Americans spend most of their lives cramped up in a small compact vehicle.I think about the amount of my life I must waste on getting places and I realize that usually entails getting into a car and jamming out to music until I reach my final destination. But that means that I spend most of my life sitting in a tiny space - usually by myself. Let's think about that for a minute - if I do indeed spend a good chunk of my time on transportation, then wouldn't it be great if I could actually get something out of the trip itself? The idea of going from bed to car (or subway) to office back to car just makes me cringe. How much lazier can one be?
Okay I'm aware of the fact that cars are much faster than bikes - but seriously we spend our whole lives sitting. Think of how many years we can add to our life expectancy if we actually exercised!?
Hence, I am a huge proponent of the bicycle. Especially for cities. For example, let's consider New York, Paris, or even Hong Kong. I think we can all agree that driving in any of these cities would be an utter nightmare. The cars are pushy, there are motos everywhere, they often have random road closings/demonstrations, there's no place to park your car, and if you do find parking it costs an arm and a leg.
But a 40 minute bike ride can get you from one end of the city to the other. I don't believe that driving would save that much time. City congestion is every suburban driver's nightmare. Plus you look SO MUCH COOLER on a bike! Don't believe me? Well... let's do an experiment:
Who looks cooler
Exhibit A.
.... or.....
Exhibit B.
Yeah. I thought so. Plus Parisians seem to have biking etiquette down to an art.
Face it, a nice and light bike is a million times cooler than a huge hunk of metal with fat tires. Only ignorant folk would choose such a wasteful means of transportation as driving.
