Why riding a bike can change your life & the world

June 22, 2008

Some people would consider bicycling through knee-deep snow and dodging ice boulders just to get to work—well, they wouldn’t even consider it.
John Robert Williams, on the other hand, calls it an “adventure.”
Williams, a Traverse City native, is a slender, bespectacled commercial photographer known for co-founding the Traverse City Film Festival. Before that, he and his brother were greatly admired for their weird and huge “Williams Brothers” floats that featured marching queens and racy puns—the high point of the National Cherry Festival Royale parade.
But Williams is also a thoughtful guy, who believes that bicycles hold one of the keys to the way we humans think about ourselves and the earth we live on. A lifelong cyclist, he is not anti-car. He owns two of them, including a work van to haul equipment to location shoots.
He doesn’t ride necessarily to save money, but he proudly reports that he has only filled up the gas tanks twice since the first of the year. “ I think of using a car as a choice. It is not a necessity.”
And given the choice, he usually rides a bike. His only decision is which bike.
He opens his garage door and reveals no less than 20 bikes, many of them found dead on the street and brought back to life. Many of the interns working for the Film Festival ride part of his fleet, keeping car traffic down during festival week.
Williams explains that some people choose to knit or fish for relaxation. He fixes, mends or builds bikes and loans them out.
He has so many bikes, he names them. There’s the family’s quad tandem (seats four) called “Lucy”, and “GiGi”, a French bike which is short for “grocery getter.” It features panniers on each side, a rear rack, and a front basket.
He points to a sturdy yellow single speed bike “Dasher”, with huge fenders, studded snow tires and a big basket. That’s his winter bike.
Williams challenged himself to ride his bike every single day to work last year, including winter. His decision to commute in the winter came after making several trips to Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa where his wife, Dr. Terrie Taylor, has researched malaria for 21 seasons. He saw the local people walking and talking and bicycling to work each morning, and they were perfectly happy.
“Bicycles are pick-up trucks there. They haul incredible loads with them. If they can do it, so can I,” Williams said.
Amazingly, John hasn’t missed even a day of his bike commute. He wore no special winter gear other than a waxed cotton Filson jacket, which is terrific for repelling wind and snow, a good pair of gloves, and a fleece hat under his helmet.
Traverse City plows the sidewalks during the winter, but tragically, he said, it plows the streets after the sidewalk plows go through, and the road plows toss icy boulders and drifts of snow onto the sidewalks. It makes for an “exciting” ride on ice and snow during his five and a half miles of riding around town each day, he said.

FIRST, THE LOGIC
If you think about it—and Williams has put a great deal of thought into it—riding a bike makes logical sense. A car, truck or bike is nothing but a tool to get you from point A to point B. “Let’s say an average man weighs 200 pounds. The average car weighs 4,000 pounds. If you are using a 4,000 pound car as your tool to move a 200-pound object, to get from point A to point B, that’s a bit capricious, isn’t it?” asked Williams.
“It takes a lot less energy to move a 20-pound bike than a vehicle that’s 20 times your weight.”
It does make sense to use a motorized vehicle to haul more bodies, especially if you’re talking mass transit.
Ironically, Williams lives a stone’s throw from a gas station. He watches motorists each day pull up to the pump and fill their car. He has a word for those who believe they have no choice but to fill up—“gas addicts.” John keeps odometers on his bikes, and said he regularly logs at least 100 miles each week just running around town, which is equivalent to about $30 worth of gas.
Anyone can ride bikes, said Williams, who is 52. His 87-year-old dad rides a bike. So do his two sons, ages 12 and 15. Just recently, they rode their bikes to their guitar lessons on South Airport Road, strapping their instruments on their shoulders like back packs. Sounds dangerous, but the East Side Boardman Lake Trail is a bike path that starts just south of the Traverse Area District Library, goes along Boardman Lake, and brings you right out at Logan’s Landing.

THE SPIRIT OF BIKE RIDING
You might think you’re suffering at the gas pump, but what could be more difficult than climbing on your bike in mid-January, at 6:30 a.m. when it’s dark out, bitter, bitter cold, and a snow plow lobs ice chunks at your fender?
Now Williams gets revved up. First of all, he admits: “It’s a whale of an ADVENTURE!”
Williams quotes Russ Soyring, planner for Traverse City, who also rides his bike through winter: “In the winter, you get warmer faster on a bike than sitting in a cold car.”
Before you even consider becoming a commuter—winter or summer—you must first change the way you think about yourself and your life, Williams said.
“You must dispense with the words of ‘fear’ and ‘can’t.’ After all, it’s only frozen water. Why do you live here if you are afraid of it?”
For Williams, this whole bike riding thing is only partly about saving money and the planet. It’s also a rejection of what he calls the “comfort” problem. Perhaps you have it? Turning up the heat when it’s a little too cool, turning on the air conditioning as soon as the weather hits 82 degrees.
“We as an American society have taken all these wonderful time-saving, ‘labor-saving’ innovations and perverted and overused them. We’ve gotten soft, to the point of getting weak and lazy. And then we get fat and watch diabetes rates soar.
“You want to know why? We don’t like pain or discomfort. We have the ability to have everything ‘comfortable.’ Where’s the effort? Where is the struggle? Happiness comes from achievement! You want a comfortable house, a soft chair. People won’t swim if the water is too cold. We don’t want the wind against us, we don’t like to sweat. People have remote control starters for their cars so they won’t have to get into a cold car and they have heated car seats too! Oh my God...SUV Wimps!”
“It’s become the ‘American lifestyle’ and we’ve bought it, hook, line and sinker. We have become a people that are fat, weak and lazy. It’s a comfort mentality, and we’re going to get walked over as a society. Never in the history of humanity have people had it so easy and been so soft. Then to waste even more energy, why someone would drive a car to the gym, go in, and ride a stationary bike for an hour? To get fit?”
Here’s Williams’ vision. You get up in the morning, walk to your bike and throw your leg over the bar.
“It’s never the same from one day to the next. You see everything, you smell everything, you feel everything. If it’s cold, you push harder, and you get warm really fast. Cycling is a true metaphor for life. Some days it’s tough. But if the day is bright and sunny, and you’re rolling easily downhill or with a tailwind, you are grateful! For me every ride is a joy ride! It is utter joy. I am rarely unhappy when riding a bike.”
Except maybe when it rains. “Ah, yeah, you get your pants wet. That’s why they invented fenders!”
After a winter of commuter riding, Williams lost weight (instead of gaining winter pounds) and suffered not even a cold or a fall. Short spurts of activity do more to boost your metabolism than a one-hour workout, he said.
And when he rides, he rides fast.
“I like to hammer. I like going fast. And it’s free—24 to 26 miles an hour, almost faster than a car in town.”

