I took the bus home yesterday from work. While I was waiting, I watched cars go by. I noticed that some drivers were talking on their cell phones as they drove. I wondered how many drivers do that during the evening rush hour, so I thought I’d see how many cars I could count going by until I counted a car with a driver on the phone. How high do you think I counted? Up to 20? Maybe only up to 10? I’ll tell you, I never got past 6. Sometimes I only got up to 1. In a 15 minute span, it turned out that about 1 of every 3 or 4 drivers was talking on the phone. That’s 25%-33% of every driver I saw. Now that’s good news if you’re in the business of selling cell phones, I guess. Or maybe if you own a body shop, as studies have shown drivers who talk on a phone and drive are dangerous. In fact, they can be more dangerous than drunk drivers!

Granted, my little survey was not very scientific – but man, that seems like a lot of distracted drivers. And speaking as a regular bicycle commuter, let me tell all you talk ‘n drive jockeys out there something. YOU’RE NOT AS GOOD A DRIVER AS YOU THINK YOU ARE. There, I’ve said it. So put your hands on the wheel, and your eyes upon the road (and every 5 seconds your rear view mirror), please! Shut up and drive.

Your mind’s made up? Let’s go shopping.

You may have considered the idea of cycle commuting to work, and if you haven’t tried it before, or don’t ride a lot, the whole idea probably raises a lot of questions in your mind. I think there are lots of articles that you can read that suggest the long list of health and wealth benefits of commuting by bicycle, so I’m not going to get into that. You have your own reasons if you’re even contemplating this. But here are some key areas you’ll want to consider to get yourself ready:
- A bike. You’ll need one of those for sure.
- A helmet. The bad news, most of them look dorky and make the person wearing them look even dorkier. The good news, in many jurisdictions they’re required by law, so at least we can all look dorky together.
- Clothes and accessories. You don’t need a lot of special stuff to get started, though I wholeheartedly recommend bike gloves. You’ll know why if you ever take a spill, or that is, an “unscheduled dismount”.
- Your physical condition. I’ve seen people smoking as they ride, but come on. That just makes you look like you’re riding because you’ve had your driver’s license suspended.

BIKES
There are lots of types of bikes to choose from. Consider the terrain, and notice what other cyclists are riding. After riding over the Knight St. Bridge on my 10-speed, I decided to go with something different. Riding on the sidewalk over that bridge, I have ridden over or around:
- a ladder
- kitchen cabinets
- buckets
- work gloves
- 2×4’s (usually with nails sticking out)
- plywood
- panelling
- nails
- more nails
- assorted car parts
- lots of loose sand
And on a rainy day in Vancouver, the water collected at the southwest end of the sidewalk as you came off the bridge such that the pathway disappeared under water, and I would ride through this mess (which for some reason often had chunks of Styrofoam floating in it) with the water coming up past the bottom of the chain and bike frame. Wet feet kind of went with the territory. I decided a mountain bike with knobby tires was what I needed. These days I ride a “comfort” or hybrid bike, a Gary Fisher Capitola. The seating position on my old hardtail Specialized Rock Hopper II was causing some numbness in the fingers, and in Kelowna the riding I do is generally much flatter than Vancouver, so a more upright seating position is OK.

HELMET
I recommend getting one with a visor. It doesn’t help much, but it looks slightly cooler. Don’t buy a used one. It may have damage you can’t see, and this piece of gear could mean the difference between a happy, healthy future and you spending your life answering every question with “I’m an excellent driver”. Seriously, don’t leave home without it.

CLOTHES and ACCESSORIES
OK, first the clothes. If you’re like me and your cycle commute takes more than fifteen minutes, you will probably be much more comfortable riding your bike in riding clothes and then changing when you arrive at work. Where I worked didn’t have a shower, but I was able to leave a clothes bag there. My clothes bag included:
- two or three shirts
- two pairs of pants, one belt
- one or two pairs of socks
- underwear
- one pair of shoes
- Ziploc bag with soap and deodorant
- one towel
My riding clothes evolved and changed with the weather. Basically, layers are your friends. The toughest time to dress right was winter-to-spring and fall-to-winter, because the riding conditions in the morning can be much different than at the end of the day. Eventually my clothing arsenal included:
- padded baggy cycling shorts, worn over either plain cycling shorts or lined tights, waterproof over-pants
- slim running shoes, sport or thermal socks
- long or short-sleeved T-shirts, fleece vest, sweater, neon-green riding jacket, scarf, fleece skullcap, safety vest
- full-fingered riding gloves, as well as open finger style gloves
- goggles, plain and tinted

