Larger Than Themselves

I am stuck in my ways. I prefer riding my bicycle the same way to work and back every day, along the exact same roads, the same exact paths. I am one to think that if I rode the same way every day for the next twenty five years I will always find some degree of pleasure in the routine. I will never bore of my commute.

This afternoon I detoured off Franklin Blvd. to my ophthalmologist's office on Florin Rd. to retrieve my new pair of glasses. It was lunacy navigating a bicycle alongside the wretched surburban madness of Florin Road in South Sacramento. But I did it anyway.

I guess I did it to prove I could. I did it to show that it's possible -- to make a statement. I understand why people do the risky things they do. I understand why the old black lady at Martin Luther King and 22nd Avenue risks her life every morning as a crossing guard. I understand why every weekday morning the retired black guy rises and dresses and volunteers as a crossing guard at Franklin Blvd. and G Parkway -- they are making a statement that pedestrians count, that they are worthy of guarding against the two hundred thousand asshole drivers in our city.

I am hardly comparing my bicycling to the noble deeds done each morning by these two. But I think I better understand why they do it, why the subject themselves to the elements, to inattentive hurried drivers, to getting trash thrown at them and insults hurled at them (it happens all the time). They do it for reasons that are larger than themselves.

I started bicycling primarily to keep my diabetes in check, but over time I've come to realize how marginally better my living environment is because of it, and I like to think about what Elk Grove could have been had more of our decision makers also had type I diabetes, and also discovered the benefits of exercise, and also discovered what a hostile city they've created for people without cars.

But they aren't diabetic. They don't walk anywhere anymore. They require campaign funding from pro-sprawl sources to remain decision makers. And while I claim that I don't care how all this plays out, under the assumption that I've got no power to spur change, and how I immensely enjoy blogging about our wretchedness, I look to those two crossing guards and I see that they are making a substantial contribution to a better environment.