A child of the fifties, I grew up on the back of a three-speed “racing” Schwinn I’d often rifle between two trees, touching bark with both hands. In my thirties and forties, I mostly ran; but once fifty, I started riding the big bumps of the Parkway and the back trails of Bent Creek. Then, the streets and bike paths of Carrboro and Charleston; small towns in Colorado and Florida. Around here, I love the river road out to Marshall, but navigating a path from A to B in Asheville has always been a challenge at best, a conundrum at worst. How do you avoid Hendersonville Highway, for example, or Tunnel or West Patton? Better to snake through quiet neighborhoods, along a natural valley or through a park, even if an enclosed climb feels like Stage Five of the Tour “day” France.
Regardless, getting there on a bike has always been way more than half the fun; it is, after all, a conversation with the world at large. You feel the place up through your feet, you smell the air, you blend into the moment, you hail someone or stop to jawbone. One ride is never like any other—and especially in Asheville, when the wind boots up, mists settle in, or slanting light brushes in golds and blacks at the beginnings and ends of days. Sorry, not nearly as available in a car.
As a teacher at Evergreen Community Charter School, Mike Sule doesn’t own a car. Rather, he owns a bike, which he uses to travel to his job in Haw Creek from his home in the center of town. Years ago, he sold his car and used the savings from not owning it (which he figures amounted to $10,000 a year) to buy a city-centric condo.
“I absolutely love the commute,” he says. “I love the experience of traveling on a bike, even in the dead of winter. Plus, it just feels like a responsible thing to do. My students ask me, ‘How can you do this in February with snow on the ground?’ I just say, ‘Same reason you guys go snowboarding.’ It’s fun.”
People who use bicycles as their primary means of getting around tend to boost the economy of their surrounding neighborhoods—it’s just easier and more convenient to “buy local.” In towns where parking spaces have been taken up for bike racks, merchants generally move from apoplexy to happiness: the number of people (and potential shoppers) represented by that space drastically multiplies. Morover, a recent economic impact study in the Outer Banks shows that a public funds investment of $6.7 million for bike paths and paved shoulders has directly contributed to bicycling activity that yields $60 million in annual economic benefits.
All of which begs the question: Where will we be in five years as a bike friendly community? Claudia Nix, very active at both state and city levels as a bike path and local transportation advocate, won’t go so far as to say we will be like a city in Holland, as much as I’ve tried to draw that conclusion out of her.
“We’ll be a lot more connected,” she says, meaning that the 181 mile network of bicycle lanes and paths and shared roadways and greenway routes outlined in the city’s 2008 Comprehensive Bicycle Plan will be a lot closer to being real and part of city life.
In the meantime, at a recent “Downtown after 5” on North Lexington, 130 people dropped by riding a bike, and stayed to enjoy the evening. And, chances are, somewhere on their ride back home, they took a street with a “Sharrow” painted on it, passed a sign that says “Share the Road” or climbed a hill inscribed with a bike lane.
And getting there, coming or going, was way more than half the fun.
For more information on the city’s plan and biking, in general: ashevilleonbikes.com
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