Bike to Work

I feel like a hero. Dressed in bike shorts and helmet, rolling right through the carpeted Capitol Hilton past all the suits and heels, I am the girl walking down the city street, turning heads.

This is Bike to Work Day, last Friday. I almost didn’t ride, as I had to attend a conference here, two miles further from home than my usual office—a conference with all the usual expectations (like, wear something other than shorts and a t-shirt, and arrive relatively un-sweaty). Plus, thunderstorms were forecast for the afternoon. But Tyler, who commuted to Dupont Circle all last summer, pointed out I could always metro home if it poured, the morning was clear and sunny, and really, who can resist a good bike ride?

So I decided to make a statement and join thousands of others who participated in the annual celebration of the bicycle commute.

Two years ago on Bike to Work Day, I rode to NIH in Bethesda, researching an article about the thriving bicycle commuter club there (Bethesda Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2009). That trip was an eye-opener. After years of commuting just up the stairs to my office, I was surprised at the intensity of a ride I thought would be a pleasant pedal through the park. Instead, drivers on the two-lane road squeezed me onto a tiny shoulder full of gravel and uneven pavement; I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I heard a vehicle approaching from behind, and was relieved to finally roll onto the NIH campus.

Oddly enough, now that I commute to the more urban Union Station neighborhood, I enjoy the ride more. It’s not canopied in trees, like the Beach Drive/Rock Creek Park route to Bethesda; it’s industrial, along beat up back roads with auto repair shops and abandoned buildings, then beside the railroad track and a gravel processing plant. But I have found unexpected beauty along the way: the funneled shape of enormous gravel bins, neatly numbered one through six; the brick arches filled in with more brick, lined up along the outside wall of on an empty building; the pyramid-like hill of black, tar-smelling substance piled up beside the metro tracks. There are the vibrant colors of street murals meant to dress up a transitional neighborhood, the irreverent stencils and scrawled tags graffiti’ed on warehouse walls, the curious establishments I pass (compressor rentals, charter schools, community gardens) and the occasional surprise, like the ripe mulberries, first of the season, fallen onto the sidewalk along the highway.

On Bike to Work Day, it was no different. I pulled my old red Nishiki out of the shed and carried it down the 27 steps from my yard to the street, pedaled up and down the hilly neighborhood roads of Takoma Park, up the sidewalk along New Hampshire Avenue, on to Ft. Totten Drive and then the Metropolitan Branch Trail. At 2nd and M Streets Northeast, I pulled off the trail to hit the Bike Day pit stop set up in the NOMA (North Of Massachusetts Ave.) neighborhood. Since I’d registered for the event, I got to pick up a purple Bike to Work Day t-shirt and a re-usable shopping bag with various promotional brochures plus a water bottle, a bike commuter map, and a tire patch kit. There were also muffins and bananas and friendly faces asking about my ride in to work.

Then I finished the ride, winding my way through downtown D.C. (on hyper-alert for unexpectedly opening car-doors, swerving cabs and turning buses). At the Hilton, the door man tells me the most secure place for my bike is inside, so I follow him through the lobby to the luggage check. The attendant gives me a tag, as if the bike were a suitcase I could pick up later; then I find the nearest bathroom to change into work clothes.

After dipping my toe into bike commuting about a month ago, riding only occasionally, I can now say I am fully immersed and committed to making the bike trail my primary commuter route. I want to tell everyone how, as one of the NIH bikers said, it feels as though I get to play before work. I want to tell them how liberating it is to leave the office building at the end of the day and feel the wind on my face as I pedal home. I want to describe how virtuous I feel for having reduced my carbon footprint, and how pleased I am to save the $6 round trip metro fare to work. And I want to urge everyone to try this for themselves: imagine what a difference it would make if just one in five of the drivers during morning rush hour were on two wheels instead of four.

Of course, I won’t lecture folks into commuting by bike. But I do hope that, striding through the Hilton lobby, I made people think: some people ride their bikes, even on conference days. Maybe I could do that, too.