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Column: Bicycling can become way of life

Phillip Barron
The Herald-Sun
July 28, 2004 9:10 pm

DURHAM — I ride a bicycle for many reasons.

It’s healthy — riding my bike for an hour to and from work every day is a reasonable workout. It’s fun — there’s nothing like mountain biking in Pisgah National Forest. It costs less than driving a car — I save a lot of money on gas. It’s a cleaner mode of transportation than any automobile — the Triangle region has some of the worst air quality in the nation. Converting food to energy is a lot cleaner and more efficient than converting gasoline to energy.

But most of all, I ride because of how it makes me feel.

On two wheels, I feel more connected to the neighborhoods I ride through. People are friendlier to me when I’m on a bike. You see more from the saddle of a bicycle than you do from behind the windows of a car or bus. Every morning when I wake up, I look forward to the coolness of the “kudzu corridor” (also known as the American Tobacco Trail, Durham’s longest Rail-to-Trail bike path). No matter how hectic things get at work, I know that my mind will quiet once my pedals find a rhythm.

In this column, I want to do several things. If you already enjoy spending time on two wheels, then I want to share with you my love of the bicycle. I’ll tell you about some of Durham’s bicycling events and keep you informed about what the City Council and County Commissioners are doing to help make bicycling a viable alternative mode of transportation.

If you don’t ride much, but you want to ride more, then I want to help make bicycling more accessible to you. I plan to spend some time talking about how to perform simple repairs to your bike, how to commute to work, how to ride in the rain or ride at night. I’ll also try to highlight some of the best places to ride as well as some ways to fit bicycling into your busy schedule. Durham has a growing bicycling community and I’ll help you get in touch with it.

If you’re not a bicyclist at all, then maybe you’ll enjoy some of my stories and live a bicyclist’s life vicariously.

I also want to hear from you. I hope you’ll e-mail me with questions, comments on the column or just to share good news.

So, ride around and say hello to the folks you pass. If you don’t already know how much fun bicycling is, you’ll find out soon enough.

new bicycling column

Every other Thursday, I’ll be writing a column on bicycling for the local paper, The Herald-Sun. How much fun will this be?!?