hello lovely followers, I am publishing a few of my pre-written blog posts so that we can get to new ones! there are more dispatches from car culture coming except contemporary this time, and also a post about my Many Hobbies and the value of process

Dispatch from car culture 17 August 2023

My colleague Tommy and I are plotting how we can go to see an electric ferry getting built next week without having to use a car (I’m on a month long car free streak) and without taking multiple hours (our boss would not love this). After we agree to go to see the ferry we get an email from the comms person: a press release saying that ferry trips are decreasing due to staff shortages.

It takes less time for me to bike from my work to the bar than it does for my friend Levi to find parking in the city.

Every time there’s a Football World Cup game I can tell by the traffic: all the streets around my flat are filled with people trying to find a place to store their metal boxes.

“I wish I’d brought a bike,” I imagine all the people at the journalism retreat saying when I roll up for the weekend. Instead I get a lot of “you biked here? Are you okay?”. Someone finds a musty cupboard, also containing a lot of firewood and a generator, for me to keep my vehicle in. I feel completely vindicated, however, when I leave someone else sorting out my spreadsheets while I go for a bike ride in the sunset, the air cool and the forest quiet. I am completely convinced I am in the right place.

When it’s time to go home, it’s raining. Multiple people ask me if I need a ride. It’s not cold, I say. If I’m willing to make a statement, I have to be willing to make a statement in the rain, I say. I’m really all right, I say. I need to test out my navigation skills, and if I get sick of the rain, I can always hop on a train, I say. Inside, though, I’m imagining the easy route: flicking my quick release pin opening, loading my lovely Marin Alp into the back of someone’s sedan, making surface level conversation about our jobs for an hour in the traffic.

Instead I ride. It’s quiet, and the rain is soft. I’ve remembered the route perfectly. A long section of it is beside a stream. I’m all alone. In my head, I wonder at the worry I received for choosing to ride home. Bikes need to be a legitimate form of transport, not a statement: not something to worry about the people choosing to move in this way. My bike is a vehicle, just like a car. It doesn’t limit where I can go, but takes me to new places, makes my world bigger and wider and definitely more pleasant and interesting. It’s completely reasonable to convey myself for a weekend retreat twenty kilometres away in this manner, and it allowed me to go for much more interesting runs while I was there.

Yes, I do sometimes benefit from cars: their convenience, the distance they can travel. Most of the time, thought, cars are dangerous, a nuisance to me. They’re loud. I imagine being hit by them every single day, although these thoughts usually do not trouble me. But every single time I ride my bike, car drivers benefit. I’m not adding to the traffic burden. I’m not emitting chemicals that cause respiratory diseases, or exacerbating the climate crisis that is already impacting them, and will impact their children and grandchildren more. I’m not taking up parking space. I’m not getting stressed, and burdening the mental health system; failing to get exercise, and burdening the healthcare system. I’m not endangering their children as they exit school to get into their SUV by being three tonnes of metal and plastic.

I strap my lights on and bike to my aunty’s house. On the way, I am nearly hit by two cars performing rash swerves in and out of the McDonald’s parking lot, in the space of 20 seconds. I scream a little bit and alarm Shreyas, who is ahead. I log the incidents on dangerspace.nz, and think about exposure to danger, and how easy it would be for stuff like this to put me off cycling. My chain is getting a little rusty from all this winter rain. I clean it with an old toothbrush and drip lubricant on. I feel completely smug that I can maintain my own vehicle. On the other side of the garage, my flatmate and his friend are jamming: playing a version of Change by Big Thief. The bikes are locked in the shed. All is well.