But there was something unusual about the group: all were women.

Bogotá and other Colombian cities have long imposed a traffic policy called “Pico y Placa,” which prohibits each vehicle from using the streets every other day as a way to reduce congestion. (Your days off depend on your license plate number). In April, as the coronavirus approached, the government, after banning travel and events, imposed a variation on the Pico y Placa policy to keep more people home: Males were only allowed to leave home on odd-numbered days, and females on even-numbered ones.

Despite the draconian—and, some might say, arbitrary—gender rule, few protested (although many grumbled). The only organizations to criticize the curfew publicly were transgender rights advocates, who don’t want the police—whom they accuse of many abuses—deciding who is a man and who a woman.

Of course, in the best Colombian style, the rule was enforced with flexibility. Some businesses, such as banks and large supermarkets, conformed and allowed only a single gender each day, probably because of the police watching from the sidewalk outside. But smaller businesses, needful of pesos during harsh economic times, didn’t seem to care. I purchased bread and fruit, and made photocopies on the first women-only day. And dozens of cops who saw me riding my bike on the street just ignored me, although the fact that I was pulling a cargo trailer loaded with fruit probably helped, since messengers of all genders are permitted to work.

Even so, when I arrived in the morning at the market from which I have been doing deliveries of fruits and vegetables, a guard would not let me enter without a special permit. It was the same at Bogotá’s central wholesale market, where burly men called cargadores usually arrive at dawn to unload 100-kilogram sacks of fruit and vegetables. The first morning of Pico y Placa, guards initially kept out the cargadores, until common sense prevailed and they returned to work.

Those men are more fortunate than others who work in Colombia’s huge informal economy, and have no social insurance, poor health care and, now, no employment. With the shutdown’s start, street vendors were banned, as were bars, barbers, and bike shops. The city even blockaded off the red-light district and recommended masturbation as a contagion-free alternative. Yet, many white-collar workers, who can work from home, are still employed, and getting paid, and will likely weather the pandemic fine.

I have lived in Colombia for 15 years. The first several years, I did freelance journalism. But, as the amount of work shriveled with the troubles of the print media industry, I was able to turn my lifelong love for bicycling into a business by founding Bogotá Bike Tours. We were fortunate that Colombian tourism was then just taking off, and doing tours and renting bikes turned out to be a fun way to make a living—until the coronavirus slammed the brakes on us. With travel banned and the borders sealed, our industry evaporated.

But Maikal, one of our guides, and his girlfriend Sara, saw a new need: to feed the millions of Bogotanos confined to their homes. So, they founded a business delivering fruits and veggies from one of Bogotá’s main markets.

This was work that few would envy. You pedal across this sprawling city of 9 million people pulling a child trailer loaded with sacks of produce, in sun, rain and hail, under broiling sun, and sometimes up the hills lining Bogotá’s eastern border, and while gasping for oxygen at 2,650 meters above sea level. And all for about $2 per delivery.

But I didn’t mind the discomforts, which I saw as challenges. And pedaling all day was a great relief after years of staying up half the night preparing invoices, answering e-mails and resolving problems with bike tours. Now, all I had to do was pedal, and the complications became someone else’s headaches. Plus, with the city shut down, this was the best time ever for urban cycling: The vacant streets belonged to us, and pollution was at a record low.

When deliveries took me to cramped efficiency apartments belonging to young couples who probably signed their leases expecting to only eat and sleep there, but were now spending months shut in doors, I gave a prayer of thanks for my freedom, even with all its troubles.

We messengers didn’t worry much about getting infected, even though I’ve since seen delivery people described as “front-line heroes.” For many, the work was a necessity in a time of crisis. A young woman known as “La Flaca,” who joined us in delivering fruit, did it to support herself and her young child. Another fruit deliverer, named Luisca, supported his ex-wife and his aged mother. I was paying for rent and services both at home and for the shop, where our nearly 100 bicycles continue to gather dust.

Ceasar’s delivery group distributing food to a neighborhood in Bogotá. Courtesy of Mike Ceasar.

