NeXt: Along for the ride (on a bicycle)
Published: October 15, 2009, 7:51 am
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Bella Buscarino, a sophomore at Buffalo Seminary, describes the realization that she could ride a bicycle without help as the "best feeling ever ... you just feel free."
Today Bella knows that she can ride a bike, but the feeling of independence, of "being in control" that she has when she is on a bicycle is something she still enjoys. Bella has been riding her bike to school since she was a freshman. She enjoys the freedom it allows her to hang out with friends after school and to "go wherever [she] wants to."
This feeling of freedom is something that also drives David Saunders, a junior at Hutchinson-Central Technical High School, to ride his bike to school. He began riding to school in seventh grade.
"It gives me more independence from [my parents]," he said.
The openness of riding a bike is also appealing.
"It's always nice to see the people out there in the early morning," said Sara Daly, a junior at Buffalo Seminary who began riding her bicycle to school when she was a freshman.
"The most fun thing is that you see more people," said Bella. "You see people you haven't seen in years." And, she said, she meets new people.
This availability to the world is not without its downside. Bella said she often gets catcalls and encounters "creepy men, just being really creepy."
Environmental consciousness is another reason some students have decided to ride their bikes to school. Sara said she is "very into the environment," and Bella said that riding her bike makes her feel "a little greener."
David said there were "some environmental" reasons that he rides to school, however, it was not his main motivation.
Stas Stepniewski, a junior at Williamsville East High School, says he walks to school because it is so close to his house.
"If it takes me five to 10 minutes to walk to school, it would take me a minute on a bike," he said. But Stas said that only about five people ride their bikes to his school of over 1,000 students. That is less than 1 percent of the student body.
"Not a lot of people ride their bikes in suburban areas," he said, because "the distances are too large or the people are too lazy."
It is not necessarily simple laziness that stops people from cycling. The weather in Western New York is not always ideal for biking. With the weather soon to take a turn for the worse, many students will be putting their bikes away for a while.
Sara said she rides "mostly just in the fall and the spring" because the winter is "icy and icky."
"The rain will get your brakes wet, so you might slip," said David. "If it's cold, then you're cold, too," he added.
Another difficulty of riding bikes in Buffalo is that there are very few bike lanes, forcing bicyclists to choose between riding in the street with cars or on the sidewalk.
"When I ride my bike in the street, people yell at me to go to the sidewalk, and when I ride on the sidewalk, people yell at me to go in the street," Bella said. "Sometimes the traffic situations are very dangerous."
David agrees. "Dealing with the traffic" is a major difficulty of riding his bike to school. He said "a separate bike lane on a main road like Elmwood" would help bicyclists feel safer on their way to school.
"In Toronto there is a separate bike lane on almost all the streets, and all the cars respect you," David said.
Stas, who spends his summers in Poland, said bike lanes are "all over the place" in Europe.
Stas said he believes cycling makes people happier because they don't have to "deal with the stress of actually driving."
Many schools don't provide bicycle racks for students, so many high school students get creative in finding places to lock their bikes.
Last year, David's bike was stolen. He had been locking it to the fence that goes around Hutch Tech. After the theft, "the principal announced that we couldn't park our bikes on the campus anymore."
David wrote a letter to the Buffalo School Board, and then attended and spoke at one of its meetings. This resulted in the first bike rack being installed at Hutch Tech.
Over the summer, local bike activist Justin Booth worked with school officials to install a second rack at Hutch Tech.
For teens who are really into biking, Clifford Madell runs Teen Treks, a summer camp of small groups of teenagers (with leaders) who take bicycling trips. Most trips are between 10 and 16 days, with 20 to 30 miles of riding each day. These trips appeal to teenagers who "want to explore the world and think bicycling would be fun," Madell said.
He said he has seen an increased interest in bicycling. He said he attributes the increase to gas prices, environmental issues and because bicycling just seems like "a neat thing to do."
Cypress Marrs is a junior at City Honors.
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