Point of Entry

“Give the world outside a point of entry. It’ll give back to you.”

That lyric stuck in my soul the first time I heard it in Larry Murante’s title song of his album Point of Entry.

Music is an incredible force, and each listener interprets what they hear in their own way. Words can be heard and quickly forgotten, but put them to music, and they will most likely be with you forever.

I know for a fact that Larry didn’t set out to write a bicycle travel tune. But that is exactly what it is for me. My “point of entry” is my bicycle. It allows me to be more engaged, more vulnerable, and more in touch with the world around me.

With that in mind, listen to the tune with added images, and you may agree that this is one of the most beautiful bicycle travel songs ever written.

Originally posted on the Adventure Cycling Association’s blog.

Note: Larry will be performing this song live at my presentation, Come to Your Senses: A Celebration of Bicycle Travel at Seattle’s REI Flagship on Tuesday, Feb 7th at 7pm. Advance tickets at:
Brown Paper Tickets

What is the perfect gift? Ask a hundred people, and you’ll get a hundred different answers. But when you give one, or receive one — you know it.

I received one of those gifts thirty years ago. I still carry it with me today.

The summer of 1981 was magical for me. I’d pedaled across the U.S. with my best buddy Thomas. The sense of accomplishment was amazing. My connection to the world around me had never been so raw and wonderful.

But coming home after an adventure can be a tough transition. I’d taken a quarter off from the junior college I was attending. I’d been taking general education courses with no particular focus (Astronomy, Geology, English Comp, Theater, Business Math, etc.)

On my bike trip, I knew exactly (well, almost) where I was going. In life … I was lost. Too many options, and none of them was presenting itself as my future major, let alone my future.

I was talking with my mom. I babbled about my frustrations, and lack of any focus.

She looked me in the eye and said, “I want you to know something. Whether you become a biologist, or an actor, or a teacher … or whether you put a pack on your back and wander the world for the rest of your life … I want you to know that I consider you a success.”

That was it. In twenty seconds, my mom had given me the perfect gift. It was as if she had given me a magical gift certificate. I didn’t have to worry about what I did. I just needed to fill in the gift card with whatever my heart desired.

Little did my mother know how literally I’d take her words. Though I’ve used panniers instead of a pack.

And it hasn’t all been bicycle travel. I’ve driven trucks, acted on stage, waited tables, fought forest fires, written columns, and tried many other pursuits.

But no matter what I’ve done, I’ve always known that in the heart of one of the most important people in my life, I’ve been a success.

Thanks, Mom.

Merry Christmas.

Originally posted on the Adventure Cycling Association’s blog.

Current signage (left) Improved signage (right)

Do you remember when neighborhood streets were not just for cars, but for people too? Do your childhood memories include hide-and-seek, kickball and kick-the-can? Did you learn how to ride your bike right down the middle of your street, not in some park or empty parking lot? You do? Then if you live in the United States, you must be close to my age. I’m 50.

Forty years ago Americans were just as much in love with their cars as they are today. But they were also in love with their neighborhoods. They didn’t just commute through them, they lived in them. There had to be 30 kids on my block, and summer’s seemed to be one long continuous kick-ball game. We set up in the middle of the street outside the Heffner’s house. Kids outside laughing and playing. As it should be.

When a car came down the street. It approached, waiting for the mob of youthful energy to clear out, and then slowly passed by. The driver usually smiled and waved.

One day an incredible thing happened. Bruce was about ready to deliver the kickball at a crucial moment in the game, when there was a strange mechanical sound. We looked up and Mr. Cook’s  garage door  magically opened. All by itself! We stood there in amazement as Mr. Cook’s car appeared around the corner, and drove right into the garage. There was another mechanical sound, and the garage door closed.

Whoa.

THAT was cool.

Mr. Cook (he worked at the bank) was the first one in the neighborhood to get a automatic garage door opener.

The next day at the exact same time (we were waiting) the magic happened again.

As a kid, Mr. Cook’s magic door was the greatest thing since spongy loaves of Wonder Bread. But as an adult, I now see that it was the beginning of the end.

We didn’t see Mr. Cook much anymore. You see, before his cool gadget, Mr. Cook had to get out of his car to open up his garage door himself. Sometimes he’d watch our game for a few minutes. Sometimes he’d talk with us. I remember him saying, “You all argue a lot more than you play kickball.” He was right.

Americans were already spending more time in their cars, but the automatic garage door opener allowed neighbors to actually never physically spend time in their neighborhood.

Of course, there were other factors, (jobs further away, two-three-and-four car families, the shopping mall). They all played a part in the demise of the livable neighborhood.

The sign to the left in the photo above is from my street on Beacon Hill in Seattle. It is one block away from Kimball Elementary School. ONE block. That’s the school zone.  Why? Well, in my opinion, it is because there is the assumption that kids don’t walk to school anymore. They need to be safe in that one block where their parents park or drop them off.