The streets have gotten harder to ride in recent weeks. Even as the pandemic has worsened here, Bogotá has returned toward its chaotic normalcy. The city’s deadly air pollution, which had taken a holiday during the lockdown, returned with the smog-belching trucks and buses. Main streets now teem with pedestrians and vendors as people struggle to find a way to survive and keep themselves sane.

“Can you imagine what it’s like being shut up all day in a tiny room?” Gabriela, an older woman and street vendor, asked me.

Truth be told, the pandemic has hit Bogotá relatively lightly, with only about 500 deaths in a city the size of New York, despite much higher levels of poverty and a weaker hospital system. However, rather than any government policies, I suspect that Bogotanos can thank their high elevation, which seems to reduce infection rates. The epidemic has hit so lightly, in fact, that I’ve noticed an expanding belief that the virus doesn’t really exist and that the epidemic is a hoax—perhaps to facilitate corruption.

No wonder official efforts to quarantine the public aren’t working. One afternoon, a police officer stopped me while I rode my bike through a crowded market area. The officer stopped about half-a-dozen cyclists, but meanwhile dozens more pedaled past us, and crowds of hundreds of shoppers milled about.

“Your I.D. cards,” he demanded. “And your permits to be out on the street during curfew! And proof that you own those bikes!”

I looked at the hundreds of shoppers milling about us and wondered what reality our city leaders were inhabiting.

None of us detainees had all the documents. Finally, bowing to reality, the officer let us all go, and looked for more cyclists to stop to justify his salary.

For me, the most difficult part of the delivery work is neither being victimized by senseless laws, nor straining up hills pulling an overloaded trailer, nor getting misled by confusing addresses. Instead, I am plagued by a new sensation of vulnerability, because I’m a foreigner.

Colombia sealed its borders in March. So, by April, all foreigners still in Colombia had been here far too long to constitute a danger of spreading the virus. Nevertheless, many Colombians treated all foreigners as threats. When groups of tourists stranded in Bogotá tried to visit Paloquemao, the central fruit market, they were either stopped at the entrance or followed around by guards once inside. I often had to argue to get in, and then argue again when guards tried to kick me out. I explained over and over that the danger came not from foreigners, but from anybody who had recently returned from overseas.

As the lockdown lengthened and hunger increased, Bogotá’s low death toll has made many here wonder whether the cure is worse than the disease. Several times each week, we push shopping carts through the market and collect donations of ripe fruit and vegetables which the vendors would otherwise throw away. Often, we get hundreds of kilograms of moldy and damaged produce, which we load onto our cargo bikes and give away to foundations or to hungry households who tie red rags to their windows to signal their desperation.

Despite our work and government food distribution, the need is overwhelming. When the food ran out in one neighborhood, ironically named “La Favorita,” those still in line started yelling and seemed on the verge of rioting. Those of us doing the delivery left in a hurry, promising to return soon. But with so much need elsewhere, we never have.

Even so, Bogotanos are relatively fortunate. In lower-elevation parts of the country, the pandemic appears to be accelerating. Neighboring Brazil, whose right-wing president keeps denying the epidemic’s reality, has become a global epicenter of the epidemic. To Colombia’s east, Venezuela’s economy and health system have long been in free fall under the impacts of corruption, U.S. sanctions, and collapsing oil prices. Now, its authoritarian government is unwilling or unable to report the number of COVID-19 cases there. Meanwhile, millions of Venezuelan refugees have fled back and forth across Colombia, potentially carrying the epidemic with them.

I am trying to imagine what the future here looks like. We’ve transformed our bike shop into a neighborhood market. Unfortunately for us, however, several of our neighbors had the same idea, and the barrio is now saturated with markets. At the same time, the neighborhood, which depended on tourists and university students, shrinks in population.

In the meantime, I expect to do even more deliveries—at least until a vaccine arrives.

