my next to last car, I was down to just the 1994 ultra-safe and quiet little Lincoln Continental I still, at this writing, am unfortunate enough to own. But just a few days after I sold my next to last car for what seemed a horribly unfair to me price, my only remaining car was trashed while it was legally and carefully parked behind some dumb van that used the half-car length of space I left between the vehicles to build up enough speed to ram my spiffy new-looking Lincoln hard enough to sever the PARK pin in its transmission and of course do about $3000 in damage to the bumper and grille. I got to watch in horror as the driver at fault sped away, playing hit and run. Neither I nor three other witnesses were able to get a license plate number but I did have good insurance for my car, which proceeded to be very badly mis-repaired by two different shops - one for the engine work, and another for the body work of course. The shop had been highly recommended by a now defunct consumer rating organization called Value-Star, but one of the more sensationally bad things they did was to lose track of where they had even put my car, a week after I made and kept an appointment to drop it off. IT TOOK THEM AN ENTIRE CALENDAR MONTH to badly mis-repair the vehicle, with me making no fewer than seven round trips out of town to this now out of business auto, and auto body, repair facility. The jolt came from suddenly finding myself trying to live car-free in that month; my insurance didn’t cover any loaner car of any type for this inept repair procedure, SO I TOOK TO BICYCLING EVERYWHERE THAT MONTH. And some strange and positive things began to happen, such as, my health level took a great leap forward, which is always a bit of a miracle when like me at the age of 50, you are taught to expect to decline and decay. Frankly looking back on all this four years later, I realize I happily escaped having a sedentary lifestyle made possible by a car, become my method of aging grouchily and sourly. By doing everything I used to do by car, on a bike equipped for running errands, that I was suddenly smiling more, building muscle mass, getting clearer thinking going, just with a little exercise on a terrific modern, ultralight full-suspension bike. As a lover of life and of the outdoors, I’m anxious to share a message of health, joy and healing available to anyone with the courage to find out just how beautiful and quiet and fragrant the world can be - from the saddle of a modern bicycle. I have 50 year’s life experience riding a bike, and believe me, bike technology has changed dramatically in that time. I’ve changed dramatically, too. I used to live the conventional American life, taking maybe an average of 3,000 pounds of steel, oil, gasoline and furniture around with me almost wherever I went. After all, this is the Amerikan way of death, the notion you must have a gas tank to carry with you wherever you go. At this writing, I do still own and operate such a beast, known as a car, but I am looking forward to the day I get rid of it - and all the insurance, taxes, licenses, maintenance and gridlock costs it comes with - as slowly over the years I have got rid of one car after another, and have always been glad I did. Meanwhile, the money I’ve saved from not keeping up the damned expense of multiple cars is being plowed into some of the most advanced, safe, and beautiful magic carpets, known as bicycles, Northern California has ever seen. My bikes feature such things as fully automatic lighting (motion detectors turn on, and auto-off chips turn off, three separate lights on each of my bikes. These bikes also sport a handlebar stereo which I plug into a solar panel on my garage roof, so there’s no need of changing batteries (although of course even rechargeable batteries will eventually wear out.) It tinkles out tunes from either cd’s or tapes, as an early warning signal that I’m approaching, and these dandy Panasonic Walkman type stereos have proven to be a MAJOR plus for safety. Cats and Dogs, not to mention inattentive jaywalkers who figure they don’t need to look when they cross a street, assuming there’s no such thing as a quiet bicycle approaching at 30 mph - well you can see how important it is to make SOME modest little noise (the Walkman I’m referring to work from a mere pair of AA batteries, so we’re not talking serious noise pollution here.) Perhaps here in terms of safety I should try and overcome a primary misconception folks have about bicycling, that it’s too dangerous, and that’s why they’d prefer to continue killing each other and the planet with tailpipes and wars for oil. I HAVE BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED IN MY TRAVELS, BUT ONLY WHEN USING A SET OF CAR KEYS. My inoperable spinal injury was a direct result of my FIRST carjacking incident, where I was run over by my own car. I was carjacked a second time in the summer of 2002, by some horrible kids who knocked me unconscious for the sole and express purpose of getting my car keys from me. They had to ask me where the car was parked as I was coming to bleeding on the floor. I ask you dear reader, how did my car contribute to my safety? I have had certainly dozens of mishaps in my 50 years of bicycling, but not one of them came even close to producing the life-threatening injuries my possession of a set of car keys produced. Cars, and our American obsession with them, reinforced by an avalanche of advertising exploiting every human weakness as being solvable by buying a car, continue to take a ghastly toll upon each of us and our planet. My guess is the average American 20-something has been exposed to 50,000 televised automobile advertisements; and probably easily another 50,000 billboard/print ads - by the time they reach their "automotive age.
True silence...is to the spirit, what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment." William Penn 1644-1718
True silence...is to the spirit, what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment." William Penn 1644-1718