If you are wondering what a car-free bicycle rider can tell you about moving yourself about in a car, or truck, or for that matter on a motorcycle, I have an admission to make. I used to own and drive, even repair more different types of gasoline burring vehicles than most people will own in a lifetime. In fact, buying and selling motorized transport was how I supported myself through college in my early twenty’s.

I have watched the car cultures come and go from my life. As a teen, I cruised the strip. In college, I ate at the drive-ins and necked at lover’s lane, and when I then became gainfully employed, I bought a BMW and participated in many years of the heavy commute rituals that were soon to follow.

Even my vacations were dependent upon internal combustion. Often during the summers, my friends and I would sit for hours in a hot, boat-towing automobile en route to a lake or river slough. Once there, the excitement grew as a loud outboard engine moved us through the water. After the thrill of a few relatively brief sessions on water skis, we then drove back home exhausted. I have even toured the Pacific Northwest, western Canada and much of California, even Mexico on my many different motorcycle tours. All of which drained me physically, mentally and financially.

But is an exhausted body and mind really the price we have to pay for sitting in one place, for doing almost nothing with our physical selves? Is there not some way to some way to experience a net gain when we get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle to travel for recreation or work?

I’ve not owned a fuel powered machine since 1989, and believe it or not, I do not miss one. Whether I will own one again, I do not know. I had needed a driver’s license a few years ago to get a passport, and yet I have felt zero temptation to get behind the wheel of a car since I made the decision to be Car-Free!

Even infrequently seeing the road from a passenger seat is hard for me any more. I have to work to keep myself from getting car sick. My many years of my not piloting a car, truck or bus, do, however, allow me to to objectify the whole experience. I offer the following words as a result of such reflection.

Because so many of us spend so much of our time in our motor vehicles, we need to be aware of how the simple act of driving can produce many roadblocks to living a life that is full, rich and indomitable. We will use much of this chapter to look at what these obstacles are as well as the unconscious mental routines they set up. Then, we will explore ways they can then be overcome. Toward the end of this new look at the ways our transportation efforts affect our ability to love ourselves and thereby those with who we share the world, we will then take a look at my favorite traveling option, the bicycle.

We set ourselves up for both physical and mental laziness every time we hop in our motor vehicles. We place our bodies into a comfortable chair where the movements that our arms and legs must make are confined to a very small area. And as we then watch the road ahead, the hum of the motor and the sameness of scenery, with which we do not interact, put us into an almost trance like state.

That motorist who requires us to move our steering wheel several inches can test our nerve. Parallel parking becomes a chore. We have a hard time getting in and out of our vehicles to run even a simple errand.
All this is so because our bodies enter relaxation mode when we drive. And then once we reach our destinations, it is often hard to get them going again. We can, at least, partially offset the harmful effects of long periods of such physical inactivity (especially if stuck in traffic) by keeping our minds stimulated.

One way we can do this is by turning our vehicles into learning centers. We can use them to learn a new language, hear a great book or listen to any one of the many self help tapes and podcasts that are all readily available on line. By controlling what you listen to in this way, you can produce a greater abundance of energy in your life.

We need to be aware of how the car can also lull us into expecting quick fixes. When we expect the vehicle we own to take care of all of our transportation needs, without looking for alternatives, our subconscious begins to see life in absolutes with little of the needed gray in between. We, in other words, condition ourselves to expect black and white solutions for most of the other uncertainty in our lives. We expect a pill to heal us if we get sick, we think homelessness can be solved with the right kind of motivation and we even believe we can produce world peace with one last war.

And yet most of us know that the solutions to any of those woes that face us do not fit into neat little compartments such as these. In order to live lives that have more power and love at their core, we need to open up our thinking. We need to be more conscious of those habit patterns that keep our lives running on automatic. And an effective way to begin doing so is to question the need as well as the mode of conveyance for each and every trip we make.

