Friday, May 15, 2009

Bike-to-Work Week - Day Five

Today was the big pay-off for Bike-to-Work Week, wherein everything came together to become ...

Bike-to-Work Day!

I'd have to give it a resounding "meh."

Six Bikes

So, all this week I saw one other cyclist on my morning or evening commute, and he was out training. Based on that, I should be ecstatic that -- this morning -- I saw six other bicycle commuters. Of course, one of them was RandoGirl and our friend Jeff Sammons. And today I rode with them into downtown Brentwood, so it makes sense that I would see more commuters there.

I guess that I just had higher hopes.

It's kind of like the way birthdays used to be when you were a kid. They start out huge, with everyone making a big fuss, and all these great presents. And then you get older and the presents just don't seem the same, and the fuss is not nearly as big. Or maybe you just get jaded to it all, so that it takes more to impress you.

I was hoping for more of a "kid birthday" Bike-to-Work Week, and instead I got more of a "Happy 57th Birthday, Louis" kind of spectacle. No cake, no presents, just a card from your cousin Bernice.

Meh.

I'm going to post an announcement to the general mailing list of the Harpeth Bike Club, and try to get some of my friends there to post comments here regarding their Bike-to-Work experiences for the week. Maybe there was a bigger party, and I just missed it. Frankly, I'll be satisfied if just a few other people tried it this week, and one of them decides to continue getting to work by bike. I may even be satisfied if there were enough of us out there that cars took notice -- hopefully in a positive way, so that they will behave better around us in the future.

Hope springs eternal. Unless it's Hope Lange, who's probably doing some springing with the captain now.

Good luck with that, Mrs. Muir, wherever you are.

3 comments:

  1. Commuted to work 3 days this week. Irony alert: The 2 days I drove were due to participating in group rides, teaching spin class.

    Didn't see any other cyclists today, but I ride in early. On the way home I see cyclists on Belmont Blvd, though they may not be commuters.

    It's been pleasant to ride this week with temperate weather.

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  2. In the post-apocolyptic Mad Max no-gasoline wasteland, we cyclists may be the ones with the greatest potential for mobility, but we will be forced to ride the same roads in our neighborhoods because we have no cars with which to drive to Leiper's Fork. If our neighbors become cannibals, we may have to learn to bike further.

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  3. I saw four other cyclists on my ride into work today! Of course two of them were Randoboy and Jeff Sammone. Thank you, Randoboy, for introducing us to the joy of riding into work. Granted, one jerk in a very large, old gas-guzzling car did yell at us, "Are you crazy?", but overall I think it went very well.

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