This morning as I was pulling out of the driveway of my apartment building, my neighbour whizzed by on a bright yellow gravel bike. I was excited, because I recognized this bike.
Marc Kitteringhama day ago
The Victoria Bike Valet program inspired a similar one in Campbell River. Photo by Marc Kitteringham/Comox Valley Record
There aren't many places that a bike can't get to in the Comox ValleyMarc Kitteringham / Comox Valley Record
This morning as I was pulling out of the driveway of my apartment building, my neighbour whizzed by on a bright yellow gravel bike.
I was excited, because I recognized this bike. It’s often locked up at an office building just down the way from where I work. I realized that this was a chance for an experiment. I was going to see who would get to work first: me, a driver navigating traffic, construction and finding parking, or him, a cyclist on the same route, but with a clear bike lane and the ability to just roll up to the front door.
The race was on.
It wasn’t long before he lost me. After the first set of lights, for which he dutifully waited until they turned green before proceeding, he was gone. I was stuck behind a few other cars and he had a clear lane all to himself at the side of the road. The bike lane bypasses the next few lights, and he was quickly out of sight. I tried to see if he was crossing the bridge or riding up the hill, but he was long gone. I figured he’d take a more direct route than I, since he didn’t have to worry about going around to the back of the building where the parking lot is. By the time I’d parked and walked around to the front door, the bike was locked up outside and the rider was probably already sipping his first cup of coffee. He had handily won.
That wasn’t even the way that I wanted to start this story. What I wanted to say was that I like bikes because you don’t have to scrape them off when it gets frosty. But I’m fine with having more than one reason to be excited about bikes.
I’ve used this quote before, but I think it just makes so much sense and feel like I need to use it wherever I can: “Bikes deliver the freedom that auto industry ads promise.” That was first said by Tom Flood, a road safety advocate. My neighbour just proved that this morning, but I feel it every time I choose to ride my bike over driving my car.
I have seven bicycles that I ride regularly. Some of them are admittedly not great for commuting — I won’t be hauling groceries on my BMX — but with those seven bicycles I can go pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything I want. Ride up to the top of Forbidden Plateau? Yeah I have three bikes that I would use for that.
What about going camping with the kids? Well I don’t have kids yet, but when I do I’ll load them and all of my camping gear up on the cargo bike. What about getting a week’s worth of groceries? Cargo bike all the way. Quick jaunt to the brewery? All of the above. What if I signed up for a local race? Well depending on the race, I’d have my pick between road, cyclocross, gravel, mountain and bikepacking. I’m not going to win any of those races, but sure, I’ll sign up. What about taking the kids to school? Cargo bike. Commuting to work? Well that’s hypothetical because I’m required to have a car, but it would depend on how I’m feeling that day. And yes, I can do a session at the skatepark if I want, too.
I’ve spent less on all of these bikes, plus the four my wife has, and the two I have that I’m building as projects, than I have on my car in the past four years. I have an excessive amount of bikes, I know that. But it’s also my hobby.
For anyone normal (he said in a self-deprecating tone), one bike is fine. Right now there are at least ten used bikes for sale in the Comox Valley for between $40 and $200. I can’t even fill up my car for $40. If you’re e-bike curious, you can always use the new Evo e-bike rental network.
Bikes are quickly becoming the symbol for freedom of mobility that cars once were. With the advent of electric bikes, that’s even more true. Now the average e-bike commuter won’t even be tired by the end of their ride.
What about the weather? While it is true that if you ride in the rain, you’ll get wet, there are a lot of ways to mitigate that. Fenders do a lot of good work, and a decent rain cape or jacket will do the rest. We have it much, much better than places like Edmonton, Alta. where I cut my cycling teeth riding all year round, through blizzards, arctic temperatures and snow that was deeper than the hubs on my wheels.
When I ride, and I ride all year round here, I make sure my bike is suitable for the conditions, and then just dress for the weather. There’s no such thing as bad weather, just a lack of preparation. Then if it’s truly terrible weather out (bomb cyclone, anyone?), then it’s fine to take either the bus or even your car. Remember it’s a sliding scale.
A person on a bike is actually the most efficient among travelling animals and machines in terms of energy consumed as a function of body weight. We’ve known that for a long time. That figure comes from a 1973 report in Scientific American.
“Its purpose is to make it easier for an individual to move about, and this the bicycle achieves in a way that quite outdoes natural evolution,” writes S.S. Wilson at the time.
That’s very likely even more true when e-bikes come into the calculation, though that technology was not even part of the discussion when Wilson was writing. Many publications this year were touting the fact that e-bikes are even more environmentally friendly than conventional bicycles, when the impact of the cyclist’s food is taken into account.
Bikes are also much, much, much better for the roads than even the lightest car. Bikes benefit from something called the “fourth power law,” which states that the stress on the road caused by a motor vehicle increases in proportion to the fourth power of its axle load. That means it would take 41,082 journeys on my cargo bike to do the same damage as one trip in my car (or 112 years of doing the same trip every day).
Check out roaddamagecalculator.com and do some of your own calculations. So those with arguments about cyclists not paying their share of road taxes (also, not a thing in Canada, and I don’t have the space to get into that here), I agree. It would also mean cyclists get paid out thousands of dollars per year. But I’m not holding my breath.
I can clearly go on and on about the good that comes from cycling. But I think the most important point I have to make is that I have never had a bad time on a bike. Even commuting in the worst weather, I’m riding around with a smile on my face. The physical activity, fresh air and ability to feel like I’m part of the landscape as opposed to watching it roll by.
I’m so jealous of my neighbour. Maybe someday I can challenge him to a fair race, not one where he has a huge advantage over me.
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