“Go medium speed, Mom,” four-year-old Zola requested as we pedaled to school, “I want to have time with you.” The ride is short, a little over a mile and a half, so I dialed down my pace. Zola was wearing pink cowboy boots and a pink helmet; my boots were tan and my helmet green. We talked about how the story of Rapunzel could be different if she had a twin sister who stayed with her real mom and dad while "Rapuzey" was shipped off to live in a tower. Separated at birth, a new concept for her. Her tag-along bike, a wheel with a seat and handlebars attached to my bike, jingled with leftover Mardi Gras beads and a gold pine cone dangling from her crossbar, while she wondered aloud how the sisters could be reunited.
We biked over potholes and passed cemeteries. We crossed St. Charles, listening for the clatter of the streetcar while avoiding cars going in both directions. We even rode by a movie filming on location. We greeted people every couple blocks and noticed how the cold morning was warming. I love biking in New Orleans. We’re not a hard-core biking family. We have two cars and drive when we need to, but we bike when we can.
New Orleans bikes when it can too. The city wants so many things. It believes it already is so many things. I think it especially wants to be a bike city. When New Orleans imagines itself Bike City, it envisions something different from what the rest of America sees.
New Orleans is naturally bikeable. It's flat, and there are ways to zigzag the city without being blocked in by major highways and stuck biking on six lane mega-avenues. Part of the reason it is so horrible to drive in New Orleans is why it is to bikeable. Potholes can be easily avoided on a bike. Quiet residential streets, where parked cars make it impossible for two cars to pass in opposite directions, are easily navigated by bike and link to bike arteries.
This summer thirteen-year-old Ramona stood at the windows of Portland's science museum on the banks of the Willamette River, watching bikers zip by on the paved path along the river. She called me over, "Mom, there's some sort of bike race going on. Do you see all those bikers?" I peeked out the window. Sure enough, there was a steady flow of bikers racing by on expensive bikes, wearing fancy bike helmets and special biking outfits. Even their water bottles screamed screamed high-end. But they weren't racing. These folks were headed to work. When I shrugged and told Ramona they were just daily commuters, she didn't believe me, "Mom, that's impossible. So many people biking to work? And look at their outfits." Who would be caught dead at work in spandex with a padded butt?
My dad jumped into the conversation, ready with a statistic and sunny fact about perfect Oregon. "Portland is the number two biking city in America. Guess what number one is?" It's Minneapolis. I wondered: How do they determine that? Raw number or percentage per capita of commuters? Miles of paved bike paths? New Orleans will never be Minneapolis or Portland. I bet there’s a ranking somewhere of excellence in biking by state and I am sure that Louisiana is at the bottom, 48 or 49. And, as my son says, Mississippi probably “has our back” at 50. We suffer from an inferiority complex down here.
"New Orleans is a biking city too," I offered. Ramona and my dad scoffed. They weren't having it. I defended New Orleans, "Sure it's not the thousand-dollar bike capital of the country and the roads suck and the drivers don't know how to share the road with bikers and it's very difficult to protect yourself from punctures. I had three flats tires in one week last year," I admitted, "But there are no hills and people bike. Lots of people bike. Some do because they don't have another way to get where they're going and bikes are more reliable than public transportation. Some bike to be hip. Some bike to prove a point. In fact, I bet if New Orleans shunted all its commuters onto one path, it’d be busier than that rat race down there.” And less self-conscious too.
For a second, I considered if maybe I was projecting my feelings on my city's psyche. I am prone to unbridled optimism. Maybe it is just me who wants New Orleans to be a bike city? Nah, I decided. New Orleans is just a different kind of bike city.
After I dropped Zola off, I traveled a few blocks to a coffee shop and set up my laptop to write. I forgot my lock again, so while I worked at an outside table, I kept a close eye on my bike and that dangling pine cone, which sat a few feet away, just out of arm’s reach. Bike theft, like other more violent crimes, is a real problem here.
Using twisted logic, I am convinced that this proves that the city yearns to be a cycling metropolis. Everyone who lives here knows a couple wild theft stories. Sumner's best friend Joe had his bike stolen in broad daylight while he stood on the porch of his teacher's house, selling her a coupon book for his football team. The month we moved into our house, my bike was pilfered from our open garage on the day our gate was rebuilt. Were both Joe and I to blame for leaving our bikes unsecured? Partly. While cynics may see this as a knock against determining New Orleans as bike friendly, I see something else. Why would so many people steal bikes if they didn't so badly want to be biking? I believe New Orleans is hungry for bikes. If a hungry person steals a loaf of bread, who can blame them? At least that’s what I got out of Les Miserables.
I don't condone bike theft. I once pulled over and chewed out a teenage stranger for stealing a bike. He was about six feet tall and no older than fifteen. He was riding a pink dirt bike that just didn't fit. His friend was walking next to him. When they hit Claiborne, he ditched the bike in the gutter. Driving by, I stopped, rolled down my window, and called out to him in my middle-school teacher voice, "Why did you steal that bike if you are going to dump it? Take it back. Tell me where you got it and I'll take it back." He and his friend picked up their pace and moved away from me, shouting over their shoulders about how it was their bike. "I'm a little sensitive about this," I shouted back, cupping my hands around my mouth and leaning out the window, "My bike was stolen a few months ago. Don't. Steal. Bikes," I crescendoed. I felt a little bad that I might have scared them, so I added "and God bless you" for good measure. There was a chance they could run as fast as my mini-van.
