Rochester in June means one thing to me — jazz. Every year, the Rochester International Jazz Festival brings tens of thousands of fans and hundreds of jazz artists to the Flower City for more than a week of music and fun. It also brings to light another problem that we face in downtown Rochester. Lack of parking.
To combat this difficulty, I usually ride my bike. This year, I went to get my bike from its place on the front porch to get it ready for riding, given that I hadn’t ridden it in months.
It wasn’t there. So I went to the back yard to look for it. I knew Jen had moved things off the porch to clean it. My bike wasn’t there, either.
I must have put it in the basement, I thought. Down into the dank basement I trudged, but no bike.
“Honey, where’s my bike?” I asked, starting to get a little panicked. Within minutes, the truth was evident. My bike was gone. Stolen from our backyard.
We didn’t have the money to replace the bike, so I called my folks and asked if they’d front the money. They agreed, and within a few days I was taking home a new Giant Sedona DX from Towners Bike Shop in Rochester. I rode it every day during the Jazz Fest, relishing the ease with which I navigated in and out of congested streets. I could always find a “parking space” and never needed to spend money on gas.
Then a funny thing happened. At the end of the week, I decided to keep riding. It was working out so well that it seemed foolish to get back in my SUV for my 1.5-mile commute to work. So I kept pedaling. It was a blast. I got from place to place quickly enough to suit me, and slowly enough to see the world. Combined with my new membership at the Y and my new exercise routine, I was getting thinner, stronger, healthier — and happier. Could two wheels make this much of a difference? Apparently so.
Pretty soon, I discovered a bike culture on the Web. With me, there are only two mental gears — apathy and obsession. Cycling quickly turned on the latter brain setting, and I was reading about bikes constantly. Then the Tour de France started, so I read about bicycle racing. Then I found out about Critical Mass, and rode my first CM. Within a few weeks, I was becoming a cyclist.
As with most of my obsessions, a blog soon followed. RocBike.com started as a way to catalog my experiences as a cycling newbie, but it quickly outgrew those limited expectations. I met Adam Durand at Critical Mass, and he quickly jumped on board as a contributor. So did Jack Bradigan Spula, a cyclist, activist and journalist whom I’d known for years. Julie White followed shortly thereafter, and Team RocBike was born.
As it turns out, Rochester has a good bicycle culture for a city that’s cold about 8 months of each year. People started visiting RocBike.com and telling their stories. When I biked around town in my goofy, black-and-white Walz cycling beanie, folks recognized me from the pictures on the site. It was fun, and I felt like part of something larger. Something that could change our city for the better.
Within a couple months, I owned three bikes. My Giant, plus two French-made Motobecane road bikes from the late 70s and early 80s. I started primarily riding the Motobecane Nomade as my commuter because of its light weight and maneuverability — at least compared to the Giant. It was the first time in my life that I’d ridden a bike with drop bars, but I quickly came to like the traditional racing posture, especially after seeing the movie Breaking Away, which has probably sucked a lot of people into bicycling.
Then I discovered the Xtracycle, an attachment that converts just about any bike into an SUB — a Sport Utility Bike. Thanks to my freelance writing for the Island Packet on Hilton Head Island, I was able to buy an Xtracycle. I converted my Giant in October and dubbed it “The Packet Boat” in honor of its funding source.
The Xtracycle has become my primary bike. In fact, both road bikes are in the basement at the moment. I commute with the Packet Boat, shop with it, take my older son to school with it. It’s an amazing piece of technology.
So here I am, five months after I started riding a bike again, and I’m knee-deep in the whole world of cycling. I’m healthier, fitter, happier and more in tune with the world around me. I know my city’s streets better than I did before. I’ve made new friends. I’m re-engaged in the environmental movement in a way I haven’t been for years. All because of a bicycle.
If that isn’t good technology, I don’t know what is.
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