Today is Earth Day! I want to tell you the story of how I became friends with a bike, a story spanning four cities and twelve years. #KWAwesome #Halifax #BikeTO #OttBike #ChooseTheBike

I grew up in a small farming community in Southern Ontario. Riding bikes was something that kids did on sidewalks and that families did while on vacation. Nobody ever rode a bike to get anywhere.

When I was in Grade 12, I became friends with a German exchange student named Marieke. She lived with a host family in an even smaller town than the town our school was in.

The first thing Marieke did when she got here was buy a bike. She rode that bike all over the place. She rode to the lake, she rode to the store. We all thought she was strange, because we just didn’t DO that. No one rides a bike on the road around here.

At the end of the school year, Marieke went back to Germany and I prepared to head off to university. Before she left, she gave me her bike. She said she didn’t want to take it on the plane, and she hoped I could use it.

Expecting nothing, I took the bike with me to university. Slowly but surely, I got used to the freedom and independence the bike gave me. I rode it to the farther-away-but-nicer gym. I rode it to the park.

And when I got a co-op job without bus access, I bought a balaclava and some rain pants and I rode my bike to and from work every day for four months.

After that four months of cycle commuting, I felt a new sense of gratitude for that bike. I felt like the bike was now my friend. I had glimpsed a beautiful way of life that I had never before considered, and I wanted it.

I can tell something in me changed because before this point I have no pictures of the bike (even though I had it and used it) and afterwards, the bike appears in my photos more and more, my trusty sidekick.

I started visiting the community bike repair shop and learning how to do basic repairs on my own (if you live in KW, Recycle Cycles @Workingcentre is THE BEST).

I had been to a different bike store where the staff told me my bike was bad and I should buy a new ($1000+) bike from them. But someone at Recycle Cycles told me it was a good bike, and I felt a rush of pride for my friend the Good Bike.

Biking became a way to explore new places. I went to Montreal for a weekend with some friends, and we all got Bixi bikes and rode around town in the sunshine.

I rode from Waterloo to New Hamburg with my roommates one day. We rode our bikes to the strip malls on the edge of town to go dumpster diving. Here’s one of my roommates in a “bikes have infinity mileage” shirt. You can see where this is going.

For a second co-op term, I rode my bike every day to and from work, except when this guy offered me a ride home in his convertible. (This guy is now my husband.)

I lived in Halifax for a summer - one of my all-time favourite places in the world, a truly magical city. With the help of Recycle Cycles, I packed the Good Bike in a flat box, got on a plane, and biked all over that seabound peninsula.

While there I bought a second bike for visitors, fixed it up, and sold it again at the end of the summer. I biked to the grocery store, the beach, the North End. @kent_fisher visited and we biked to Dartmouth, chartered a dingy, and camped for a night on an island in the Harbour.

When I moved to Toronto for grad school, it wasn’t a question anymore, my ride was my bike. I loved biking in Toronto. I biked in the winter, I biked in the rain, I biked at night (though I can only handle two of cold, dark, and wet at the same time), I biked while pregnant.

Now I live in Ottawa, and now I bike with a kid, and it's the best. I wish everyone could feel the freedom and joy that riding a bike brings, and I wish we built cities so that all people could safely enjoy the magic of biking.
#EarthDay #ChooseTheBike