The post A Letter From Bogotá, Where Hunger Feels More Threatening Than the Virus appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The basket on my bicycle is hanging low.
It’s filled with strange things you said.
We took a trail down to the beach.
You drew a map so we’d remember
where we sat waiting for our spirit animals.
We never once saw yours.
Every familiar thing we once knew disappeared:
we’d come this far
to start again or fall apart.
So scared of second chances
we both knew it was time.
Didn’t mean to, but words slipped right through
and tossed you like a stone into the ocean.
I don’t deserve all that I receive.
On my bicycle, I’m moving slow.

The post Bike Rides to the Ocean appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Through the 1880s, spring and fall rains routinely turned dirt lanes into impassable mud pits that brought rural life to a standstill, stranding farmers at home with their produce and leaving grocers’ shelves bare. In the summer, the roads bore deep, sunbaked ruts; in the winter, treacherous ice slicks. The nearby farmers who were responsible for maintaining these roads didn’t have the means or desire to pave them, or even to post signs identifying them.

City streets weren’t much better. Though many were paved with cobblestones or wood blocks, they were also slashed through with trolley tracks and scattered with trash and horse manure. In 1892, British novelist Rudyard Kipling savaged New York’s “slatternly pavement” in a travel essay, calling the city’s uneven, stinky streets “first cousins to a Zanzibar foreshore.”

But the same ravaged paths that seemed primitive to foreigners like Kipling were normal for Americans. And they might have stayed that way if it hadn’t been for bicycles, and cyclists who banded together to lobby for government funding of better roads.

The first bicycle, called a “pedal velocipede,” was patented in 1866, and its heavy wood-spoked wheels were no match for America’s rough roadways. By the late 1870s, though, builders had started making wheels with lightweight wire spokes under tension. This technique, still seen in modern bicycle wheels, allowed makers to enlarge the front driving wheel so that the bike would go farther with each crank of the pedals.

Bikes took on the penny-farthing silhouette: a chest-high front wheel and a knee-high rear wheel. This design made cycles faster and more roadworthy, since the tall wheels’ gentle arcs rolled right over smaller holes in the road.

As soon as American cyclists began riding high-wheelers outdoors, they began kvetching about the roadways. “The majority [of Americans] do not know what a good road is,” wrote one rider in 1882, “and their horses—who do know and could explain the differences in roads—are debarred from speaking.”

Cyclists, however, could speak— and organize. Since high-wheel bicycles cost many times the average tradesman’s weekly wages, they were affordable only to the well-to-do, and the first bicycle clubs were upper-crusty fraternities for racing and socializing.

The groups quickly developed a political agenda, as cyclists had to fight for the right to ride. Police routinely stopped riders and shooed them off city streets, inspiring cyclists to join together and press for access to public thoroughfares. A national coalition of clubs called the League of American Wheelmen (LAW) came to lead these efforts.

A cover of Good Roads magazine.

Early court cases went against bikers. In 1881, three cyclists who defied a ban on riding in New York’s Central Park were jailed. But the cyclists eventually prevailed, and in 1890, the landmark Kansas case Swift v. Topeka established bicycles as vehicles with the same road rights as any other conveyance.

By then, the bicycle had undergone another transformation. Makers had discovered that, by using a chain and sprockets, they could make a wheel rotate more than once with each turn of the pedals. Wheels got smaller again, seats got closer to the ground, and the so-called “safety bicycle” — cushioned by new, air-filled tires — started selling like mad. A safety bicycle looked pretty much like a modern commuter bike, and by the early 1890s, more than a million Americans were riding them. With that many cyclists on the road, the demand for smoother roadways began to go mainstream.

Farmers weren’t on board yet, though. If better roads meant more unpaid work for them, most preferred the status quo. But then cyclists launched a full-bore PR campaign, one of the first of the modern era. Both in books and in a new monthly magazine called Good Roads, the LAW made the case to farmers in pocketbook terms.

Because pulling loaded wagons through muck or over ruts required extra horsepower, American farmers owned and fed at least two million more horses than they would need if the roads were smooth, LAW official Isaac B. Potter informed his rural reader. “A bad road is really the most expensive thing in your agricultural outfit,” he wrote. Potter argued that farmers deserved a cut of their urban countrymen’s taxes to pay for road paving. Many farmers were convinced, and began to work with cyclists to lobby state and local governments for better roads.

