Today is my friend Noelle Studer-Spevak’s birthday. I met her for breakfast recently at the Daily Cafe on SE Grand, and hugged her. “You look beautiful!” I said, and she did: glowing skin, glossy hair, sparkling eyes and smile.
Being pregnant as Noelle is can do that for you, but her cheeks had particularly high color. “I bicycled in,” she explained as I glanced at her neon yellow vest on the chair. My jaw must have dropped, because Noelle calmly informed me, “Alison, there are lots of pregnant women who bicycle to work.”
Working in transportation as I do, I know that the most common reason people cite for not riding a bicycle for short trips is safety concerns. People are afraid of getting hit by a car. Noelle, though, explains that she feels safe because her neon vest makes her highly visible, plus she uses Portland’s excellent bike lanes.
“Giving birth is an athletic event,” Noelle further informed me. “You have to train for it. Bicycling is part of my training.” I could only nod in happy agreement. “Cool,” I replied.
Electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular, and I see many people wanting them to be The Transportation Answer to our problems of energy independence and global warming. But I don’t think they merit nearly the emphasis that bicycling does, and here is why: electric vehicles don’t mitigate one bit the problems of national obesity and heart disease, nor traffic congestion and delayed travel times, nor the economic burden to U.S. households of car ownership. Bike transportation helps with all those problems.
Later today (it’s 5:30 a.m. right now) I’ll call Noelle and sing Happy Birthday to her. I love to sing, and singing voicemails have become my trademark for friends’ birthdays. I guess you could say a singing voicemail is zero-carbon, while a card would be low-carbon. (For comparison/contrast, a gift of a snowmobile would be considered high-carbon.) I need to set up a time to give her the warm socks I bought her for her winter bike commuting. Noelle’s new socks are made of alpaca fiber, and I bought them from the Oregon alpaca farm Suri Futures.
photo courtesy of Leah Kanach
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- Green Wedding: Community As Capital
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