As for accessories, my bike evolved into a full-on commuter-mobile:
- fenders fore and aft
- panniers. I ditched the backpack because it was hard on my back and I sweated like crazy underneath it.
- lights fore and aft
- air pump
- spare inner tube (note, I used to carry a patch kit, but I got a few flats on the bridge, and the noise from the traffic was so loud you couldn’t possibly hear where the air was escaping to make a repair, so the solution was to simply rip out the tube and replace it so you could patch it later)
- 25 cents to make a phone call for help if I had a major mechanical problem
- latex gloves, for putting the chain back on without getting all greasy
- small bicycle tool kit
- bike bell (ding, ding)
- toe clips
- Kevlar liners, to fit between the inner wall of the tires and the outer walls of the tubes. These were a great investment and drastically reduced the number of flats I got riding across the bridge.
The idea was to be self-sufficient if I had a minor mechanical breakdown of some kind. I got great info off the internet about how to change a tire and replace an inner tube, and I tried it at home so I knew how to do it.

PHYSICAL CONDITION
I didn’t have much going on in that department when I started, but after a couple of seasons of riding from one to five days a week, I developed some definite muscle tone. It feels great to ride, your body will enjoy it, trust me. The other big benefit for me was that when I ride, I have to be totally in the moment. When you drive a car, sometimes we arrive at our destination and we don’t even remember parts of the journey because we were thinking about other things. Riding a bike, you’re focused on staying upright and not being killed, so there’s not much of a chance to let your mind wander. And being in the moment for a full half-hour stretch or whatever your commute takes is a real refreshing exercise for most of us.

So let me sum it up—if you think commuting by bike is really hard, I’m here to tell you it may not be as hard as you think. If you plan for it, do a little research, and take little steps and set modest goals, you can do it. No one ever accused me of being a jock before I started cycle commuting (or since), and there is definitely a sense of accomplishment when you realize you are helping yourself, your community, and the planet. If more of us can manage to ride even a few days a month, it does make a difference.

Can I really do this?

Once I decided to seriously consider cycling to work, the first thing I did was ride to my workplace on a Sunday (we were closed on weekends), just to see if I could even do it. I had a 10-speed bike that I’d had since I was 16. It got me there and back home in about two hours, and I got some sense of the distance and physical demands. It was kind of tough, but not enough to deter me.

The next thing I did was buy a ten-session pass from a gym that had been built near where I worked, and on some days after work I went there and rode the stationary bike. I didn’t do any other training, and I figured after ten sessions I’d start commuting. For me, it was important to set small goals so that the prospect of this commute didn’t overwhelm me. I figured I could contribute to making the world a better place if I could manage to cycle to work one day a week, at least to start. That didn’t sound too bad, because 80% of the time I’d either be commuting in the cup-holding sanctuary of my minivan or my sometime carpool buddy’s K-car.

I needed some way to take a few things to work, so a backpack was pressed into service. My workplace environment was sort of office casual, so I could potentially ride in my work clothes. And so I began.

I learned lots from doing it, and I surfed the internet and looked for advice. In Part Three, I’ll cut to the chase and provide some ideas for the novice cycle commuter, based on the lessons I learned.

PART ONE
The 40-year old novice commuter cyclist

Have you ever found yourself sitting alone in your car, stopped in traffic, looking around you at all the other individuals in their cars, and thought “I’m part of the problem here, not part of the solution.” It happened to me one day, on the Knight St. Bridge.

The Knight St. Bridge connects Vancouver to Richmond, BC. It’s a busy four-lane highway, arching across the Fraser River. Traffic merges onto it from multiple lanes at both ends, and the north end features a few additional ramp choices to and from Mitchell Island. Concrete dividers run down the middle of the bridge, separating the two northbound lanes from the southbound ones. More dividers at the curb protect the sidewalks that hang out on each side of the bridge. A metal rail fence on the very outside of the sidewalk prevents pedestrians from being blown off into the might Fraser, way below. Cyclists are also obliged to share the sidewalk with pedestrians, as the roadway shoulder is narrow.