In mid-1892, Colonel Albert A. Pope, a leading bicycle manufacturer, printed thousands of copies of a petition demanding that Congress create a federal department to promote “knowledge in the art of constructing and maintaining roads.” He enlisted cyclists’ help to collect signatures and return signed copies, which he pasted into an enormous scroll.

Pope delivered this scroll to the U.S. Capitol in 1893, displaying it on a pair of hand-cranked oak spools that stood seven feet high. The so-called “monster petition,” now housed in the National Archives, bore 150,000 signatures. That same year, Congress authorized the creation of the Office of Road Inquiry, a two-man fact-finding operation that was a precursor to the Federal Highway Administration.

In 1896, the U.S. Postal Service further boosted rural support for good roads by launching the first rural free delivery routes. Rather than having to trek miles over iffy roads to the nearest post office to check for mail, farmers could now receive the same daily drop-off service as city residents. The catch was that the postmaster would authorize home delivery only if the local roads were passable, a strong incentive for farmers to see that they were.

As roads improved, city-dwellers increasingly used bikes to explore the flyover country of their day: the terra incognita between railroad stations. Wayside inns that had averaged one guest a week for years were suddenly overrun with wheelmen, some of whom installed signposts and created road maps to help other cyclists find their way.

This didn’t last long, though. By the end of the 1890s, the bicycle boom had collapsed, and fashionable swells had moved on to other passions. Working people in cities still used bikes for commuting or making deliveries, but the touring fad and the power of the bicycle lobby were done. Nevertheless, when automobile tourists took to the roads in large numbers in the 1910s and 1920s, they often found the way marked, mapped, and paved by cyclists who had come before.

A promotional patch from the League of American Wheelmen.

The bicycle, meanwhile, was largely erased from America’s roadways. Painted, car-width lanes seemed to leave no space for cycles. The new practice of parking private vehicles along the edges of public roads crowded bikes out of that space. Postwar suburbs separated housing from workplaces by long distances, making bicycle commuting impractical. Late-century exurbs, with their cul-de-sacs and collector roads, maximized driving speeds within developments, which added to the danger of cycling there. Interstate highways, for which early cyclists are partly responsible, are almost all closed to cyclists.

Now comes a new call for road space for bikes. In the past 10 years, as middle-class Americans have moved back to urban cores—where shorter travel distances make cycling more practical—riders have pressed governments for safer bike routes. And governments have begun to deliver. In the 50 most populous cities, the average mileage of on-street bicycle lanes has doubled since 2007, while nationwide, the number of physically separated bike lanes has more than tripled since 2011, with many more miles in the works.

Some drivers bemoan the loss of asphalt. Much like farmers of the 1880s, they prefer the imperfect status quo to changes they perceive as serving a small, self-regarding elite at their expense. And, much like good-roads lobbyists of the 1880s, it falls upon bicycle advocates to make the case that facilities for cyclists are worth the cost, not only in construction (which tends to be cheap) but also in lost access to part of an existing roadway for driving and parking.

There are strong arguments being made here. More and better bike lanes have been shown to smooth traffic flow and diminish deadly collisions between bikes and cars. They can also help clear the air, reduce the demand for downtown parking, and improve public health by encouraging exercise. But to judge by the furious responses that usually erupt when plans for a new bike lane are announced, those arguments haven’t convinced everyone.

Bicycle advocates are already following the historical example of the League of American Wheelmen by banding together in advocacy groups such as the League of American Bicyclists, a gender-neutral revival of the old organization. Isaac Potter might advise bike lane supporters to seek common cause with their most vocal opponents, stressing the money and time saved for drivers when all road users are safely accommodated.

Another thing Potter might say is that the future is fickle. We may do our best to shape roads that work for all current users, only to find we’ve paved the way for some new mode of transport that is beyond our imagining.

