I Love My Bicycle

It’s final – I’ve become one of them. Having lived in Finland for almost five years now, I have progressed so far in my “Europeanization” that I have become a bicyclist. Yes, it’s true, with the advent of the summer season here in Finland – when temperatures finally rise above freezing - I have shunned all other modes of transportation and adopted the bicycle as my vehicle of choice.

I had for several weeks stared out the slightly smudgy windows of the streetcar I rode to work at the bicyclists who seemed to zip along without a care in the world while the rest of us stewed and waited while the streetcar inched along in traffic to our final destination. I envied the way the bicyclists seemed to mock those of us that were held prisoners in our streetcars, buses and cars while they moved along without being constrained by neither traffic lights nor pedestrian crossings. “I’ve had enough”, I finally decided one day and made the decision that from then on I would rely on my bicycle to take me everywhere and anywhere. Alas, it proved to not be as simple as I had assumed.

 “Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle, I love to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike…” Freddie Mercury could not have been serious when he came up with these lyrics. I have barely been riding for ten minutes and I am already wheezing like an asthmatic and sweat is dripping down my forehead. These words of inspiration that helped in motivating me to trade in my monthly public transportation pass, wrench my bike free from the depths of my building’s bike cellar, fix it, fill the tires with air and adopt it as my primary mode of transportation are now beginning to appear extremely doubtful. Perhaps Freddie was under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs when he came up with the words to “Bicycle Race” – it was the 70’s after all.

However, I appear to be the only one having these difficulties moving myself and my bike up and down anything with an incline greater than that of a molehill. After enduring several days of bicycle-induced torture, I came to the conclusion that all my suffering has to be due to my lack of the proper muscles required for biking and that the reason I am so deficient in this form of athletic prowess is because, as a North American, my bicycling experience is limited to between the ages of five and twelve. It is true, unless you are a pre-adolescent, as a North American you simply do not use your bike to actually get anywhere. You, of course, may go biking, but that means that you strap the bike to your car, drive for about an hour, go biking and then attach the bike back to your car and drive home. Actually using your bike to get anywhere conjures up images of French people with berets bicycling around with baguettes in their bike baskets. Indeed, in high school we all poked fun at my friend Kirstin who spent a year in France as an au pair and upon returning to Canada insisted on taking her bike everywhere. “She thinks she’s sooo European”, we all laughed.

Why is this? With all the talk of rising oil prices, increasingly frequent smog alerts and the ever-present danger of the greenhouse effect, why don’t Canadians trade in their SUV’s and hop on their bikes – a significantly more fuel-efficient alternative.   Why? Because it would be utter chaos, that’s why. What makes biking so easy in Finland is the incredibly vast network of bike paths. They actually publish a map of all the bike paths in the greater Helsinki area, which charts all the ways in which you can get absolutely anywhere you want to go with your bike and without putting your life, or the life of pedestrians, in danger. Not that Toronto is not trying; it currently has 40 km of bike lanes, 50 km of bike routes and 125 km of bike paths and work is being done all the time to promote the greater use of bicycles. However, compared to the 2 200 kilometres of bike paths already found in the metropolitan Helsinki area and with plans to double the use of bikes by 2015, Toronto still has a lot of catching up to do. 

Why is it that North America is so different from Europe when it comes to getting around by bike? Sure, the distances are greater, but why for example in downtown Toronto aren’t there bike paths that would allow residents of the urban core to get around by bike easily? Why is that when you read of a Canadian who has just won the lottery, the first thing they go out and splurge on is a Hummer - a vehicle that was originally designed to transport military troops around in and which requires the economic backing of a small nation-state to keep tanked up? One reason is that the all-powerful American oil industry has helped to shape the North American landscape, as well as the North American dream, into one that requires a car to complete the picture. The birth of the suburbs with their sprawling residential areas sparsely dispersed with immense shopping complexes housing hundreds of stores brought with it the reliance on cars to complete even the most basic of daily errands.

This dependence on the automobile for mobility as well as pleasure has helped shape North America into the continent with the most overweight people in the world. I recently watched a documentary that showcased overweight people from Houston, Texas - which can proudly claim to be the fattest state in America - on which a rather hefty fellow boasted that he does not even go to his mailbox at the end of the driveway without taking his car. How can it be that we, as humans, have forgotten how to use the two legs given to us at birth and now require four wheels and a tank of gas to move us from place to place? We should not only be using bikes more in order to conserve oil, but also to preserve our health. It is conceivable that were North Americans to choose their bikes even just a few times a week to get somewhere instead of their car, one might see a drop in diabetes and heart disease as well as other ailments associated with obesity.

The other day on my ride home from work, I saw a man with a cardboard sign taped to the back of his bike, which read “Lisää pyöräilyteitä” – or more bike paths. Wow, I thought, 2 200 kilometres and still not content. If only there were a few more people like him in North America that were ready to fight for making biking a real option for personal transportation, perhaps dependence on the automobile would not be so great. As for me, I keep telling myself that this biking thing has to get easier at some point. Until then, it will have to be the power of positive thinking that will keep me hopping on my bicycle rather than in my car. “I love to ride my bicycle, bicycle….”

Laura Ojanen