If our choice is the car, if we’re in a rush to get somewhere, we need to be aware that it can be difficult to cooperate once we reach our destination. This is so, because when we’re on the road in our motorized vehicles, everyone’s in our way. Subconsciously, many of us then take this assumption into the world every time we step out of our cars. Just as we imploded every stop light that stayed red too long, we may feel little need to be patient with an employee who may not move or think as quickly as we may want them to. And then on the way home, just as we wouldn’t let that car pull into our lane, we may not let that person with a candy bar cut in front of our full grocery cart at the supermarket checkstand.

To help you come from a more loving place of cooperation both in and out of your car, then, here are some things you can do. When time is pressing in on you, try to be especially mindful of all those with whom you share the road. Make it easy for someone to enter the freeway. Slow down when someone signals a desire to enter your lane. If you make a point of helping others get to where they are going, especially when you are running late, not only will you feel calmer when you are on the road but you will bring this momentum into your day once you leave your vehicle behind.

When we make the automobile the center of our lives,
we make it more difficult to appreciate.

For good reason, we cannot afford to have anything go wrong with either our car or the trips we make in it. Error here can place our lives in jeopardy. As a result, especially with older vehicles, we find ourselves constantly on the lookout for anything that could go wrong. Every noise causes suspicion. Was that the brakes I heard? What is that rattling sound? Because we are forced to think like this, rarely do you thank your car for just getting you to your destination.

Nor do you express gratitude for safe passage. Every road crew irritates you. Why do they have to be working now? Why couldn’t they block that lane instead of this one? After all, you pay gas taxes and you and your car have a right to move along unimpeded. Feeling connected to the road in this way, as though it is no more than one obstacle to wade through after another, makes anyone or anything else on it appear as an enemy. As you then move into your day it is difficult to erase the tapes you were playing to yourself when you drove.

In order to block the unfavorable momentum that could result from this, and to send the energy of love to all of your car trips, try to make them an exercise in thankfulness. Say thanks to the heater for keeping you warm and defrosting your windows. Find other drivers doing something right. Give thanks when the brake lights on the cars in front of you go on when they are supposed to. Marvel at the symphony of turn indicators as the vehicles around you jockey in and out of position. Bless the road crews for keeping the streets and highways safe for you. When you can make your journey one of appreciation, you establish that as the theme for your day away from your automobile.

For what we feel are obvious reasons, we have made ‘Do not to smile’, an unwritten rule of the car road. After all, driving really is serious stuff. When we’re sitting on thousands of pounds of metal and glass with enough horsepower to plow through most good size obstacles, we need to be mindful of the danger we could cause. Right?

Wrong. A smile, if anything, can help to release the tension we may feel in our bodies thus making us better drivers. And as the other drivers all around us see our happy demeanor, it just might serve to relax them as well. Try using your car as your very own smile rehearsal studio. Try cracking a few practice smiles because these build even more momentum for themselves that you can carry with you into your day.

Driving can make it hard to be trusting of others.

We’ve been taught that in order to be safe drivers, we must drive defensively. I do not agree. Instead of always being on the lookout for other drivers to make mistakes, I think we should see each other as friends. If we did, how could we possibly overlook a mechanical problem if we knew that it might place someone we cared for in possible jeopardy? How could we ever be careless of others on the road if we knew it might cause harm to someone we knew and liked?

I say that instead of seeing each other as people not to be trusted, as enemies, that we try to help each other get where we are going. In doing so, we form a different collective agreement about the purpose of our efforts. As a group, we subconsciously begin to expect only the best. And since thought creates our world, rivers of cars, trucks, bicycles and buses flowing in perfect harmony can be the result.

Did you know that a car centered lifestyle teaches us
poor communication skills?

When we sat in driver’s training, we were taught how to rely on only our vision. Hearing the world around us was not a part of the skill set we needed. Nor was empathy. Quickly, we found out that we didn’t have to know what the driver ahead, behind or next to us might be thinking. We learned to speak with one tool, our eyes.

We flip on a turn signal to tell others that we are changing our direction. We step on the brakes to let everyone see that we’re slowing down. If we don’t like the way someone is driving, even if we honk, that often has no bearing on how well we move or don’t move. Those in a big hurry can try to tell the person in front of them to speed up or let them pass by flashing their high beams. As you can see, though, we don’t have many communication tools when we are encapsulated in car. We speak in absolutes with nothing in between.