The post How Bikes Helped Invent American Highways appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

My mind was fuzzy, but the last thing I remembered was riding my bike toward the edge of a hilltop, with the intent to gap to a patch of concrete at the hill’s base. In doing so, I would have to air over a small metal electrical box that stuck out of the hillside. I had pulled this trick off countless times, and there was no doubt in my mind that things would go off without a hitch.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Injuries are a fact of life when you ride BMX, which stands for bicycle motocross. At first BMX was strictly a racing sport, but it has since evolved into a freestyle pursuit in which riders do whatever tricks they like in any place that works—from dirt jumps to skate park ramps to 10-stair handrails. Riding BMX in the streets, a big part of the thrill is finding obstacles that weren’t designed for extreme sports, and making them work for tricks.

And therein lies the sport’s allure. As the late BMX legend Dave Mirra said, “I’d risk the fall, just to know how it feels to fly.”

While it’s true that the thrill is fundamental to the BMX appeal, for me, riding is a more complicated matter, one tied up with childhood friendship and life-changing risks.

My BMX obsession started in 10th grade, when a classmate named Van became high-school-famous for posting photos of himself doing wall-rides in his dining room. The first time I met Van he was riding his bike full-speed down a garage ramp. He boosted off of a speed bump and into the air before pedaling back around to introduce himself. We hit it off right away. I was blown away by his confidence, and I soon noticed that when I was with him that same confidence bubbled up in me. I’d watch him ride with local pros, and imagined myself pulling off the stunts that seemed to come so naturally to him. But whenever I tried to ride Van’s bike, the magic that allowed him to leave the ground seemed to dissipate as soon as I touched the handlebars. My interest stayed frozen at the level of spectacle.

High school ended, and Van and I lost touch. But a few years later, while studying in Ireland, I found a man selling a top-of-the-line BMX bike for a fraction of what it was worth. Being pretty much alone in Ireland, my bike became my closest companion. I spent the next few months practicing hops, spins, and wheelies. I could almost hear my old friend yelling advice at me, telling me to pull my front end up harder or to remember to counter-steer when my bike began to roll backwards.

Though I was a novice with a foreign accent, Galway’s local BMX crew was quick to take me under their wing, and I soon discovered what’s since become my favorite thing to do on my bike—gaps. The term can be used as either a verb or a noun, and describes an area that can be jumped over, or the action of jumping such an area. You could say that you’ve gapped an area once you’ve jumped from one space or object to another, without touching anything in between.

I knew I was hooked the day I gapped a set of stairs that ran down to the water in my local park. The set was larger than anything I had ever jumped before, and the wet stone walkway at the bottom made for an unreliable landing space.

For weeks, I had stared at the spot and imagined myself jumping it, but was always too afraid to actually try. Then, one day, I went for it. I must have looked inept hurling myself down those stairs as clumsily as I did, but I’ll never forget the fleeting feeling of freedom that came to me as I flew through the air.

Most everything I’d learned in my life had come to me slowly and incrementally, and I was used to messing things up a few times before I succeeded. On that day, it felt great to do something right on the first try. When I jumped off the stairs, the desire not to fall and die was so strong that it pushed the very idea of failure out of my mind. As soon as my tires reconnected with the ground, I knew I had to chase that feeling. I’ve tried to carry this state of mind into everything I do, not thinking about the multiple tries it might take to get something done. If you remove the idea of redos from your mind, you’re much more likely to succeed the first time.

When my semester abroad wrapped up, I packed my bike into a giant box that ended up weighing almost 50 pounds, and brought it home with me. I didn’t realize just how attached I’d grown to my most beloved possession until I went to collect it from baggage claim. A note from TSA alerting me that they’d opened the box triggered a pang of violated concern in my gut.

Soon after returning to the states, I packed my bike up one more time, and prepared to attempt the largest gap of my life, moving 3,500 miles from my childhood home in Baltimore to Los Angeles.

Once I arrived in L.A., it felt like I had stepped into the center of the BMX world. When I needed new parts for my bike, I took it to OSS, a store in the Fashion District that runs the biggest BMX blog on the Internet. At the store, a few of the pros regularly featured on the site were hanging out and were quick to introduce themselves to me using their first names when I walked in. And after a few months, I ran into Van, who had just moved out here, while we were on our bikes. On that day, BMX reinvigorated a friendship I thought I’d lost.

