The Biking 351st

I have always envied cyclists, in-line skaters, skateboarders, and to a lesser extent, skiers, snowboarders, and surfers.

Independence has always been HUGE for me. Be it that I was over protected, the youngest of five children, or raised with a sense of pride that grows without the benefit of sunlight, I have always—will always—want to do some things entirely on my own. Biking is the perfect example of this innate desire; as of this month, now known as "The Biking 351st" and heretofore known as "April," I am an independent traveler.

I went to Egypt all by myself last September and the mix of fear and excitement still fills me whenever I look down at the mid-cuts that I wore from Cairo to Dahab. I wore those shoes out good. And along with the fear and excitement swells a sadness. A sadness that all my walking in this nascent West Coast City will destroy these shoes and render them more decrepit than the 4,000 year-old rock, stone, and sand formations that it climbed. And where I am now—it is the farthest that one can go from that first step of civilization without crossing a dateline and being sent back to it. I will preserve these shoes as I pedal myself on to much newer, but ironically, more familiar things.

I first took a journey completely alone when I was a child of but 11. We lived in a suburb called San Juan in Metro Manila, about 10 miles from the financial and medical heart of the city, Makati. The reason I mention the word medical is that my mom went into surgery to remove her cataracts in a procedure that nowadays would be considered obsolete, even archaic. She was bedridden and blind for days, gauze pads over her eyelids. On the first day of her surgery, a summer in 1990, I went out of my house. Walked about 300 meters to the busy traffic in Pinaglabanan, and boarded my first jeepney solo. At EDSA, I had to find a bus that advertised my destination: Ayala.

Different modes of travel force you to think vastly differently. Driving or riding a ca, we think of one way roads, intersections, and signal lights. On buses, we think of landmarks, bus stops, and transfers for our way back. Walking, we think of shortcuts, diagonal lines, holes in cyclone wire fences.

I picked up a Japanese proverb in Egypt, "He who travels alone travels fastest." Riding my bike around the city has given me a whole new perspective of the streets and the people and the traffic. For now I have to look out for both pedestrian and automotive traffic. I also have to look at landmarks, intersections, but I also have to look out for potholes, inclines, Muni streetcar tracks, opening doors from parked cars. I also have to learn not to look when a car zips right by me with six inches to my left. But as with all my modes of transport, I have learned to love the independence, the mobility, and now, the pleasure of wind in my face, the levitation from the hard, dirty pavement, the autonomy expressed in speed, my contribution to being a responsible member of my planet, these are things that are unequaled by walking, driving, or riding a bus. I am a singing, smiling, sustainable development on two wheels, healing scabs and all.