In 2012, I moved to L.A from Chicago (or from L.A. to Chicago, however you look at it), where I sold my car and cycling was my primary mode of transportation. This is a story about riding my bike in Chicago. The second part describing my time spent in L.A. will be up next week.
During my first few months in the Windy City, I was fortunate enough to have several seasoned bike veterans, knuckle-deep in the grittiness of the streets, show me the proper routes and appropriate level of aggression for navigating a city that had not quite yet become comfortable with cyclists. There I learned how to ride alongside cars to the point that I felt like a sidecar--zooming around in tight corridors and developing a sixth sense for any imminent danger in my environment, hooked on the inside and avoiding potholes and rats. This developed into a survivalist mechanism still ingrained in my mind today. Riding a huge city like Chicago is like riding through a condensed version of North America, with its diverse array of neighborhoods and varying levels of bike-friendliness abound. It was a challenge coming from growing up and riding bikes in Portland, OR, a city renowned for its "bikes first" attitude and overall environmentally-conscious zeitgeist.
The longer I stayed in Chicago, the more people rode on; a study showed a year after I had lived there the number of cycling commuters had increased a staggering 150%. More bike lanes, protected and shared, meant more major arteries via the downtown plunge of Kinzie and the moderately traffic-heavy Kedzie in Logan Square. Through beads of sweat and blurred vision in the sweltering summer of '12 you could visually see the dramatic increase in people who were willing to give this 'crazy' bike thing a shot. No statistics were required to get the idea that Chicago was moving, with both wheels slowly turning, towards a stronger vision of a new Cycletopia.
The starry-eyedness of our City's vision took advantage of multiple facets of its contours. The complete flatness of the city in contrast to most other landscapes is huge, along with the denseness of space and fairly liberal attitude towards back-street stop signs. Riding your bike in Chicago felt at once liberating and rebellious, as if you were cilia within an organism which got to bypass the bulkier mytochondria. One never had to deal with the byzantine parking rules (enforced by a 3rd-party organization since Chicago had privatized its street parking many years ago) and one was pretty much free to navigate the city however you wanted as long as you didn't crash into anything. I absolutely loved it, and scarcely used public transportation, except during extreme weather or when accompanying someone who didn't deem it safe or logical to ride bikes in the city.
All of it paid off, though. In 2012, Chicago was named the 6th most bike-friendly city in America, a metric that takes into account a myriad of metric-unfriendly factors--public attitude towards cars, how easily cyclists and traffic co-exist on the roads and overall tone of the hearts of the populace. Chicago was beat out by the two other reigning heavyweights that year--Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis made their presence known--yet it had me incredibly proud to have lived in a city for three years through such a major milestone.
Our achievements were priding, but there can still be shadows cast underneath the bridges and throughout the sodium-lit alleyways. The number one major downside to riding your bike in Chicago, as public word of mouth presumes, is that the weather there is REALLY rough for about one-third of the year. It's really hard to motivate yourself to go anywhere during the winter months, and if you chose to, be prepared to spend about 20 minutes bundling up for extreme cold and harsh, spiraling winds. I wore a ski mask and goggles during most of February, the fog of my breath obstructing my lenses as cars zoomed around me. Fortunately, I survived the Winter infirmary by being extremely careful and tactician-like in my route-chosing--taking back streets, riding slowly and trying not to get knocked off my bike in extreme blasts wind.
But, a lighter side exists to any city, and during the other 66% of the year, the riding is sweet as candy, although that candy is occasionally coupled with an unusual sewage smell that permeates certain pockets of the city during muggier weather. As gross as that sounds, it is a small price to pay to be able to access a vibrant, thriving city with a virtually endless supply of places and friends within a short distance that can hold you to a spot that beats at the steady rhythm of life.
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