Sitting kills. Cycling extends your life.
The newest data show that sedentariness kills. It's not our diets, it's our lifestyles that are killing us. It's sitting on our butts.
Ride your bike to work = live longer and healthier. You drive, you die. Simple. Watching the Super Bowl right now? Stand up, even if there's nothing happening in the game to motivate you.
Sitting is as bad for you as smoking. Ah, but you say 28 states are now selling gas for $2.00 per gallon. I can drive for cheap and have a smoke afterwards. Fine, if you want to get in a death coffin and are gullible enough to believe the claims of the fossil fuel industry and big tobacco, go ahead. And think about the long term costs to our environment and society from fossil fuels. It's much higher than most people know. Besides, driving a car is so 1996 - that's when driving peaked. Do you still wear scrunchies and pantyhose too? 1996. When Madonna thought she could credibly play Evita Peron. When John Galiano was thought to be just a weird guy who liked bad hair and baroque dresses.
That SUV you buy today will be a source of illness, shame and expense tomorrow. That really nice road bike will stand out as a good investment. (Shameless plug here: #BicycleSpace, #TheBikeRack, and #TheDailyRider serve people with higher IQs.)
And don't let alarmists tell you how dangerous #cycling is. It's safer than you think. Very few cyclists were hurt last year in traffic accidents compared to drivers and pedestrians who cross four lane roads in the wee hours. And don't worry, even the Commonwealth of Virginia - home of Robert E. Lee if you get my point - is going to make it illegal to door a cyclist. Holy former south of the Mason-Dixon Line madness!
And you ask how you can afford to use bike share, the easiest means of getting around any city? It is going to made affordable to all, unless you have a bad drug habit or a serious cognitive issue that causes you to loose track of things.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-sitting-health-20150119-story.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-31018497
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/26/28-states-are-now-selling-gas-for-under-2-00/?tid=sm_tw
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2015/01/26/map-where-pedestrians-and-cyclists-have-been-struck-in-d-c-this-year/
http://www.vabike.org/legislative-update-12615/
http://www.thewashcycle.com/2015/01/peak-car-happened-to-dc-back-in-1996.html
http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/01/the-next-wave-of-bike-share-innovations-may-focus-on-equity/384795/
But what self-promoting politician is going to help make your life better as a cyclist? Well, the urban world has a plan, just like the Commonwealth of Virginia seems to.
London Mayor Boris Johnson may be remembered for two things:
1) Making the bicycling superhighway across London that made people get on their bikes, reduced obesity, and lowered the U.K.'s soaring healthcare costs; and,
2) That terrible hair.
He will also be remembered for taking on the taxi-driver's union, which opposes the bike plan for obvious reasons. (Perhaps we can get them out and about on rickshaws?)
http://ibikelondon.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/boris-gives-green-light-to-cycle.html
http://road.cc/content/news/141325-taxi-drivers-association-seek-judicial-review-cycle-superhighways
That Mayor of Tokyo is also a seer. He is pushing forward his vision of a carbon-less city where pollution does not contribute to global warming and assorted maladies.
http://safecities.economist.com/videos/interview-with-yoichi-masuzoe/
So, if I see that you are smart enough to be in the bike lane, let's be smug.
Elisa P.
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