Unfortunately that assumption is right. Come fifteen minutes to school time,  our street becomes a mess of speeding mini-vans and SUV’s with parents, rushing to get their kids to “the school zone”.

Traffic doesn’t kill a neighborhood. But speeding traffic does.

Mr. Cook never sped down our street at 35mph. Not even close. If he and others had done so, our parents wouldn’t have let us play kickball … or kick-the-can. Many of us wouldn’t have learned to ride a bike.

I recently spoke to a crowd of 200 adults. Most of them my age or older. When I asked them to raise their hands if they had walked or biked to school, almost every hand went up.

A couple of years ago I spoke at a junior college and asked the same question. One hand went up. We are quickly losing our collective memory that neighborhoods are safe places to live and play.

It’s time that we reoccupy our neighborhoods. Forget useless, pathetic one-block “school zones.” We need neighborhood zones. Places where cars are allowed, but slowed to a speed that is, well, neighborly. 2omph.

“It can’t be done!”, I hear the cries. Well. It already has been done. Portland’s Greenways program aims to reduce traffic speeds to 20mph. New York City is getting its first 20mph zoned neighborhood in the Bronx. In England they cut it to 20 too! I won’t even bother to list the gobs of examples from the Netherlands and Denmark.

In Seattle, we don’t have to be leaders in this (unfortunately, we usually aren’t). We just have to follow the great examples already in process.

There is a problem. We can’t legally do this in Seattle right now. The Bicycle Alliance of Washington introduced a bill (HB 1217)l earlier this year that would make it easier for local jurisdictions in Washington to set lower speed limits in residential and business districts. It died in committee.

Do you prefer the modified traffic sign on the right of the photo? Let your representatives know that you are in favor lower speed limits in neighborhoods. Do you want to reoccupy your neighborhood? Then get involved in these groups who are fighting to allow you to do so.
Bicycle Alliance of Washington
Cascade Bicycle Club
Feet First
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways

(Kudos to StreetFilms and the Seattle Bike Blog for great bike coverage)

Kusina Filipina mural across from my Seattle neighborhood bus stop

I visit neighborhood parks and playgrounds, eat in neighborhood cafes, and I walk (or take transit) everywhere. I love it because I get to see real life up close and personal and not what the tourist board wants me to see. Even at home in Seattle I’ll take in the block-buster exhibits at the art museum, but I really enjoy spotting street art on those neighborhood walks and along transit lines. That art feels like much more of a connection to the current trends, politics and emotions of a place.

Here are a few scenes from Seattle, Bogota, Lisboa and Seville

[View with PicLens]

There is a moment after a long, grey winter, when, late in the afternoon, the sun breaks through the curtain of clouds, and the colors explode off the pavement. It’s brief. It’s magic. It’s spring.

I was standing in an enormous parking lot in Folsom, California. I had a speaking engagement at the REI located at the Folsom Gateway shopping center.

A real estate website states, “Folsom Gateway II is one of Northern California’s premiere regional shopping centers.” And later offers this highlight, “Highly visible, prime retail location on the Highway 50 Freeway, viewed by 200,000 vehicles daily.”

Notice how the above description gives vehicles the gift of sight.

And that is appropriate. Because cars, not people, appear to have been the focus of this development.

Cars get the prime real estate. The entire middle of the complex–big box stores on one end of the parking lot–fast food and chain restaurants on the other. The distance between the retail and food is so great, that people get in their cars and drive across the parking lot from one to the other.

The shopping complex has followed building code, I’m sure. There are sidewalks and bike lanes and even a few little benches for people to sit. But they were all empty. The scale is so huge, so spread out, that humans find it daunting.

Does anyone really want to walk the mile and a half along the edge of the big box buildings to the Starbucks? (It’s much closer in your car).

If someone was to consider walking, the intersections are so wide that I imagined rest stations halfway across with water and snacks to prepare pedestrians for the second half of their journey.

The parking lots are clean, with lovely new banners that one would find at the entrance of a Renaissance or County Fair. But no jugglers, musicians or food booths await your arrival. In reality, the banners just dress up a an ugly, ocean of asphalt.

Premiere? Is this the best we can do?

If our goal is to increase the rates of obesity and diabetes. If we want to encourage people to stay in their cars. To walk less. To spend as little time outdoors as possible. Then this truly is a premiere example of how we should move forward.

You’d think I’d be happy.

I was happy (perhaps even a sense of guilty-pleasure not wanting to tell Willie that I was, um, cheating), then I merged onto I-5. Bumper to bumper and lane-crossing crazies. Off the ramp on the north side of town and I find myself heading east when I needed to go west, and turning around meant going blocks out of my way thanks to multiple one-way streets. Finally heading in the right direction meant once again sitting in traffic–thinking all the while that something a cyclist never does is sit in traffic!

