[A post from Citizen Blogger Sarah S.]

I recently purchased new tubes for my 14-year-old bike. The technician hoisted my purple, sticker-covered mount onto a brace and set about dismantling the tires, sanding the rims and oiling the brakes. I wandered around the shop, pricing air pumps and wheel racks, trying on helmets, mentally rearranging my budget to facilitate a tricked-out ride.

When my bike was finished, I rode it exactly thirty yards back to my apartment.

I am not at all hardcore. I bike for the same reason I drive: to get somewhere. I curse up hills and shake my fist at buses in the bike lane. I don’t fly down hills at 200 mph and I always obey traffic lights when I ride in the road. When I lived on the South side, the commute to work took about forty minutes and was four miles away. Now that I live on the West side, it is three miles to work and still takes forty minutes—without the added bonus of downhill all the way home. Ann Arbor may not look much like Rome, but it feels different at ground level; the topography often dips and pitches along the same road, especially around the hospital grounds. It doesn’t take much alternating between screeching brakes and grunting inclines to realize they should have pluralized “Hill” street.

And still I do it. I am one of those crazy bikers making drivers slow on the right, making them hit their brakes when they exit a parking structure, practically daring them to run me off the road. Because when I walk into work and take off my oversized (soon-to-be-replaced) helmet, my brain is awake like I had an espresso shooter. I can wait until noon before I need a cup of coffee. When I dismount on the ride home, it’s 5:00 and my daily workout is already over. I have the whole night to explore the height and breadth of my laziness; after all, how athletic can I be if I only bike to avoid the gym?

Top Three Reasons to Bust Out Your Bike:

1. It’s sustainable. Yeah, that might have gone without saying, but it’s a pure form of transport. Much like pedaling the Flintstone car, you’re getting where you’re going under your own physical power (the same is true of running, or even walking, but this one will get you there in half the time). Plus, all the carbon emissions you’re saving stay out of the air—and the gas money stays in your wallet.

2. You will look so totally hot. Depending on the distance you live from work, you could easily drop a few pounds biking in. You’ll burn far more calories than sitting on the bus, and your legs will tone at the first sight of an incline.

3. Art Fair. When the Deuce plays host to that wonderful and overwhelming living entity that is The Street Art Fair, your buses will be rerouted, your car will sit idling in the sun for hours, and out-of-towners flooding the sidewalks will make it impossible for you to navigate home. The only reasonable alternative is a two-wheeled one; bike lanes are clear even when traffic is stopped, and skirting the fair means no danger of getting waylaid by cars and pedestrians alike. Added bonus: normally, when you’re stuck in traffic, you have no choice but to sit and wait—on a bike, your only impediment is your own body. Trust me, you’ll be early.

[another post from Patti who's blogging for us this summer.  Read her other posts here and here.]

I am one of those people who will always drive to work. There are many reasons for this, namely that teacher jobs are extremely scarce (between 200-10,000 applications per position), I actually want to teach in the district I’m in and, and perhaps most importantly, I tend to burn bridges when I leave a job. If I worked where I live, then I could feasibly run into someone who I once worked with and that would be awkward, to say the least. Also, I need at least a half hour to morph from MorningPatti into TeacherPatti.

Commuting is not a dirty word, nor should it be given the vast amounts of people who drive to work. One of the reasons that I asked my pal Nancy if I could blog for her was that I wanted to encourage other folks who drive to work to just do what you can. If you can’t walk to work, you can still easily be a responsible, environmentally-minded citizen, to wit, you can:

• Use alternative transportation for errands and other after-work events. This is what I have been doing much of this summer. Hop on the bus, walk or ride your bike to the drug store or the restaurant or the pub.
• Use alternative transportation on weekends or have “car free” days. On the weekends, my husband and I usually only use one car and sometimes no cars. You also get the joy of spending time with your loved one, as you drag him to the market, the food co-op, the pet store and a million other places he rarely visits on his own.
• Plot out your errands. On my way home from work, I will often do my errands so that my car (and the exhaust it would put out) can “sleep” and get itself ready for the next day. On weekends, I will plan my errands so that I can do them in one fell swoop and I try to stay to one side of town.
• If you are someone who walks to work or doesn’t drive far, please don’t be rude or condescending. I have had dozens people from Ann Arbor express dismay, outrage or just astonishment that I “commute” (and they always say “commute” like they are saying “smelly putrid underwear” and I must give props…no one from Ypsilanti, Saline, Dexter, Chelsea or any of the Detroit suburbs has ever given me grief). Please remember that jobs are gone in an instant these days and you too might, one day, end up in a car driving for an hour or two.
• Don’t beat yourself up! Just do what you can. We didn’t get into this climate change/peak oil mess overnight and we won’t get out of overnight either. Repeat to yourself: “do what you can” and you will probably be able to do more than you think!