Everyone that I work with knows that I ride my bicycle to work. By now they don’t even give a second look when I walk in the building in spandex (for the most part). A recent comment made me stop and consider what folks must be thinking. For the second time in a month someone asked me, ” Do you even have a driver’s license?”.
It stopped me. Do my coworkers think that I ride my bike becuase I’ve had my license taken away? And the drivers out on the road, what are they thinking? Usually, I don’t much care what others think but this might be a case where it’s a bit more important.
What if people knew that I decided to ride my bike to work one nice Summer day about 3 years ago. Heck, I didn’t really have time to ride as much as I wanted to and parking is always an issue… so why not ride? I had a shower waiting for me at work along with a change of clothes so I tried it a couple times. The more times I rode to work the more I liked it. Of course, there are political, environmental and other reasons to ride instead of driving and I won’t list them all, but the bicycle has turned into my primary form of transportation.
My question is about descrimination. What do you see out in the world? In the workplace? On the road? How are you treated as a Bicyclist in the different places that you go?