The courage to bike again

When I first arrived in the Twin Cities in 1988, I did not have a driver's license. In fact, I did not know how to drive a car (although I had passed the obligatory Driver's Ed course in high school), nor had I any experience driving while living in San Francisco or Berkeley. I lived in Minneapolis for two years before deciding to learn to drive, get a license and buy a car. For one thing, I could finally afford both a car and car insurance. For another, the winters in Minneapolis are sufficiently brutal so that riding a bike can be a miserable, horrible experience for months at a time. But finally, the reason that I decided to get a car was because sharing the road with cars and trucks in Minneapolis was terrifying in a way that I had never experienced when biking in the Bay Area. I feared for my life on a daily basis, and that was beginning to wear me down.

Later, of course, the car was extremely useful for transporting a small child to and from child care as well as for commuting to work or doing grocery shopping. Although a bus runs from my neighborhood to my work, it didn't take me close enough to the child care center to make it practical to use it in the winter.

Recently, Minneaplis police got in some practice for next year's Republican Convention by corraling, beating, and arresting participants in a peaceful Critical Mass event, one which had never had a history of violence in the Twin Cities.
In the ensuing coverage and discussion of whether or not the bikers "provoked" the police or whether the police were just being police when they maced, clubbed and hauled off citizens for the terrible crimes of riding their bikes and getting a little lippy with the cops when told to leave the streets although they had commmitted no crime, very few people talked about the reason why Critical Mass exists: because people are routinely killed and injured by traffic that treats bikers as if they had no right to ride on the street. Local wingnut columnist KKKatherine KKKersten railed about bikers, anarchy and the end of civilization, in the Strib, but for better information about what really happened, I checked out this great site on biking in the Twin Cities. It's starting to make me want to get back on the bike. If only my shoulders were not currently giving me pain, I'd do it, but I have to wait until the physical therapy helps relieve the rotator cuff impingement BS I'm currently dealing with.

In New York, artists have been putting up "ghost bikes" at sites where riders have been killed by cars or trucks. We need to put one up for Adam Finley, a man killed when struck by a school bus while riding his bike near Lake Calhoun.