Hi Neighbour,
Well, I’m back on the subject of bicycles and cycling. Last week, I posted a blog on my past experiences with bicycles, but I never got to the best part: the life-changing event, after my summer in China, near Shanghai. Coming from Metro Vancouver, I felt right at home in China—we have such a large Chinese community and many of us embrace their culture. However, in Metro Vancouver, there aren’t many Chinese riding bikes. Yet in China, I saw amazing uses of different forms of bicycles and tricycles.
In fact, when I started to ride a bike, it was the year that the City of Vancouver created the Burrard St. Bridge bike lane, as a temporary bike lane. But when people got used to it, it stayed. The first crosstown bike route was Adanac Avenue, which runs from Boundary Road west to Main Street. The first time I rode my bike on 10th Avenue, in Vancouver, I couldn’t believe the number of people using that route. It was so busy, with cyclists of all ages and abilities going at different speeds. There were push-button traffic light activators and all kinds of cyclists waiting at intersections on the way. Very few ‘racer-types’; mostly, ordinary people wearing comfortable clothes and shoes; mostly, wearing helmets and watching out for others; some with paniers on the back wheels; some wearing backpacks. I automatically felt part of the cycling community.
The best part for me was knowing that I could put my bike on a bus rack, if I had to, and get a ride home or up a North Shore hill. I needed options, especially when I was trying a longer trip, for the first time, like going over the Lions Gate Bridge to the Vancouver Public Library. After a few times, some people I spoke to were surprised to think that I cycled over a bridge from the North Shore. I remember one woman who said: “You rode over the Second Narrows Bridge! Weren’t you afraid in the traffic?” To which I responded that there were sidewalks on the bridge. She had NEVER noticed the sidewalks on the bridge, and, I’m sure, had never even looked to see if people walked or rode bikes on that narrow sidewalk (which has since been widened). Of course, I understood! Because she needed to watch the cars around her. But her ignorance shocked me, just the same.
Well, it didn’t take me long to discover that there were non-profit organizations, such as HUB (bikehub.ca) and the BC Cycling Coalition (bccc.bc.ca) where I could meet other community-minded cyclists, who volunteered during Bike To Work Week in May or June, at ‘stations’ that were set up by HUB. These organizations were getting cyclists together to advocate for building bike lanes that would make cycling safer for all of the ‘ordinary folks’ who just wanted to ride their bikes on the street, to get to work, school or the store, or just to go for a ride around the Stanley Park seawall.
Any wonder that I fell in love with their attitudes about healthy communities?
Fiona