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15 October 2025 - Adetswil
When I was a young lad I biked everywhere. For the three years I lived in California it was daily transport to school and often how I got to 7-Eleven for a slurpee or candy. Getting a new 10-speed bicycle when I got straight A's in the fifth grade was a highlight. But then on fine summer day I went bike riding with my dog, Mel, who was a yellow lab with the typical amount of rambunctiousness associated with that breed. Mel crossed in front of me and before I could stop I hit her and was thrust over the handlebars and onto the street. I awoke later to her licking with a bone visibly broken in my arm and my naked chest scraped up with little pieces of asphalt in the wounds. Later at the hospital the nurse forcibly washed out those little pieces of asphalts from the scrapes and Dr. Tom Price (who would later serve as a congressman and then as the HHS secretary in the first Trump administration) stuck my fingers into five Chinese fingers dangling from a frame and moved the broken bones of my arm back into place before casting it. This experience has colored my feeling about bikes since then.
Outside of those three years in California I've never lived close enough to school or work to realistically bike there on a regular basis. And most cities in the US weren't that bike friendly anyway. I can completely related to Fran Lebowitz's amazement that more of the city cyclists aren't killed every day. So I have primarily biked as recreation since that accident, often on the safe and flat trails of Hilton Head Island where my parents lived. As a young adult for many years I didn't even own a bike. (My mom gave away my ten speed without asking as she did we a number of my things when I left for college. The octagonal folding poker table was an even worse loss though.) I rollerbladed everywhere on the GA Tech campus, even teaching classes while wearing them. Later living in the Atlanta suburbs I took the MARTA train into the city, even though the facilities often smelt of urine, but mostly I drove places when I lived in the US.
Then, moving to Bergen, I did not have a car readily available for the first time in my adult life. The buses in the city were not bad, but moving out to Askøy after a couple years it was not realistic not to have a car. I'd still often park it at the boat dock and take the boat into town though, rather than driving it all the way into work. I owned a bike, and would take it out on long rides on sunny days, especially with my son Maxwell, who is more of a bike aficionado than me. He can ride 150 kilometers in a day easily and used his bike as transport while working as a delivery boy in college. Now living in Switzerland I've done some long bikerides as recreation, but mostly I used the SBB for transport. The high population density of Switzerland means that it's economically viable for public transportation to regularly reach just about every corner of the country. And Iwona has a car for those times when one is needed. For me the perceived risk of injury will likely always outweigh the utilty of using a bike for regular transport.