One of the best things about riding in L.A. is the group street rides. I’ve gotten the chance to ride with almost all of my idols, as nearly every pro rider makes at least one trip to Southern California each year. On a recent Saturday, several hundred riders headed out en masse from Thee Block, a BMX culture store in East Hollywood. No roads were shut down, and no police cars escorted us.

A group of BMX riders mobbing the streets of downtown L.A

Most riders—including me—go without brakes. We stop by dragging our feet against our back tires or the ground. While this can lead to high-speed accidents and ruined shoes, it makes bikes simpler to fix, more maneuverable without any pesky brake cables, and generally sleeker-looking.

Riding in such a large pack, no stopping was required.

Through some telepathic choreography, we began weaving through the gridlock on Santa Monica Boulevard in a great snaking motion that didn’t bother slowing down for red lights. At the top of a hill on West Fourth Street we attempted something equal parts reckless and fun. All 300 of us rocketed down the hill, riding straight across the bridge that runs over the 110 Freeway into downtown Los Angeles.

On the other side of the bridge, we were met with a wall of cars. Some riders saw this as more of a challenge than an inconvenience, cutting and weaving through the mesh of traffic. One boy even went so far as to jump his bike onto the hood of a stopped taxicab. To the disbelief of the cab’s passenger, the kid rode straight off the back of the car, rolling his bike right over the rooftop taxi sign.

Our final destination was a ramp made from parking barriers placed atop a concrete incline in a private lot. A security detail was there to greet us, but once the guards saw what we were doing, they didn’t make us leave. One guard commented, with, perhaps, a tinge of envy, that we had “a hell of a party” going on.

A young boy turned to his father, and asked if it would be okay for him to try riding the ramp, saying he was afraid that the other bikers would make fun of him for not being good enough. After a few words of encouragement, the boy decided to give it a shot. He pedaled hard, made it up the incline, and tapped his front tire on the base of the parking barrier. As he rode back to his dad, the riders he passed bent down to give him high-fives.

Fast-forward a couple of months to that day that found me in shock trauma, my arms tangled amidst tubes. I hadn’t quite cleared the gap, and even with a helmet, the impact of my fall was enough to knock me unconscious. My best guess was that my tires had slipped out when I landed short on the wet grass.

Once I recovered from my concussion and climbed back on the BMX saddle, the lasting pain was one of embarrassment. After riding away from countless close calls, my “big crash” was a slip-and-fall less than two feet, into a grassy hill.

Still, you could trip and break your neck right outside your front door, no bike required. My fall that day—unimpressive as it seems—could have been fatal. I often ride alone, but fortunately for me, on that day, Van was with me. BMX nearly did me in, but Van made sure I lived to ride again.

The post Why BMX Bike Riding Is a Matter of Life and Death appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I receive high praise from others whenever I mention my commute. I hear how honorable and selfless I am. People tell me they couldn’t last a week making my commute. I’ve learned to respond to such comments with a courteous smile and a slight blush. Not because I’m embarrassed, but because that’s how I figure an honorable and selfless person would react.

The reality is that I can’t stand taking the bus every day. Because taking the bus through southeastern Los Angeles completely blows.

After my car was impounded five months ago, I was intrigued by the prospect of riding the bus. I wanted to save money on gas and parking. I was proud of my reduced environmental footprint. And I was relishing my rogue status in a land of automotive dependency.

Then I rode on the bus for five months.

Five months.

Five months of waiting for delayed buses. Five months of teeth-rattling starts and stops on crumbling roads. Five months of confounding trivia questions on the bus system’s TransitTV (my personal favorite: “Chores are a form of physical activity: true or false?”). After all of it, the novelty of the bus was gone. So were my ideals.

If given the choice, I would rather drive to work in a vehicle powered by incinerated bald eagles than step on another bus in Los Angeles.

In a heartbeat.

But I learned there may be hope for me yet.

