10,000

With the rains of a warm front approaching quickly from the southwest, under overcast skies, and with a slight hangover from my homebrewed barleywine, I surpassed the 10,000 mile mark on my bicycle this morning. Ten thousand commuting miles by bicycle.

Of Elk Grove's 130 thousand residents, I am one of perhaps eighteen, maybe twenty, who ride their bikes to work....and the reason so few? Well, perhaps it's because we are a bike hostile city, perhaps it's because our residential housal pods are no fewer than fifteen miles from our employment centers, or perhaps it's because of the stigma of being a third class citizen...apparently one too poor to own a motor vehicle.

I am something of an accidental environmentalist. I thought that riding would stabilize my type I diabetes (which it does). It took this dumb engineer quite a while to figure out that I could commute by bike, improve my health, save a little money, keep my car in service many years longer, pollute less -- killing a knob of birds with one stone. Today I ride Franklin Blvd. to SMUD in Sacramento -- Franklin giving rise to my blog's title -- and I will hopefully ride it for years to come...even if it is wholly threatening to bicyclists. I do not fly the "global warming" flag, I wave the flag for my local environment and I do more than enough to take care of it. If we lived correctly to begin with we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with white bears seven thousand miles away. But we don't...and I'm smart enough to know we won't.

A consequence of my desire to bike commute immediately revealed the complete and utter lack of bicycle venues for Elk Grovians. This whole damn city is predicated on everyone perpetually motoring about, from commuting to work, buying a jug of milk, or getting a spare key made. Automobiling is the central facet to any Elk Grovian's life, due to its low density single use zoning mandates, miles from everywhere layout and a complete lack of any local economy. Environmentalism for most Elk Grovians means separating their recyclables from their trash -- that's the full extent of what most will do. The only thing "green" about Elk Grove is the shade of some of its residents' automobiles.

If we had built this city, from the beginning, with bicycle options in mind, we would have a dedicated north-south trail or other such facility that separates motor vehicles from bikers and pedestrians and that trail, today, would be a jewel to a couple thousand more accidental environmentalists. If we had built this city, from the beginning, with light rail service in mind, we, today, would already have a line, perhaps two lines, servicing several thousand Elk Grovians. Instead, bicyclists get to run the gauntlet of speeders on Franklin, Freeport, Bruceville, Elk Grove-Florin. Instead, we have no light rail at all.

Knowing that a safe bicycle commute to jobs in the region is a total fantasy has led to my disdain for this city, yet it gives rise to my inspiration for blogging about all the bad things our social arrangements give us, such as perpetual motoring and the one fifth of our lives spent working to support it, teenagers and adults who can't socialize, crushing consumer debt to live lifestyles that we don't want to pay for, rampant consumerism and globalized waste, poor land use decisions, and a total lack of community. We bring this upon ourselves. I revel in our collective frustration and pain with the consequences of our own actions, and in providing commentary on it. Remember, never confuse me with someone who gives a shit.

I am presently at mile number three on my second ten thousand mile segment. I am hopeful the next ten thousand are as injury free and as rewarding to me as a commentator as the first.