Bike Culture

Image of bike parking at a nearby primary school.

After many terrifying drives on the wrong side of the road to and from Teighan’s school, I am finally hanging up my habit to drive everywhere and trying to adopt the English custom of biking or walking EVERYWHERE in ANY kind of weather. The streets are packed with bikes and the roads are VERY narrow around Cambridge. There are no shoulders on the roads to leave room for error which accelerates my anxiety level while trying not to hit bikes or instinctively move to the right side of the road. As a driver from New Jersey,  I am impressed that under these conditions I haven’t seen any road rage. Drivers smile and pull to the side to let others go ahead or to give them a little more room.  That said, I’m going to try to avoid driving. The buses and trains have been easy to use. We are so lucky to be living on Grantchester Meadow. We can ride our bike across the meadow and hop on a paved trail along the River Cam which leads to his school. It takes about 10-15 minutes and this morning we did it for the first time.

I like to think I am a bit of a connoisseur of child carrying devices for bikes since Teighan spent a lot of time since birth on the Columbia Trail in New Jersey, but because this is the main transportation of many families here they have all kinds of contraptions.

 

 

I will post more as I see them.

This healthier approach to communting is just one part of a bigger picture of addressing environmental issues.  I’ll be posting more about how the community addresses enviromental ethics and how this is shared in the schools.