Transportation

Heading home.  End of the line on a beautiful evening.  Eventually the train will extend north to UNCC and North Davidson where stuff happens.  That is, as long as the corporations can keep raising pigs and chickens so Bank of America can keep making money and paying taxes and employees (who buy property and pay taxes), so our local government can stay afloat.  Or, that those kids who romanticize trains grow up and want them.

But for now, it stops here.  Just blocks from city center.  Inside the immediate two-square-mile-beltway.  But that's alright with me.  I enjoy riding my bicycle.

I take the train into work when it's too hot, not that I couldn't get away with it, just that I grew-up and have remained accustomed to a certain level of comfort.  I, unlike most people who complain about, perhaps rightfully so, tax dollars spent on someone other than them, chose to live and work along the train line.  In fact, positive transportation planning awarded Charlotte with a check-mark while searching for a city to live in.

But I ride in when the sun is down, or the weather bearable, and I always ride back.  Not only is it thrilling, but it helps me prove to myself that my job is not draining.

As a 21st century shopkeeper, I was informed by another that they wished that they could ride their bike everywhere because they figured it'd be a good way to stay in shape.  I offered that perhaps it would be so long as one didn't mind arriving to appointments moist, or making trips to the grocery a couple of times each week.  And that was that.

I think that if more people are to consider bicycles as a legitimate form of transportation, then more people are going to have to actually enjoy riding bikes.  And I don't think they do.  But I don't know why.  Maybe they think its childish or unsafe.  I enjoy riding through a city with an unobstructed view of the buildings and the lives going on around me.  I enjoy the rush and thrill of pwning the roadway in city traffic.  I envy the elite few who make their living pedaling.  I love that I am being propelled by nothing more than a gear physically manipulated by my living body.  

And my bike runs on vegetables.

And when I transport I grow stronger.

And the contraposition holds true.

The States are an highway wasteland.  If we incorporate safe paths for bicycles more people will be able to enjoy them.  Just lets not render this a class divide.  Lets not put the bikes on the hitch to go for a ride.  Lets enjoy it for real.