Shift | thoughts on shifting gears and transportation choices while adventuring on two ... - 0 views
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Ihering Alcoforado on 31 Jan 12Why the Bike Lane is the Golf Course of the 21st Century Posted on January 26, 2012 Hello Dear Readers, The Sightline Daily, a blog affiliated with a Northwest policy think tank, published an article I wrote about my Stevens Fellowship experience. You can read the article here! A funny story about how the opportunity with Sightline came about. I was waiting at a stoplight near Mercer Street in Seattle in late November and this guy pulled up to me (on his bicycle) and commented on how bad the bicycle infrastructure was at that particular intersection. He noticed that I had no "biking clothes" on and asked me if I'd ever heard of Copenhagen Cycle Chic. "Copenhagen Cycle Chic is my favorite blog!" I told him. Then we started talking bike politics and eventually I realized he was Alan Durning, the founder of the Sightline Institute. I've been reading the Sightline blog and using their research in my work for years. I really like that this Sightline article came about because of a conversation that started on the bike lane (or..errr…lack of bike lane). Who needs the golf course when you cycle! Cycling is such a social form of transport. Sean and I were biking in to work a few days before Christmas and bumped into our friend Jed who I hadn't seen in almost a year. (Jed and his wife recently had a baby!) We rode together along the cold, but sunny, shores of Westlake for about ten minutes and caught up. It was a great way to start the day and I was happy to know that Jed was doing well. Then, the next morning, Sean and I bumped into Jed again-in almost the same place as the day before-and we shared another pleasant commute together while joking about how we were becoming a bike commuter gang. The morning before I left for Copenhagen I biked downtown alone after saying goodbye to Sean. I was feeling the weight of the goodbye and also some anxiety about professional challenges ahead. I pedaled slowly along Dexter, my pace matchi