So you can imagine my distress at the increasingly cold weather we've been having. The bitterly chilly wind pushes against me and my strenuous efforts to pedal prove close to futile. The icy air seeps under my scarf and freezes my throat. The blood in my gloved fingers practically freezes as my paralyzed-with-cold fingers awkwardly grip the handlebars.
That toasty warm car sure looks good at 7:30 in the morning. And if I were just to take my mother up on her offer...
Mais non! I actually despise cars. Our car culture is part of what makes Americans so isolated. We pass mostly people on the street while in the shelter of our cars, whereas if we were walking or biking, we would all be having more direct and meaningful interactions. The French pedestrian/biking culture is what provides such a vivacious café culture. I love walking around Paris or Cannes and passing all the bicyclists with a fresh baguette from the bakery under one arm or a library book in their front basket. We see little snippets of peoples' lives which we wouldn't get if we were all cooped up in our cars. We don't all live within comfortable biking distance of our schools or workplaces, but there are usually grocery stores or libraries near by. Making the extra effort to bike when possible makes all the difference.
I also just love the opportunity biking gives me to be outside in nature, breathing the fresh air and zipping beneath the tree branches laced under the sky. In addition, there's the fact that driving provides no health benefits, whereas biking fits in a glorious twenty minutes of my day in which I am actively moving (even if I am painfully struggling against cruel winter winds). And the most obvious: cars are gas hogs which pollute the environment!
I'm resolute in my decision to resist taking the car in the morning. If more people made the effort to bike when possible, we could significantly reduce our carbon footprints.
