Week 11: Reactions

I have shared my summer "experiment" with many friends, family members, neighbors, and colleagues, though I have yet to aggressively promote my blog on the web (I would like to do that, ideas welcome!). So, in absence of comments on my posts, I have relied on the (generally) positive reaction I have received when I tell people what I am doing. However, I am beginning to think that my closest friends are tiring of it!

Of all the "needs" for a car that I identified in my initial Analysis (see earlier post) I have experienced the most challenges around meeting the needs of my social life. Over the summer, I have been able to get to lots of great summer events Downtown, in Corktown and Midtown and even out to Belle Isle, Maheras Gentry Park and the "Villages". In many cases, it has been to my advantage to be on a bike, avoiding the traffic jams and parking challenges which my friends in cars face. But my relatives live in the suburbs (granted, a bus and bike ride away), and many of my friends live on the far Eastside, so I have seen them less this summer. I had naively hoped that I could get them to come to me and/or focus my social life within my own neighborhood (neither strategy exactly worked out!) . While getting to the far east or west side of the city on a bike is no issue, it is the return ride home - in the dark and after an evening of imbibing (!) that becomes a challenge. Often, I will cut my evenings short and head home around sunset, or simply try not to overindulge so when I ride home at midnight I have all my faculties (when drivers often do not!).

On a number of occasions, my friends who know that I am on a bike or on foot will offer me rides late at night (in some cases loading my bike into their trunk!). This is very kind and I know is out of genuine concern for my safety, which I, of course, appreciate (and gives me some pause about my own insistence on remaining car free). But just yesterday, after the Detroit Bikes bike launch party at the Old Miami (great event - congrats to Zak and the whole crew!), my friends and I were due at a birthday party in Woodbridge Estates. One of my very kind friends offered that I could leave my bike at the bar and ride over with them (and she would drive me back to pick it up after the party). While I was locking up my bike and negotiating with the bouncer to keep an eye on it, the group walked away without telling me where the car was parked, so I lost them for a few minutes. It was a bit unpleasant, and the first time I got a sense that my friends' patience with my non motorized movement experiment was wearing thin.  We did not discuss it, but I think there may be various issues in play (Perhaps I haven't sufficiently explained my motivations and how I plan to carry these experiences forward in my teaching and research? Perhaps that I am doing this by choice, not out of necessity, and could end it any time (and so it is somehow less noble)? That the growing bike culture in Detroit is viewed by some as positive and cool and by others as obnoxious and self righteous? etc.). As I biked home at midnight (sticking mostly to the sidewalk along Mack!), I contemplated some of the unanticipated outcomes and impacts of my experiment, and how long I will keep it going.