Im calling this one a WIN

The Bike Pgh blog recently posted about the increase in bike parking in downtown Pittsburgh (Read whole post here) I'm very excited to see all the things that are happening here in Pittsburgh. from the Bike Racks on busses (which I use all the time) to the increase in bike lanes and sharrows. I really think we are approaching a tipping point of popularity where cyclists began to be noticed as something more than a bothersome nuisance.

We are starting to be noticed as a valid group instead of

Out the ordinary
Hippy freaks
Law breakers
Unruly kids

This is a very good thing, for the most part. There are some negative aspects of this that I will, no doubt, talk about later. But for now, I'm calling this one a WIN!

Transportation

A strange thing happened to me over the past few weeks. Well I don’t know if “strange” is the right word but it was the first one that came to mind. I have been riding my bike a lot more than what was usual. By ‘more’ I mean more in the last week than most of the summer.  According to the Car Free Calculator (http://car-free.bike-pgh.org/) I logged 18 miles in July, 75 miles in August, and over 200 so far in September with 70 of those miles being just this week. So yeah I’m riding more. At some point I began to view my bike, and my riding differently.
You see I have always looked at cycling as recreation, something I did for the fun of it. Even when I would ride to work, it would be something out of the ordinary, something I did because it was fun and the day made for an enjoyable trip.
None of this has changed, I still find a great deal of recreation in getting out to ride. What has happened is that biking has starting to become transportation as well as recreation. Nothing made this clearer than the Friday night ride with flock of cycles. As planned I threw my bike on the bus in Pittsburgh and headed off to Oakland. After being on the packed bus with the 700 other people who also wanted to get to Oakland I began to think “I could of ridden there faster!”
After the ride I was watching the clock figuring I could ride into to town, I ended up realizing I could just ride home. I realized then that I had started to seriously consider my bike as my transportation. It wasn’t until then that I realized that I hadn’t considered my bike as transportation.
This thought has led to a day of serious consideration, and it is something that I am still considering. I am hopeful that my bike doesn’t lose it’s recreation feeling and at the same time I am excited at the new ideas and thoughts I have when thinking of my bike as a serious form of transportation.