The Knight St. Bridge is what you might call a blue-collar bridge. It has none of the architectural appeal of the Alex Fraser Bridge that connects Delta to New Westminster, or the old world charm of the Burrard St. Bridge, or the modern, crisp feel of the Cambie St. Bridge. It is strictly functional, built to handle loads of trucks and waves of commuters in their automobiles. But as Vancouver and Richmond have grown, those waves of commuters often become not so much a wave, as a standing pool. Driving across the bridge at rush hour is what the perky radio ‘copter-riding reporters might call “stop ‘n go”.

Sitting in my minivan one morning, in the stop ‘n go, I noticed a cyclist ride by on the sidewalk. He looked hardcore—helmet, sunglasses, fluorescent-coloured bike jacket under a beat up backpack, army green shorts and black leggings, and riding a stripped down mountain bike. Over the next several minutes a few other hardy souls rode by as I inched along. “Man”, I thought, “those guys are crazy”. I could not imagine myself ever doing that.

That night I woke up in the middle of the night, with a chest pain. I’d heard of 40-year old guys like me dropping dead of heart attacks. Was I having a heart attack? I waited, kept breathing and seemed to be OK. But I had more nights like that, so I went to my doctor. She figured it was stress, but just to be safe she sent me to get an ECG. “If there’s any problem, I’ll phone you, otherwise everything’s fine.” The next morning when I arrived at the office, there was a message waiting from my doctor. She was sending me to a heart specialist, pronto. Uh-oh.

The specialist got me on a treadmill, wired me up, and then nearly killed me running on the thing for 30 minutes. I got off, drenched in sweat and with a burning sensation in my legs. I was gasping for air, and feeling sorry for myself. The result was I had a heart arrhythmia. Maybe I’d had it all my life, no way to tell. But he did tell me I needed to get going with some cardio exercise immediately. This desk-jockey was going to have to get physical.

I took up running. Well, jogging, really. The problem was, I hated it. And when you hate something, you resist doing it, right? So I decided to try something I had really enjoyed as a kid—riding a bike. Recreational riding was fun and I got into it, and eventually I started to think about those nuts commuting to work.

Consider the sports car. Ah yes, the quintessential symbol of a full blown mid-life crisis. If you find yourself with a little disposable cash, and an urge to recapture a youth that you probably didn’t actually have because you couldn’t have afforded it at the time, then you my friend may find yourself seriously contemplating acquiring that big toy. But before you lay your money down, let’s have a little look at a few do’s and don’ts.

First of all, it will have to be a vehicle that says “sporty”, even if only in name and looks. So, for example, if you’re thinking that a restored ’56 International Harvester pickup truck just like the one your Dad used to drive would be the ticket, forget it. Nope, sorry, that won’t do. Really it comes down to two choices: foreign two-seater or Detroit iron muscle car.

If you want to say to the world “I’m eccentric”, look for a used Italian or German sports car from 40 or 50 years ago. If you want to say “I’m jolly eccentric, and I like to spend more time under the car than in it”, then get yourself an old British sports car (don’t forget to budget for a tweed cap and jacket, pipe optional, for those times you can actually get the thing to run). Unfortunately, if you decide Detroit iron is the ticket, you may be saying “my best days are behind me”, just like Detroit. I mean, what do you really think when you see a gray-haired guy piloting a ’74 ‘Vette into the parking lot at the mall? Yeah, me too; Viagra. And if he’s driving a brand new ‘Vette, you’re probably thinking “has a boatload of money, has left his third wife and taken up with some 21-year old he’s constantly trying to impress. I’ll bet he’s not really happy”. Admit it, you do.

But the feeling won’t go away. You still hanker after the kind of car you couldn’t have as a teenager. The manufacturers know this. Look at the surge of old-is-new-again designs out there: Mustang, Camaro (coming soon), Mini, Challenger (also soon), VW Beetle and so on. Even Fiat figured it out.