Errands uptown finished, I headed downtown and found the parking lot to my bank closed and searching for street parking for a momentary trip to test my ATM card ready for travel. On my bike I would have pulled right up to the ATM, put in my card and been on my way. Instead, found a 3 minute loading zone and ran. But dang! My card no longer worked and I needed to go inside and get it straightened out…. which meant moving the car and paying for parking. Paying for parking might be one of those costs of life that is built into the driver psyche, but to me it was as foreign as a VAT tax. I’ll think of that next time lock my bike to a pole or rack  and be thankful I don’t have to pay for the privilege.

Back in the Subaru, it was fast approaching rush hour and I found myself seeking alternate routes back home that would take me on back roads also known as “cut-throughs” by people who don’t appreciate motorists passing through their quiet neighborhood street. I realized I was driving like a cyclist seeking the roads less trafficked.

By the time I got home, I was relieved to hang up those keys. Rather than enjoying the drive as a treat, it was all work and no play.

The following is an excerpt from my book Travels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist.

I vividly remember watching the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery. The camera zoomed in as the rockets ignited. The billowing fireballs, its shear power and energy, were awesome. But the shuttle just sat there. Was something wrong? Then there was movement, almost undetectable movement, as the shuttle struggled. It was hard to believe that this lumbering, struggling vehicle would soon be up in space and free from the force of the earth’s gravity.

I love travel—the open road, the undiscovered nooks and crannies off of the tourist track. There are moments on a bicycle journey when I believe I’ve discovered true bliss. Yet, in order for me to take that bike trip, I first must break free from the gravitational pull of home.

Actually, Kat and I both struggle with it.

The list of things to do before we go has increased with time—getting a house sitter (and one who likes cats), finishing up work projects, getting rid of enough stuff that the house sitter has enough room to live in our house, finishing house projects so a house sitter would actually like to live in our house, paying bills, paying other bills in advance, finding people willing to fill in with several nonprofit projects we work on, shoveling a layer of compost on the garden, filing for an extension for our taxes, going to the dentist.

It wasn’t always this complicated, was it?

Escaping the gravity of home

Twenty years ago, I lived in a dumpy basement apartment. My bedroom had no windows. My roommates and I couldn’t afford to turn on the heat, so you could see your breath inside the apartment from November through February. I had no furniture to speak of, unless you count a cardboard apple box used as a bed-side table.

I didn’t have a cat, but my roommate did. The cat had fleas. The fleas liked me … a lot.

When I embarked on a bicycle journey, instead of pulling free of gravity like Discovery, leaving was more akin to being a hummingbird sitting on a branch and then instantly and effortlessly zooming into the sky.

I didn’t leave … I escaped.

Over ninety percent of the weight of the Space Shuttle at liftoff is fuel that will be burned in the first eight and a half minutes of flight. Almost all of its resources are used solely to break free from the pull of the earth’s gravity. Leaving the earth is hard—outer space is a breeze by comparison.

It is the same for many a journey; leaving home is the hard part—the actual trip is easy in comparison.

I’ve known people who have been planning trips for years (decades even), and still haven’t made the move.

They keep asking the same questions and search for the perfect bike. They go on countless training rides and take a language course. They buy maps and tour guides, but never take the trip.

For some the emotional pull of home is too great. Traveling means leaving friends, family and pets. And for most of us, there truly is “no place like home.”

Then there is the money issue.

The financial pull of home can be even stronger than the emotional one. Finances can be the black hole of travel dreams. …

When I speak at high schools and universities, I want to shake the students and say:

“Travel now. Get on your dumpy, used bike and go somewhere, anywhere. Those people who tell you that it doesn’t get easier? They’re right.”

“Go before you have debts and mortgages and kids and a career. Go. The gravitational pull of home will never be lighter.”

A few of them get it. But most get a car and a wallet full of credit cards.

You would think that the best way to be a world traveler would be to have no home, no base, no ties of any kind. However, I believe home grounds us as travelers. I’ve met too many people who severed all ties with home, only to become aimless wanderers. Traveling without a purpose or goal can become just as mind numbing as the world’s worst desk job.

A man in a small village in South Africa once told me, “Travel is worth nothing unless you return home a better person for it.”

I think he is right. Each trip shapes me as a person. So much of what I believe and who I am comes from the combined experiences of my journeys.

Do I long to return to the days of basement apartment living with no heat? Not a chance. I love my city, my neighborhood, my garden and my cat. But I also love to get on my bicycle and go.

That’s why we’re packing and storing and running a thousand errands in preparation for another trip.

I can’t change gravity. The physical, financial and emotional pull of home is there and I am a fool to try and ignore it. It’s better to acknowledge it, celebrate it. I consider myself fortunate to love home as much as the open road.

