The other day, we were arranging with K&R to borrow their van. I wanted to borrow it for several days running, as we have many occasions to move van-sized lots of furniture. My sister-in-law immediately said yes, since she’d have another car, then asked my brother-in-law if that was okay with him. My brother-in-law, who goes as many places by bike as he can, looked surprised, then replied, “I don’t need a car.” I wanted to tell him, “I know exactly what you mean. I don’t need one either.”

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One of the best things about bike commuting is that after a while, the exertion involved becomes trivial, so you don’t think about how much energy you’re expending, or have to expend next. At that point, it’s almost like riding in a car; you can pedal along looking at both sides of the street and just relax and enjoy the scenery. So I have begun to be familiar with the houses on my route in the way that only happens if you’re moving through these neighborhoods slowly. For instance, there’s one butter-yellow two-story with white trim and a southern exposure that has a whole slew of blue morning glories growing up the white front porch railing. (I’ll get a picture next week sometime.) There are many well- and variously-tended houses and lawns on my way; each house has its own particular character. No landscape architects at work here – just the sensibilities and imaginations of the unique individuals who inhabit each of these houses. Not all of them are cared for, and not all of them are to my taste but I enjoy looking at the tended ones in the same way that I like to look at paintings in a museum.

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So what is the optimum velocity for a human body? How much traveling through space can we do, really? The difference between driving 70 miles to work and riding two seems almost to be affecting me on the molecular level. For one thing, I suppose, I’m getting exercise twice a day, and the twice-daily shots of endorphins are by themselves doing me good; I have the feeling that my baseline set-point for well-being is rising. But that’s not the whole story by a long shot.

Part of the story has to do with the ability to take in the scenery with all of my senses. I don’t listen to music when I ride because I think it’s unsafe – I need to listen as well as see. What I’m listening to are my surroundings, which is vastly different than what I do while riding in a car. In a car I’m likely to be listening to the radio – and therefore seeing one thing and hearing quite another. Similarly, on a bike I use the senses of smell and touch. I’m exposed to the weather – getting a very tactile sensation of the weather through my skin, and also through my nose. Do I smell rain coming, or snow? Is it humid today, or dry? Construction dust hits me, as do gentle breezes. All my senses are tuned to the single experience of getting from here to there. This multi-sensory input all devoted to a single purpose has a way of focusing my energy that’s hard to describe. It puts me in a zone where I can concentrate deeply.

Part of it, too, has to do with choice. I bike down residential city streets to the local grocery store, which is small because it’s meant to be a neighborhood store. Small is good if you want to run in for a few things for dinner; you don’t have to wade through miles of aisles to get three ingredients. And the bakery I stopped at the other day was also small. It’s pretty darned good – really more of an Italian grocery than just a bakery - but still, although it has small quantities of a relatively large number of items, it still doesn’t have a whole lot. But there are no other bakeries or grocery stores within two miles, so if I want to stay within that radius, those are my stores. The decision to go by bike makes the decision for me about where to shop; I’m not tempted to crisscross the city to get exactly everything I want. This is enormously freeing, in an odd sort of way. I’m not saying that choice is unimportant or that having many choices is de facto a bad thing. I’m saying that when we have a large number of choices, we can be forced to make (or allow ourselves to be bullied into making) so many decisions on a day-to-day basis about so many trivial things that we’re fatigued in a way we hardly even recognize any longer. When this fatigue descends on me, I try to reduce my input by not seeing, not listening, not paying attention – the exact antithesis of what I do on my ride.

In the end, it’s a matter of scale. Somehow, keeping most of my motion under my own power and within a two-mile radius – and maybe it’s this particular two-mile radius - brings everything down to a more manageable, human scale in almost every way I can think of. The optimum velocity for this human body is about 12mph.


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I tend to think of car commuting as eating up time but it’s clearly not just time – it’s also psychic energy. Lately I feel like I’m being a tightwad with my personal energy in the same way that Amy Dacyczyn (aka The Frugal Zealot) is a tightwad with her money – I’m saving as much of it as I can, so that I can spend it on the things that are really important to me. I’m not going to expend energy on deciding which grocery store to drive to; I’m going to expend it on my teaching, or on my friendships, or maybe on learning German.

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All in all, I can’t believe how happy I am to be commuting by bike once again. When Emil first mentioned moving to Lansing last December, the first thing he said was, “You could ride your bike to work again.” I think he knew better than me how much I’d missed it . . .