A couple of days back our car's battery-starter wires got chawed by some rascally rodent. Of course the car wouldn't start. Problem was we were running dangerously low on food, so I hopped on my bike and in to town I went.
It was raining for most of the ride to town that first day so I didn't get any pictures. Lame.
So to get the car back up and running we got it towed to a car repair place - thankfully it was a simple fix and was done the next day. So to get it I just rode my bike there, took the front wheel off, threw the bike in the back, and headed for home.
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| Over Fish Creek Slough on the way into town. |
It got me to thinking today: what vehicle, other than a bike, is capable of this? What vehicle gets you from Point A to Point B and then allows you do 30 seconds of disassembly and then put it in the back of a Ford Focus (yes, it's a station wagon, but I've had bikes, that have been relieved of their wheels, sit in the back seat of a two-door, non-station-wagon Nissan Sentra.) Certainly not a motorcycle or 4 wheeler (which, I'm sure you know, isn't even road legal). Even a moped would, if you could even muscle it into a car by yourself - a dubious proposition, run the risk of leaking gas or oil or some sort of fossil fuel nastiness into the upholstery.
And that's not even thinking about long and short-term health benefits (both mental and physical), or limiting your carbon footprint, or improving your ability to be self reliant (I once saw a T-shirt with a picture of a bike that said, "It's not a bike, it's a post-apocalyptic zombie survival tool." When the SHTF [as preppers say] how on earth are you going to get from A to B when all the gas is gone? When you start talking zombies reality goes out the window pretty quick, so, I may have had to turn the logical part of my brain off, but I thought Zombieland was actually a pretty funny movie despite the fact that they drove across the country in a Hummer when, as far as the viewer could tell, there wasn't a functioning gas station the whole way. Probably a more realistic thing would have been that they were attacked by zombies as they were standing around waiting for their enormous tank to fill. It's interesting that with all the breaking of laws of physics, zombies, and all the impossible stuff in that movie that this would be the thing that I remember as most unrealistic. But I digress.)
Being an actual fiscal conservative (but certainly not, I hasten to add, a modern-day republican - who beat the fiscally conservative drum to get them votes on the campaign trail but in practice are anything but) I'd like to take a moment to flesh out the health benefits of biking in terms of their economic impact. The articles you can find online about the health benefits of cycling are legion. But it's bit harder to find out how riding a bike puts money in your pocket via those health benefits.
According to a
study by the Minnesota DOT: "
When cost-benefit analyses [of bicycle use] only consider reductions in mortality, the benefit of projects is underestimated because cost savings related to reduced health care costs from non-fatal concerns, like treatment of diabetes, are not considered." This interests me greatly, despite the robotic tone.
When I was in high school one of my math teachers was teaching us about interest rates and how they compound over time - or something, to tell the truth I've forgotten the math - sorry Mr. Noble - but I learned a more valuable lesson that's stuck with me. To illustrate his lesson he used the cost of cigarettes (which in those days was around $2/pack). If you take the money you use to buy cigs and put it into something earning a decent interest rate, adding only a little at a time, after enough time goes by (but surprisingly short the way things add up) you end up with a ridiculous amount of money. I've forgotten how to calculate interest payments but that's stuck with me: how a seemingly small amount can add up especially when you throw in the interest rate. I think this may have something to do with me being so averse to going into debt (credit cards in particular) - but that's another issue. The math teacher's lesson totally ignored all the health reasons not to smoke. Don't get me wrong, if you solely focus on health the reasons for not smoking are overwhelming. But everyone knows about the health risks of tobacco and tobacco use is still very much a thing. If, as someone is lighting up, you say, "that shit'll kill ya," they could respond something to the effect of, "of course it will, everyone knows that." They might look at you funny, but it'd be just as true (if not more so) if you said, "Maybe that'll kill you, maybe it won't but but there's a decent chance it'll bankrupt you with medical bills and will make the your golden years be not so golden. By burning that cigarette you're throwing money away (and probably a decent quality of life when you get older) far beyond the cost of the cigarette itself. Think about the cost of lost productivity, and medical care." By smoking they are taking money out of not only their own pocket but their kids' pockets, their fellow American's pockets. Thanks for the lesson Mr. Noble.
If the end goal is, for example, to stop as many kids from smoking as we can, I think we are making a tactical blunder by only talking about health. Ditto if our goal is to get as many people on bikes as we can. We can talk of health benefits 'til we're blue in the face but for some it just doesn't work. Of course, for some it will but if the goal is to get as many people as possible to stop smoking or to start riding their bikes why not make the case for it (bikes) or against it (smoking) on as many fronts as possible so we appeal to as many as possible? By all means let's talk about how biking makes your heart stronger, or reduces your risk of diabetes and cancer; how it improves your anxiety and depression; how it increases your sex drive. But let's not stop there: let's talk about how much cold, hard cash you save by lowering your risk of heart attack, diabetes, cancer, being anxious or depressed, or, well, unsatisfied with your love life.
Let's take one thing: stress. In an article in businessnewsdaily.com it tells how the World Health Organization reports that stress costs the USA citizens 300 billion a year. According to an article in Forbes it costs the USA 190 billion. I don't want to niggle over the exact number but it's obviously A LOT. Again, articles are all over the place about how cycling (or almost any form of being active) relieves stress. An article at nbcnews.com from a number of years ago says that in '07 America spent $11 billion (on things like stress balls and relaxing music) and projected that we'll spend $14 billion in '08. We could come at this two ways: use the numbers about how much stress costs ($190-$300 billion) or how much we spend to try and tame it ($14 billion almost ten years ago - a number rising then). Whatever way you look at it reducing stress puts lot's (hundreds of millions at the low end) of money back in Americans' pockets. And that's just one health benefit. We could run numbers on cancer, cardiovascular problems, diabetes, anxiety, depression and all sorts of other, hard to quantify, things - how much is it worth to improve your quality of life? be happy and mentally well balanced? know that if you need to get food from the grocery or your car from the shop (or any of the practically infinite reasons to get from Point A to B) you can do it? Or that you're not so damn dependent on a fuel source out of your control? Or that when you're out for a bike ride you're not burning fossil fuel or supporting an industry that pollutes at every step of the way, from well, to pipeline, to refinery, to exhaust pipe? Or that when you're riding a bike you're providing your own power, damnit, not just sitting back being a throttle jockey? I don't care what you're average riding speed is: if you can knock out a 40K ITT in less than an hour or if you are someone who struggles to ride 1/4 mile to the grocery store: when you're done with a ride you've provided all your power and that feeling is hard to put a dollar value to. I believe "priceless" is the word I'm looking for.
I started off this post talking about running errands on the bike. I suppose it's a bit of a stretch to have that be a lead up to stress and how biking could reduce stress' societal cost. But when I really get down to thinking about it I just can't get over how amazing bikes are - and how little respect they command. They're relatively cheap to buy (can you buy a car/atv/utv/motorcycle/moped of pretty respectable quality, brand new, for under $1000?), relatively easy to work on yourself (or fairly cheap to take to a bike shop to get a tune up), efficient (you can go 3 times as fast on a bike while using the same amount of energy as walking), save you money when you ride them, make you healthier when you ride them, do things no other vehicle can, power it with food, in some urban settings you can actually get from A to B faster.
Of course there are plenty of times when driving a car makes sense. I do it all the time and I'm not trying to guilt trip anyone for doing that. But there are times - a surprising number when we start to think of bikes as the useful tools they are - when the reasons to ride are fewer than the reasons not to.
Ride your bike, you'll be glad you did.
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