It takes a lot more time and energy than it did twenty years ago, but the ride is still worth it.

I don’t escape anymore. I lift off.

Lift Off was originally published in Adventure Cyclist magazine.

Lauren and Leigh bicycle from their Beacon Hill neighborhood to join H-o-W downtown for dinner.

I love to ride my bike whether it’s running the regular errands of life or putting in miles getting ready for a trip. For years every time I road my bicycle, short distance or long, I switched my shoes, put on my black Lycra shorts, and donned my day-glo jacket before taking off. Last year after I was sold bike shoes that looked and felt like aliens that ultimately I could not abide, I switched to regular ol’ platform pedals while I looked for bike shoes that I could wear.

That was the beginning of the end. I stopped “clicking in” to ride the mile to the produce stand. I started wearing a merino wool skirt and Mary-janes on rides across town to a regular meeting. I looked for fun clothes to ride and wear to dinner parties.  The less I used special clothes to ride my bike, the more I felt the bike was just an extension of my life. The joy of riding my bike around town hit a new high as we entered our 5th year of living car-free.

Then I read a little blurb in a newsletter from Atlanta, Georgia and discovered they were doing something to bring women together and show how fun, stylish, easy it can be to ride a bike:

Mark your calendars for a girls night out with a twist! We’ll glide down Atlanta’s signature street, Peachtree, for a night on the town without the hassle of figuring out who will drive, where to park, and how to avoid the traffic. Wear your finest so we can demonstrate just how easy it can be (should be!) to ride a bike in Atlanta. Our goal is to turn a few heads and shift people’s thinking about a) WHO rides bikes (it’s not just men) and b) WHERE people ride bikes (biking intown can be a safe and practical way of getting around).

Juliette, Rebecca, Kat and Barbara enjoy dinner fresh off their bicycles.

That little tidbit was the spark that lead me to call together 3 friends, invited them to meet me for “Lycra-free” dinner we arrive at by bicycle. We met for dinner at Cafe Presse – natural meeting place with a car-size bike rack outside the door – and we too called it a  “Heels on Wheels” night out. If gals from Atlanta could do it, certainly there is room in a bicycle-city like Seattle to expand the definition and expectations of riding a bike.

Short on bike parking, street sign poles will have to do.

Since then, the guest list has expanded to 40+ women friends who have shown an interest in shedding that “I am a cyclist” look and just ride a bike like you were going out for dinner. Each month women bike to different locations, daisy-chain our bikes together outside, and enjoy a dinner sharing food and swapping stories. Women who have never pedaled beyond their neighborhood are making their way downtown or even across town, and women who have logged thousands of miles and worn out many pairs of Lycra shorts are showing up in dinner-party style.

Over the summer of Heels on Wheels meet-ups, Wheelies, as we fondly call ourselves, have purchased new bicycles, new gear and new clothes. We’ve found restaurants that welcome a dozen bicycle parked outside. We discuss the dearth of stylish, let alone serviceable rain gear, as well as tips for how best to keep our skirts down in a breeze.

Juliette sports a great bag from Hub and Bespoke.

The bicycle industry should know that women talk about sales people not really listening or respecting how we like to use our bikes, nor do they often address and how poorly many bikes fit our bodes and our lives. We are looking for better ways to carry our bags, books and groceries. We want cool clothes that ride well and look “normal” when we step off the bike. Women who ride bikes are clearly untapped marketing potential.

The entry ramp to Verve in Columbia City makes a great parking lane.

Women who ride bikes are also untapped advocacy potential. I’ve introduced friends to bike paths and lanes and hopefully unleashed their desire for more safe amenities for cyclists. If you’ve been riding a bike and feel fine “taking your lane” in traffic, take a novice rider for a spin and you’ll see the world from the perspective of the masses of potential bike riders. The number of sport-cyclists who enjoy the workout of a hard ride, or even the commute cyclist who rides to work every day is a drop in the bucket compared to the potential ocean of women and men who could just ride their bike to get around town. Tap into that ocean and there is the potential to change the image of bicycles as a  specialized vehicle for athletes into bikes – and bicycle resources – for everyone.

Heels are not required, but bikeable skirts are favored in warm weather.

Woman needing some encouragement should know too that skirts turn heads! I’ve received more waves, acts of kindnesses, thumbs up, and positive encouragement riding around the streets of Seattle in my pink skirt than I ever felt in my black shorts. The world is a friendlier place when drivers take notice and give a little extra room.

Perhaps the whole experience can be summed up in a note I received from a friend after our last get-together. “Thanks for inspiring me to ride my bike, Kat! You rode with me, you allowed me to go slow, and you pointed out the benefits of wearing a skirt. …I’m ready to be a Bike Rider in Seattle.”

Kat leaves home for a night out with the Wheelies.

Start your own Heels on Wheels group and invite your friends to join you pedaling to a night out on the town.