If you’re not a weekend mechanic, then new is probably the way to go. The upside is better reliability, better fuel economy, lower CO2 emissions, airbags, traction control, ABS, and of course the most significant automotive advancement in a long time—cupholders! What you’ll be missing is chrome, fins and carburetors.

If you sit tight and do nothing, the feeling may pass. Or you may settle for a compromise. I’ve told my wife if the urge hits, she may come home one day to find I’ve bought a set of mags for the minivan. In the meantime, you can window shop to your heart’s delight online. You can find a lot of cool stuff here. But be warned, we tend to make the world out of those thoughts we keep feeding, so if you’re not careful, you could wind up with a ’73 240Z (some rust, runs good) and a puddle of oil in your driveway. But hey, if that’s what it takes to find your mojo, let’s go for a ride!

The Steinway piano is to pianos what Rolls Royce is to cars. It may not be everyone’s favourite, but its’ name is synonymous with the best that money can buy. And so it was with great anticipation that we music students awaited the arrival of a Steinway grand at our college. We already had a Yamaha grand piano, but this—a Steinway—this was something else altogether.

The big day came, and the piano, still in its’ crate, was carted into the music building. There were several of us hanging around that day, and we were keen to help the college facility guys un-crate the piano. The piano teacher would have none of it, insisting that we must wait until a local piano technician is available to oversee the whole procedure. We assured her there was nothing to worry about. We were just going to help these guys get it out of the crate and mount it on its’ legs, and since there were so many of us here today, it was a good time to do it. Maybe when the technician arrived, there wouldn’t be so many people around to help him. She fluttered around like a bird whose nest is under attack, a picture of nervous anxiety. We men got on with the job, and she left the room, no doubt to track down the piano technician at once.

If you’ve ever seen a grand piano delivered in a crate you’ll know that they’re delivered with the legs and pedals detached. The piano is stood on edge in the crate, and that’s how they’re able to fit them through doorways.

The facility guys got a crowbar and started pulling off one side of the crate, revealing the dull black lid-side of the piano. When the side of the crate was completely removed, they walked around to the other side. All of the students walked around to the other side too, to watch the work in progress. Except for me. Something told me it just wasn’t a good idea, with the piano on its’ side like that, for everyone to be standing on one side of it. So I stood there, hands in pockets, while the un-crating continued on the other side. Suddenly after one vigorous jerk with the crowbar, the piano did a little bounce and flopped—if you can imagine a Steinway grand “flopping”—my way. I was about to be crushed by a flopping great Steinway.

In an instant, my hands came out of my pockets and came up between me and the Steinway. Time stood still, more or less. I stood pretty still, too, palms pressed against the lid, knees bent, back swayed. Everyone stood there motionless, silent, like they were expecting me to just push it back upright. Finally I gave out a little grunt that meant “hey, could use a hand over here” and a bunch of guys rushed around to my side and we got the piano back. What happened next was a real guy moment. We all stood looking at each other, and it was understood that we had just had a real close call, and a silent pact was being made that we would absolutely not mention this to the piano teacher or any of the faculty.

Finally someone said to me, “I have never seen someone move so fast in their lives”. Having to catch a piano will do that to you. You will move faster, be stronger, than you ever thought you could. But like any hero, I just did what I had to do.

A few years ago I got past the denial stage and finally acquiesced to acquiring eyeglasses. I hadn’t read CD liner notes (anyone remember what a pre-recorded music CD from a store looks like?) for a couple of years before that, and no kind of squinting was working any more. I could not see the small print, but I did see the writing on the wall.

Without my glasses on, I now notice a lot of design elements that I never did before. It’s been surprising to discover just how many gadgets and packages come with such small printing, directions, instructions or interfaces, that without my glasses I have no hope of operating them. I cannot tear along the dotted line, I cannot plug the headphones into the hole marked because the symbol is just slightly raised off its’ same-coloured background and I cannot make it out any better than Helen Keller could have. I cannot open this end only, see details below, and read the fine print that all smart shoppers are applauded for reading. In short, without my glasses, I have to live in the macro world. The micro has become, if not invisible, very fuzzy to me now.

