It’s snowing like crazy today. So I walked. I also used the Bear Line to get downtown, so I didn’t miss my Tuesday/Thursday appointment to hang out and read the newspaper at the Mudhouse.

A short conversation this morning in the kitchen:

Wife: I’m happy to give you a ride, but you probably don’t want it.

Me: I don’t want you driving in this.

Two things: 1) It is very comfortable to ride in or drive a car in snowy weather. There’s just no doubt about that, but 2) it is also dangerous to drive in the snow — especially in the morning as many people are commuting.

Since I live 3/4-mile from my office, I just see no sense in putting my wife or myself in danger. Plus, proper dress really takes care of most of the comfort issues for a <15-minute walk.

Riding the Bear Line begs the issue of danger, but I’ll ignore that

The key here — to whatever point it is I’m trying to make — is that living close to your major destinations can be a really good thing if one finds it possible. I’m lucky. I have a wife who would venture into the snow by car (something I know she hates) just to make sure I’m comfortable. I live close enough to turn down the offer with few worries.

Technorati Tags: commuting, public transportation, walking, weather

I like this part:

“It’s almost like a snowball effect,” says researcher John Pucher of Rutgers University. “People see other people cycling and they say, ‘Wow!’ ” As part of a three-year research project for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Pucher has completed a preliminary report that documents the increase in biking in nine major North American cities.

I cannot find a link for this study (hello! NPR … it’s called the ethic of the link, or tell us there is no link possible). But a Google search for Pucher (and a couple of terms related to this story) turns up quite a bit of stuff.

I’m not sure “wow” is what they say unless it’s “wow, that guy must be crazy.” But I do think that when people see otherwise normal-looking people on bicycles riding safely in traffic it begins to have some positive effect. So perhaps Pucher is correct.

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle commuting, commuting

What’s disappointing about the study is that it doesn’t take mode into account. I don’t think I’m going very far out on a limb to claim that long car commutes can drive you crazy — like what happened to William Foster, who leaves his car and goes on a rampage through Los Angeles in the 1993 film Falling Down. I wonder if the spread of misery by commute time would have been wider if the study had been confined to cars. I wonder if people with 25-minute bicycle commutes have a greater sense of well-being that people with 25-minute car commutes

You’ll find all kinds of good information about the nexus of housing and commuting at the Urban Land Institute. These are the two biggest expenses most of us have, which means these may also be the two biggest headaches.

So let’s see: Combine these expenses/headaches with long commutes in cars and what do you get?

S T R E S S

It’s a killer.

So, yes, commuting is killing you if you’re doing it for a long time in a car.

Technorati Tags: commuting, transportation

OK, I get it that this is an attempt at whimsy. But ya gotta wonder about an ad agency that sooooo misunderstands the intended audience. It is not the case that women are going to find getting dirty on a bicycle cute. It is not the case that people are going to choose bicycles over cars if riding bicycles makes their lives more difficult.

This image is also counter-factual. One does not have to get dirty or wet riding a bicycle in work clothes. Just check out any photograph at Copenhagen Cycle Chic. If one rides a proper bicycle (i.e. with a chain guard and fenders) one is not likely to suffer the indignity pictured above — an indignity that absolutely will keep average people — average women — from commuting on a bicycle.

You want women riding bicycles to work? Show them this photo:

(Published by permission of Copenhagen Cycle Chic)

What the offending image represents is designers getting a little too cute while understanding a bit too little about the kinds of things that make people not want to ride bicycles.

Thankfully there’s plenty of time before the 2011 Bike to Work Week to kill this idea and dream up something useful.

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle commuting, bicycle culture, bicycle equipment, commuting, cycling

And by now this walking has become habitual enough that, if for pressing reasons I do not or cannot walk, I feel that an important part of my day is either missing or has been denied me. I feel, intellectually, the loss of walking the way I would feel, physically, the absence of caffeine, life’s most pleasant addictive substance. Deprived of my walk I am deprived of time to be alone, of time to think, to be reminded that I live in the world regardless of how sedentary and abstract my life might otherwise be—in it rather than over or across it. Without my walk I feel bereft of time and occasion to see the built and natural landscapes at human speed, from man’s eye-view.

But, more fundamentally, I am firm in my resolve to walk the mile and a half because it matters to me that I know both how the cold feels and what it means, neither of which can be known by my walking eight steps into an already warm car, driving a very short distance, and then walking a few dozen steps from my warm car to my (usually) heated building. To know what the cold feels like I must have the chance to be cold, and then the resolve to be cold, for how the cold feels is known by observation, and observation (as John Muir knew well) is impossible without a willing subjection of the self. I must feel the regions of the skin tighten, the mysterious surfaces harden. I must feel the burn of exposed flesh in the stinging wind. I must feel the hardening even of the soles of my boots, which in such weather as this lose their cushion. I must feel the many ways in which life itself becomes hard.

Even with the hardness of the cold, walking or riding a bicycle as basic transportation is still a higher quality experience than driving for me. But it’s a quality that you won’t come to know unless you allow yourself to make a commitment. After you come to know it, getting in a car becomes something to be avoided — a nasty, brutish experience best saved for when you have no other choice.

Apparently there’s another winter storm headed our way. If I drove to work I might be worried about it just as I might be worried about the price of gas, which I have again forgotten.

I may get the chance to ride today. My daughter is competing in a debate tournament at a local high school — about three miles away. The roads are clear this morning. But I’d have no problem walking that distance either.

I reject the idea that my transportation choice — burning calories instead of carbon — is a more moral or ethical choice than someone’s choice to  drive a car (although I’m happy to point out the moral failings of how some people operate their cars). I mean no such implication. I’ve written before about changing the world by making quality choices for one’s self (re: Robert Pirsig). Far too many people are stuck in circumstances that make driving a necessity. They are stuck partly by their own choices, but those choices were to a large part constrained by our country’s subsidizing and promoting the automobile as the primary mode of transportation.  It’s partly this recognition that prompted the 1-mile Solution (even this simple idea is not possible for some people).

And, finally, there’s no reason to confine walking and riding a bicycle to purposeful movement from point A to point B. Nothing says you can’t get out there and just do it for the simple joy of it — no matter what the weather is doing.

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle advocacy, bicycle commuting, car culture, commuting, cycling, transportation, utility cycling, walking, weather