As the close of another decade approaches, we all have to accept that the future is coming. Flash drives are the new floppy disks, jeggings are the new skinny jeans, green is the new crimson. But there are certain changes I refuse to accept: bikes are not the new legs, and cycling is not the new cool thing to do.
I know that Harvard kids have really seized on the idea of bicycling as a legitimate life choice. The thought process makes a lot of sense if you are unathletic in physique and unlikeable in personality. You can barely handle the physical strain of sailing, but you still want to be seen as athletic and healthy. The average person would just go to the gym, lunging off the treadmill for a water break after a breathless half-mile trot and accepting their own lameness. They would deal with the shame and slowly build up their endurance. But Harvard kids are way more entitled than that; Ivy League “exercise” should be as ostentatious and effortless as possible. And what is the most obnoxious and obvious form of public “exercise” available to college students?
Biking.
It’s really a win-win situation: you get to ride your bike everywhere, thereby being about six times lazier than every other student on campus, and you get to pass that laziness off as athleticism. And environmentalism. How boss.
And biking doesn’t just come with PR benefits. It’s really an overall lifestyle improvement. Instead of leaving for class 10 minutes early, you get to leave for class 10 minutes early. Sounds the same, you say? Wrong. Cyclists get to spend three of those ten minutes locking up a bike. You spend those three minutes chatting with your friends on the way to class. I think it’s pretty obvious who has it better: locks can last over 150 years; people are lucky if they make it to 85. Whom would you rather spend at least 15 minutes a week with? Who is more likely to get you through the Mayan apocalypse?
But not all of the cyclist’s new friends are metal. When a mere pedestrian walks through campus, he or she is rarely noticed or shouted at. Heck, you’re lucky to get a wave and a “Hey.” If you barrel through Tercentenary Theater on a bike, though, every single kid on the way to Sever notices and shouts at you. You’re a celebrity. “That douche who runs down children and cripples with his bike every morning.” People remember a man with that sort of a title.
You also get to walk the exciting line between pedestrian and vehicle, never quite sure which one you’re going to act like in this situation. It’s like playing Russian roulette, but with other people’s lives at risk instead of your own. And the best part about confusing everyone near you and endangering everything around you? You get to be entitled about it. If any truck or car threatens your fun with traffic “laws,” buy a “Share the Road” bumper sticker, and slap it on your bike. It is your right as an American to zig-zag between three lanes of 40-mile-per-hour traffic and the sidewalk, and any pedestrian or car in your way had best learn to share. You have important places to be; that’s why you’re biking instead of walking. You are an important person; that’s why you’re biking instead of taking the bus.
In short, being a bicyclist means being the single douchiest biped in a 50-foot radius—machine or mammal—and getting to feel good about yourself because of it. And that is why, cry though we might about how cold it’s about to get, winter in New England brings one awesome gift: way fewer cyclists. So I’ll happily wear 16 layers and sleep under 24 blankets at night if it means that 16 cyclists start taking the bus and 24 break their legs while zig-zagging across the ice.