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT
Williams likes his bikes simple and elegant. He often takes an old bike and strips off all the cables, shifters, derailleurs & gears, so it becomes a single speed or a fixed-gear (no coasting). “This town is so flat, you only need one gear!” He puts fenders on some of his bikes, with mud flaps low to the ground, so he doesn’t arrive at work caked in mud or dripping slush.
If it’s clear or sunny, the sleekest, simple machines come out of the bike barn. Put a big basket on a bike and it becomes a utility bike, hauling groceries with ease.
Williams didn’t let the childrearing phase hold him back. When his sons were infants, he’d put them in a child seat in a bike trailer. As they got older, he used a child conversion kit on his tandems and the four-seater.
He’s a tinkerer, so he very rarely ever buys a new bike. “One of my bikes, Buck, cost me $1 to bring it back to life.”
If you’re just getting on the road again, he offers this advice: Check the tire pressure and your bike seat. They are both probably too low. Rolling resistance comes from flat tires and a poor bike fit. Lube the chain, check the brakes, pull on a helmet and hit the road!
“What do the docs call cyclists that don’t wear helmets? Organ donors!”

BIKE DREAMS
Williams said if there’s a will, there is always a way to get to places even as intimidating as Sam’s Club (he always takes the bike path, not the road, along US-31 South—“I’m not crazy”). He doesn’t whine about the weather or minor annoyances such as branches hanging across the sidewalk.

But he has a few wishes:
“People should realize that cyclists are on a bike to leave behind an old way of thinking. We were all brought up with mom and dad driving us everywhere, it’s the language we all knew. But now, this is the future. Cyclists are saving fuel, saving money, saving the environment, so give them a break. Give a bike the right of the way. Smile and give ‘em a wave. They are out there pedaling and making a difference, while you sit in your comfortable car. The gas you are burning is being saved by them.”
Williams believes the way to fuel economy is not necessarily downsizing to a smaller car as much as it is getting out of your car. Trading a smaller car for the same habit is like giving a junkie a smaller “fix.” It doesn’t cure the addict.
Williams has had only one problem with antagonistic drivers. Twenty-plus years ago a ne’er-do-well driving an old Chrysler intentionally stalked and ran
him over.
“He was revving his engine after he pinned me under his car. When he finally backed off, and I was able to get up, he said he didn’t like me riding a bike on State Street. He hated bike riders, and unbelievably he was not prosecuted for using his car as a weapon. Thus, I really like separate bike paths and sidewalks.
“It would also be great if bike trails had a yellow line through the middle, as a reminder for people—walkers, roller bladers, and cyclists—to stay to the right.”
His biggest wish of all: a network of dedicated bike paths alongside roads. The solid white line on the side of the road doesn’t make it. “It just gives drunk drivers a little more leeway.”
“If you’re in government and you say you’re for quality of life of the electorate, then build dedicated bike trails and people will start using them. Everywhere a bike path has gone, the area around it has gotten better because of it. It’s like a front porch where people see each other and say ‘hi.’ Bike trails bring people together. It’s not a question of money. One percent of the collected gas tax is supposed to go to non-motorized transportation, but the county road commission isn’t using it for that. And where do your township taxes go? Show me one inch of sidewalk that Garfield Township has built after all the tax money it’s received from the massive development?
“Even the Boardman Lake Trail which starts out paved in the city, is unpaved in Garfield Township. Why?! Acme Township has not embraced the TART Trail that has been in development for 15 years. If they really wanted to serve the citizens, they’d find a way to make it happen. So it ends at Bunker Hill Road, instead of going through the township and connecting with trails to the north and east. Elmwood and Bingham fought legendary battles against the Leelanau Trail. Why?! The trail is privately owned and paid for by TART. One of the single greatest free amenities to the citizens in the state has been bullied about by countless townships. Why?! Ask the dinosaurs?”
As one of the original founders in 1986 of TART Trails (originally called Citizens for Better Ways), Williams has worked for years to get a network of bike paths in the Traverse City area. Progress has been slow. He still lobbies for a “necklace of pearls” that would connect all the beaches and parks in Traverse City.
Most of all, he’d like to see a sidewalk or bike path on Peninsula Drive, where scores of bicyclists, walkers, high school athletes, runners and walkers by the hundreds flow by each day.
As gas prices climb, he has no doubts that people will start eying their oft-neglected bike in the garage a little more hopefully.
“As long as you line up with everyone else at the gas station, believing you have no choice about it, you are stuck in the past. Do not complain about the price of gas.”
Then he rattles off his favorite sayings:
“If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem! Burn calories, not carbon! Pump pedals, not gas!”