Biking to work made me see life differently
My car was hit on the side, so I took it to a garage. I had no other choice but to bike to work. I’ve been working at the same place for the last seven years, and not once have I mustered the energy to bike to work. And I bet many of us do the same because we are lazy. Or maybe we are unaware; let's say we are both.
I woke up at precisely six AM. I’m supposed to be at work by seven. So, I Googled it with the bike icon, and it was a sixteen-minute ride—a perfect time to eat my eggs and a cuia de mate and bike to work. I was apprehensive because I was going to bike to work for the first time.
I’ve been to work millions of times and biked millions of times. But I’ve never biked to work. Why was there a reason for apprehension?
I felt funny by felling funny about biking to work. But I pick up my backpack and put my lunch in it. I wore a yellow raincoat so people would see me in the semi-dark early hours of the day.
But still, I was kind of apprehensive. But why? I was about to find out.
The pedaling was easy in the morning because it was mostly downhill. I get there in less than ten minutes. Arriving at work with a bike gets everyone’s attention. Oh, nice bike, they say. People seem to notice, and they have a favorable view of it. I never knew it. It was almost like a sense of envy and that they, too, wanted to bike to work, but they couldn't.
But now the day is done. It's time to retake my bike riding experience and go back home. But that was when I found out how crazy our world has become.
Going back home was a different story. Because now there are hundreds of cars in the streets. In the morning, the streets were mine, but now they are dominated by these large, noisy, and powerful metal boxes with a silhouette of someone inside.
My bike is not noted as a vehicle, and I’m not recognized as a person. The fact that I don’t have one ton of metal around me and a powerful engine with a horsepower disqualifies me as an actual vehicle. My slow speed is annoying and mostly a hassle. I pose no threat; therefore, there is no need to respect me. There was this guy with a bike. I swear, I could have killed him.
After being in Europe for three weeks and tasting how many people ride bikes, you become fully aware of how unfriendly biking is in the US. And although I’m in California, a “progressive state,” I was surprised at how many people were hostile to me. A man in a truck yelled: get out of the road! Others passed so near me that I suppose they didn’t see me. And some, of course, were respectful, a considerable chunk.
My apprehension was linked to my car addiction. We need the protection of our car and we are not used to being by ourselves between point A and point B. The space where we usually transport ourselves inside our cars — an extension of our home.
When you drive yourself to places, you rarely get in touch with the outside. You enter your car, and you expect to get out at your destination. Your windows are closed, and you’re listening to music or looking at your phone. The streets are just a convenient space for your vehicle. The space between point A and point B is basically a nonexistent place you have to endure on your trip.
You isolate yourself from the outside. And you are on autopilot going somewhere, you know. You don’t spend any effort to move from point A to point B. But something different happens when you use your body to take you to the places you need to go, and you feel it in your gut.
When you burn fuel that powers a vehicle that weighs ten to fifteen times your weight, and all of that metal does not serve any purpose other than insulating and protecting you from the environment, something is wrong. These days, cars are designed to be luxury electronic hermetic pods.
There is something new and refreshing you can only feel when you finally leave your car home and go places running your own fat power.
As I ride my bike uphill, I’m fully aware of how much energy it takes to transport myself through space and time — a lot. But I also become aware of how everyone is unaware. My need for extra oxygen makes me mindful of the pollution produced by the energy necessary to displace these enormous hunks of metal. You don’t notice it while driving because you are part of it. You press the pedal, and your vehicle charges forward as if you had power. But you are burning an enormous amount of energy by effortlessly pressing a soft pedal.
As you begin to work out, your brain is filled with blood, and your circulation dramatically increases. You become aware of what is truly happening, and you can’t help but notice what crazy things are happening around you.
You notice the obliviousness of burning such a powerful fuel to transport yourself. You feel the burned byproducts of fossil fuels in your lungs and the heavy and hot atmosphere. We have become isolated from the environment and from knowing what it takes to transport ourselves by our power as we used to for thousands of years. Then comes the sad realization we are in enormous trouble.
On average, a vehicle pumps out 411 grams of CO2 per mile. It takes me only six miles to go to work and back. Working five days a week is twenty trips in a month, 120 miles per month, or 1,440 miles a year. I’ve been working at this place for the last seven years, so I’ve traveled 10,080 miles in these seven years and multiplied by 411 grams, which gives us a whopping 4,142,880 grams of Co2 or 4,142.88 kilos of Co2 or roughly 8,285.76 pounds of Co2 released to the atmosphere on a 10-minute commute to work. It scares me to think of what a 45-minute commute is doing to our atmosphere.
Powering yourself makes you breathe heavily and inhale oxygen faster to metabolize energy to the cells. Then you see an SUV that weighs over a ton being propelled up a hill with amazing speed and momentum. As you struggle pedaling uphill with your bike, you notice how much energy is necessary to accomplish this.
You intuitively know that breaking down so much energy will have to have a big impact on something. There must be a trade-off because the energy released must have an equal and proportional cost. And this cost is intimately associated with the waste of our atmosphere.
There is a need for oxygen to burn gasoline, and the waste product of this explosion will also have an indirect cost to our atmosphere—the re-assimilation of the waste products from the energy breakdown is the price we pay for this extravagant luxury.
When you bike ride to work, you transport yourself powered by yourself. And when you do that, you become aware of the true costs of spending energy — your body energies.
You need to breathe the air. And when you share the atmosphere with hundreds of thousands of horsepower engines, you become fully aware of that on a fundamental, human, and breathing level that we are being cheated and the air is being poisoned. You feel it in your lungs, and you feel it for real.
And, of course, I do drive but depending on my bike to get to work has changed my vision of what cars are doing to our atmosphere.
Image by Pixabay
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