Why bikes?

Sometimes we get too caught-up in our own particular perspective.  So, please excuse us if we assume you know what we’re talking about when we talk about bikes.  These days any particular interest can be hyper-focused by an entire world of fellow (and expert) aficionados. It’s easy to think that we all think alike.

You probably have your own special interests. The internet is like a huge magazine rack on the back-side of a wormhole.  It’s 2.1 billion people creating 100,000 tweets, 27,700 tumblr posts, 48 hours of YouTube videos and 571 new websites – every minute -- of every single day. Boy, it’s easy to get distracted.

But we’ve gotten engaged with a world of bike enthusiasts that’s way beyond the travails of Lance Armstrong and mountain bike videos. Check out LovelyBicycle, for example, a New England neighbor who writes about biking the way James Beard writes about food.  We’ve “met” Byron of TokyoByBike, Jon at BikePortland. We've been Copenhagenized by Mikael Colville-Andersen. We wear bike helmets, sometimes.  And rain capes.  Usually when it's raining.

It turns out that the simple bike is the key to happiness. Perhaps you knew that once. Kelly McClure at Vice Magazine said the bike conjured visions of her pink Strawberry Shortcake bike. In our neighborhood we’d mount our bikes to discover new territory. They were our imaginary jets.

It’s more than just the fact that traffic congestion wastes nearly 3 billion gallons of gas per year in the U.S. Or that, for every 1 mile pedaled rather than driven, about 1 pound of CO² is saved.

It’s about re-thinking cities. In NYC, Mayor Bloomberg gets it. He appointed Janette Sadik-Khan as transportation commissioner. She loves bikes (and she has a ‘hood, btw). All around the world, cities are closing down car lanes and opening new bike sharing programs. It seems we're re-thinking our relationship with cars and just how are cities got this way.

So, when we talk about bikes we’re talking about all the people we’re meeting all over the world who care about creating more livable cities. And we usually happen to mention that the 'hood has a few special bike features, too. That's how we roll.