The Los Angeles City Council recently passed an anti-harassment ordinance that prohibits motorists from assaulting, threatening, or distracting bicyclists. When motorists do any of these things, bicyclists are to be awarded a minimum of $1,000. Damages are tripled if any are proven. Calling the new law ground-breaking would be an understatement. Los Angeles now has the most stringent legal protection for bicyclists anywhere in the country.

I’ve had two major problems with bicycle riding as a form of daily transportation. The first was the prolonged physical exertion. The second was the helplessness of sitting on a tiny aluminum frame on streets dominated by masses of fast-moving, heavy steel. This second fear has been fueled by the horror stories I hear from the bike couriers I talk to in the freight elevators I ride at work. The brake checks, swinging car doors, and homophobic jeers they talk about wouldn’t be good additions to my daily routine. But what if this new law could mitigate those threats?

It might. The law, with its vague language and large payouts for bicyclists, should give motorists second, and third, thoughts. A bicyclist who wins a legal challenge would win not only damages, but also legal fees. Winning drivers receive no such recompense for their fees. The law does little to define what constitutes improper behavior by a motorist, and bicyclists don’t have to prove any damages to win. So it’s not difficult to imagine charges filling the mailboxes of unsuspecting drivers, who will have little choice but to settle out of court.

To tell the truth, it’s that prospect that piqued my personal interest in bike riding more than anything. Crippling student loans and my frustrating inability to drive have created in me a vile jealousy of motorists that is downright shameful. I’d be embarrassed to relate the sinister thoughts that pop into my head every time I catch a glimpse of a passing BMW.

But the way I see it, this new law gives an unheard-of amount of leverage to the underclass of bike riders. David has traded in his sling for an automatic rifle, and that’s an ideal and mentality I could see adopting. So I hopped in the saddle of my uncle’s 24-speed and took to the road to see if having the law on my side gave me any sliver of confidence.

The route I took to work ran down Telegraph Road into East Los Angeles, followed Olympic through Boyle Heights, crossed into downtown on the 7th Street bridge, and ended after a quick jaunt through Skid Row.
But the majority of my trip was down Telegraph Road.

Telegraph, running alongside the heavily congested I-5 freeway, is the alternative rush-hour route for the foolishly impatient. Three lanes wide and bisected by intersections every quarter-mile or so, Telegraph feels less like a suburban thoroughfare and more like a long succession of drag strips. The 5 and its traffic flow are always in plain sight, and for drivers to receive any satisfaction for their alternate-route smarts, they have to gun the throttle in between stoplights to make up for the time lost sitting at red lights.

The road is backwards. Cars move more slowly in the crowded left lanes, pushing faster traffic to the far right, where I was riding. This kept my adrenaline pumping. I endured a couple shouts of “Get the fuck on the sidewalk!” (Sadly, I wasn’t able to catch up and prompt a threat by asking, “Or what?”) Otherwise, my commute was uneventful.

When one of my coworkers asked me if I felt like a “true cyclist” after I successfully biked down such busy streets and held my own, I told him I was too busy focusing on staying as close to the curb as possible to feel anything. And, really, that’s just the simple truth of road dynamics for bicyclists on a busy street. While I was taking painstaking care to stay in the street gutter the whole ride for fear of breaking my neck, most cars zooming past me didn’t think twice about coming within inches as they passed. That’s the level of comfort a steel frame provides.

I’d have to receive a hell of a lot more than three times my damages to feel the same level of comfort on a bike.

There’s been lots of talk lately of a cultural war between motorists and cyclists. This presumes that every cyclist carries an anarchistic bent, seeking to sabotage drivers by running red lights and veering too far to the left, and that every motorist sees red when their path is obstructed for a few fractions of a second.

It’s not like that on Telegraph Road. Cars and bikes are in a contest not because they are different, but because they share the same problem: neither has enough room to maneuver. What’s needed is more space, not more law.

Calvin Alvarez is an intern at Zócalo Public Square (and doesn’t really endorse the burning of bald eagles).

*Photo courtesy of waltarrrrr.

The post Curb Your Antagonism appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.