As a kid in the summer, I typically spent a lot of time outside. This was OK because back in those days the planet was protected by something we used to call the “ozone layer” (feel free here to make quotation marks with your hands, a la Dr. Evil). And spending all that time outdoors, we became acquainted with bugs and insects, and the details of things growing in the garden. A big treat was to look at anything, and I mean anything, under a microscope. As a kid, it’s easy to live in the micro world. The macro world is for grownups. Cuban missile crisis? Whatever, kids want to know how rockets work, and whether we can build one in the back yard.

As grownups, we are encouraged to see the big picture, plan ahead, think globally whilst acting locally and all that. Very macro stuff. (Sing with me, “Macro macro man, I want to be a Macro man”). I think this has something to do with that saying of stop and smell the roses. It’s back to a micro world, where little things mean a lot. When you watch folks even older than me, many of them seem to have found their way back to that micro world, at least part of the time.

Once in a while, I guess, it’s good to sweat the details, read the fine print, and take a close look at the bugs outside your house. But whether you find yourself living large or small, macro or micro, stay curious. If you’re not learning, you’re dying.

When you’re watching a soccer game (football to some), the clock ticks up to note how much time has passed. The actual time the game will end is a little fuzzy, ultimately up to the referee to decide. I think a lot of us live our lives that way. We know it’s going to end, but not sure when, exactly, so we kind of run around, trying to work with others towards a common goal.

In the game of ice hockey, the clock ticks down to show you how much time is left. Hence, the familiar announcement “last minute of play…”, which usually spurs the players into one last effort to do whatever it is they can to win the game. So I got to thinking, what if my life was timed that way. If I was given the rules of the game early on, say, “you have 65 years, 3 months, and 5 days to live, and there will be no overtime, no scoring shoot outs. You get to play regulation time only”, what would I have done differently with the time I’ve “played” so far? What would my “game strategy” have been? Would I play defensively, try to stay out of the penalty box? Or maybe offensively, driving to score on every shift? Maybe casually, like hey, it’s just a game?

Of course the game strategy we employ as adults is very much the result of our upbringing. Were we raised in an atmosphere of conservative pragmatism, dreamy optimism, or a confused mix of both? Was it OK to be ourselves growing up? Is it OK to be ourselves now?

Well, thinking backwards from the end is something some of us can do, and those lives give rise to phrases like “living for today”, “live each day as if it were your last”, and so on. If I were living today as if it were my last, what would I do today? Party like it’s 1999? Or get the Dalai Lama on the phone for some last minute advice?

So guys, we’re in the game, the clock is ticking down, and if our game strategy hasn’t made us feel like winners so far, maybe we need to call a time out, have a chat with our peers and the coach (hmmm, maybe finding a coach is a good idea at this point), and figure out how we’re going to play out the remaining time. Because wouldn’t we really prefer to have our victory in the bag before the clock runs out?

Welcome to mid-life, man. Maybe I got here before you, maybe you got here before me, but whatever, here we are. You can tell you’ve hit mid-life because it suddenly dawns on you one day that perhaps you now have less of your life in front of you than you have behind you. When that thought crosses your mind, you’ve arrived.

So when that mid-life thought is mysteriously triggered (is it built into our brains, like a neural timebomb?), you can’t really see things the same anymore. Oh sure, at first there will be lots of lapses as you forget all about it and carry on just like before. But bit by bit, that little thought gets louder and more insistent, and starts drowning out the other inane stuff vying for attention. Yep, you eventually have to face it, say hello, and start figuring out what it all means.

Once you have firmly grappled with the idea that perhaps the clock is winding down, you will find yourself asking what you’re doing with your life. For the majority of us, that means we realize that somewhere along the way (and for those of you who are, or were, married, do not use your first marriage date as a default date to determine when your self-determined pleasure-seeking authority-bucking life officially died) we sort of lost track of who we were and what we thought we were going to be when we grew up. I mean, how many of us dreamed of a career in middle management? Exactly.

We had no idea what it would feel like to feel so young yet look in the mirror and see some guy with grey/thinning/no hair, an expanded waistline and nose hair, with a bathroom shelf that includes potions, pills, elixirs, patches and pastes for everything from whiter cinema-quality teeth to, well, you don’t even want to know. I mean, who the hell is that guy? And what did he do with ME?

Warning, the stuff you see here is written by a middle-aged guy. You’ve been warned!