After my fancy “hybrid” bike was stolen, I rode a three-speed bike that had been gathering dust in Philip's grandmother's garage. A few years later, Sumner harvested a mountain bike from the same stash. New Orleanians don't need to outfit themselves with a bunch of special stuff to climb on a bike and get somewhere. All of the Skeldings have been caught in an afternoon downpour while riding, but that didn't send us to REI to buy rain gear. We just learned to read the clouds and the breeze and weather.com's radar better. Sure, over time Ramona added a rack and a crate to the back of her bike so she doesn't have to carry her overloaded school bag on her back and after five years or so I upgraded to another fancy bike that I love.
I often see riders on bikes that don't match. An eighteen-year-old boy in his house slippers on a sleek road bike. A old man, upright and smiling on a hipster's yellow cruiser. A hipster with a big skirt around her ribs on a mountain bike on Saturday night. And most people don't wear helmets. I rant about this often, but I know it is part of an easy attitude towards biking. Bikers here think: no need.
Excepting the helmet part, I like this attitude. We don’t need a big budget or lots of stuff or a training schedule to get out of our cars and bike. This also applies to the actual endeavor of cycling here, not just gear. New Orleanians don't need to paint or pave a perfect path to get where we need to go. It is possible to just climb on a bike.
When we landed here I puzzled at the flatness of New Orleans. It appeared easy: no steep climbs or burning thighs. I worried that biking here would be too easy and condition me to laziness. In New Orleans, the pace is slow and steady. Sometimes my native children have to remind me to slow down. We don't move furiously like we did when we lived in New York or London or Boston. We rarely sprint. It's predictable. It's pleasant, but it’s not without risk.
This morning Zola and I had to pull over when an over-zealous carpool mom in a Suburban rode too close to Zola’s little wheel, begging us to get over, instead of waiting to pass us when the road widened. Maybe she had been trapped in her car for a while, poor thing, driving in from the burbs to drop children at various schools around the city. Who knows? We stopped, smiled, and let her pass, hoping that our calm gentility would provoke kinder road sharing in her hurried soul. I’ve been her. I get it.
Two years ago, when they were fourteen and eleven, Sumner and Ramona convinced me to let them take our bicycle-built-for-two, also procured from grandmother's garage, for simultaneous haircuts and then lunch. On this maiden duo-voyage, they were hit by a truck. They were crossing St. Charles at Broadway on a green light. A man on his phone turned into them, crushing their front wheel and hurting Sumner's toe. The driver barely pulled over and never hung up his call. He shouted to see if they were okay before moving on. Still, we want our children to bike. It gives them freedom of movement, teaches them street smarts, and gives us back the hours of our day that we spent shuttling them places.
Despite their brush with death, Sumner and Ramona take opposite approaches to sharing the road with cars. Sumner believes he owns the road and that no one will dare hit him. He is aggressive: weaving between cars without regard for protruding side mirrors, taking over the width of the street when things narrow, and shouting at drivers who text while pausing at a stop sign. He figures out his route out as he goes. He's a confident rambler; he knows the road and he owns the road.
Ramona on the other hand is careful. Very careful. Her confidence comes from planning. She sees every car as a threat and instinctively imagines the worst-case scenario. I rode with her to school at least ten times before she was comfortable taking the journey alone. The journey is one mile on one street, a right turn, and three-quarters of a mile on another street. Still, she wanted to know and be able to articulate exactly how to navigate each stop sign, light, bike lane, and construction zone before she felt safe.
These two approaches embody New Orleans. Sumner's the rambling person who enjoys Mardi Gras by walking down the Avenue with a (vegan) drumstick in one hand and a drink in another, unsure where he'll end up or how he'll wipe his hands, but knowing that he'll run into people he knows and it'll all work out. Ramona is the tailgater who is aware of all of the potential hazards a Mardi Gras parade can throw at her. She is the person who packs enough food for herself and everyone she may see (including her brother), she maps out area bathrooms, she figures out exactly how she'll get to and from the route with minimum hassle, and she knows the start time and number of floats in every parade. She enjoys the triumphs of the city only when she is protected from its trials. If you know New Orleans, you know the ramblers and the prepared patrons. They both bike.
I tend to be more of a rambler, but the vulnerability of biking with kids caused me to consider being a bit more thoughtful when I set out on a ride. After getting those three flats in rapid succession, I decided I don't really need to travel with a pump and a patch kit. The reason is that I learned that anywhere I bike, I am only a few blocks from a friend. I will always be able to walk my bike (and maybe a bike trailer and small children) to a friend's house or porch or business and get help. And people will love helping us, hosting us. They did three times last year. One day my flat didn’t slow us down, as Zola, Opal, and I ended up dumping our bike at a friends’ and borrowing her double stroller to continue to our destination. After another flat, we rode along with a different savior on her errand to the farmer’s market before she dropped us at home. That acquaintance became a friend. The last time, our friend just fixed our flat and sent us on our way.
Whenever I drop Zola off, I wind my way to the coffee shop or home on a different path. When Zola is on the bike with me, I chose quiet streets so that I can hear her when we talk. I hardly ever bike to and from somewhere in New Orleans by retracing my steps. One-way streets can be an obstacle to tidy routes. New sinkholes force me to discover new courses. Sometimes the flow of school traffic confounds a there-and-back pathway. Even the foot traffic between classes at Loyola or Tulane can send me on a winding route home. There's always a chance that I might opt to go home a different way just so I can ride under the trees on South Carrollton or to take advantage of half the loop at Audubon Park.
It doesn't matter what course I take to get there. How I get there is what matters. I bike as much as I can, at a medium speed, in this Bike City.
