The Nick of Time

When "selling" cycling to the general public, most cycling advocates focus on the grand benefits: health, cleaner air, sunshine, saving money, etc. While all of those are certainly excellent reasons to choose riding a bike over driving, and I certainly don't want to diminish any of them, it's easy to overlook the far greater number of small joys that cycling offers. Sprinting to beat a red light. Finally crushing the local killer climb. Cruising down a slight decline with a tailwind. The Smile and Nod pass from another cyclist. Rolling up to a coffee shop and smelling the roasting beans. A pretty girl (or guy, if that's your thing) smiling when you ride pass. Stopping by the side of the road to enjoy the view, knowing that you got there solely on your own power:

Each ride can have a hundred such small moments, and when taken in the aggregate, riding always leaves a smile on my face. While driving can certainly have enjoyable moments, to my experience those tend to be outnumbered by the thousand constant annoyances of other drivers. Getting cut off. Merging. Slow drivers in the left lane. I have a 2-mile rule; every day I drive to work within 2 miles I'll wish I would have ridden, regardless of the weather. It never seems to fail. Sure, cycling has its frustrations; the close pass. The Heckler. On the whole, though, I find that the thousand small positives of cycling vastly outweigh the few small negatives.

Last night, Friday, while sitting at work and deciding if I should leave now or finish one more small task, I looked at the weather radar. Not good. A huge swatch of green was bearing down on the City of Lakes. Fortunately, my decision got a lot easier. I bailed on the office post haste and headed out. Rain was definitely coming. Having the rare tailwind (I ride east-west on the way home) I made great time. About 2/3 of the way home, thinking I was in the clear, I noticed a car on my right waiting to turn right onto the gridlocked freeway entrance with his window down. "Great," I thought. "Heckler". "Hey man!" came the call from the car. "Hey! You better get home fast, that storm is coming!" I'm sorry, what? Concerned for my safety? Since the traffic was all gridlocked, and we had a red light, I was able to chat with this guy for a couple of minutes. Nothing earth-shattering, just him hoping that I got home before the storm came. It felt great. For the next couple of miles I had a smile on my face, thinking about the human interactions that you get while biking that never, never happen when you're driving. Being out in the open, with all of the risks inherent in that, also has a tremendous benefit that no one really talks about all that much; interactions with people as people. It doesn't happen all that often that you find a driver who is willing to chat with you a bit at a red light, but it happens enough and is nice enough that I would say it's probably my second-favorite small-moment-of-greatness while cycling.

I did beat the storm. Beating a storm is, without a doubt, the number one underrated small-moment-of-greatness.

And then I voluntarily went out in the rain this morning to ride over to the Angry Catfish. It's only about 1.5 miles from my house, but I'm sure that I would have regretted driving.