In the same way that the car teaches us linear communication, it also desensitizes us from people. We, for example, have no way of knowing why any of the others with whom we share the road, drive the way they do. We don’t need to know, we are almost trained as car drivers to think of ourselves as no more than the cold, impersonal machines that we operate.

Since there is no possibility for any kind of real conversation with any of the drivers in the cars around us when we move ourselves about in our autos, about all we can do is to be aware that this is so. When we then arrive at our destination, we can celebrate all the ways we communicate with one another. If you arrive at an office revel in your humanness as you experience the joy of feeling the carpet beneath your feet and hearing people talking, even computers beeping or phones ringing. If you arrive home to your family, savor the satisfaction of being able to hold and touch your kids or your partner. If a shopping mall is one of your stops, find pleasure in the simple joy of just watching shoppers and merchants as they exchange with one another.

In order to keep from reinforcing the detachment from one another that driving induces, there a few things you can do. When you’re at a stop light, look at the drivers in the cars all around you. Don’t be afraid to make eye contact. As we said above, don’t be afraid to smile. Try to imagine what some of your fellow motorists are all about. What do they do for a living? How long have they been on the road? Where do they live? Whenever you can, exchange a few pleasant words to the gas station attendant, the person at the toll booth and the man or woman who took your fare at the parking lot.

By interacting with those on the road in the ways I’ve outlined above, you are reminding yourself that you and all of your fellow travelers are people with needs, concerns and feelings. And like every other quality we’ve discussed in this chapter, by practicing it on the road, your practice of it in the world will be much easier.

Even if you have become successful at feeling the love for your brothers and sisters on the road, it would do you well for you to remember to try to minimize your use of your car because of the disconnect it causes on other levels. Driving an automobile separates us from our natural environment. We see small animals pummeled into the road bed and there are those of us who laughingly refer to such manslaughter as road kill.

We regularly motor over land that has been graded, cut into and blasted through and we feel inconvenienced whenever our path is not a smooth one. We worship our parking garages that change the skyline and then complain if we have to walk too far to get to the destinations they serve. We require bigger homes just so we can sleep with our cars at night and then we fail to notice how our flight to the suburbs destroys the habitats of untold numbers of wildlife and other important microcosms.

Out tailpipe emissions affect weather patterns, destroy the very air we breathe and introduce acid rain to the lands we continue to destroy. We pollute rivers and others waterways as we continually build vehicles that make the old obsolete. And then our junkyards and tire mountains add even more hazards to our already battered planet.

And yet all of this goes on with almost reckless abandon because it’s always someone else’s problem. Such detachment is reinforced as drive-in restaurants feed us, drive-in pharmacies remove our physical pain and drive-in banks help us pay for the life that we long to be a genuine part of. Being conditioned in such a way, however, we fail to realize that all of us share one Earth. And as science is beginning to show us, the damage we do anywhere downstream or downwind has an effect on all of us.

With all of this is mind, there are ways we can get back in touch with the planet if we still must drive. Obviously, the best place to begin is to do so less. When you do find yourself behind the wheel, however, try to imagine what your surroundings were like before cars and the roads they bring ever came along.

The best way to do that is to spend more time in Nature when you are away from your car. And as you hike in a park or bike the closest back roads, make a note of everything you see, hear and smell for ready reference when you then get back in your vehicle. Add the birdsong, hidden creeks and those tree scents you may have noticed to the mental movie that your car trips can become. Try to take what you have experienced and imagine that all of the land all around you is a microcosm teeming with the kind of life that only awaits your slowing down to take the time to notice.

When you see people walking or on bikes, don’t see them as out of place or obstructions on your path, instead celebrate their efforts. Try to relate to the world you are seeing through their eyes. Try to notice when you are going up hill and then wonder what it would be like to have to lean your pedals into the same ascent your car is making for you. Feel the cyclist’s exhilaration as you then go down the other side.

When you are encapsulated in your vehicle, see if you can notice if the wind is blowing. Look at the trees or weeds and see which way they are moving, if at all. Feel your muscles pushing you through the headwind that you may see. In a tailwind, thank nature for the added boost. In a gentle breeze feel the air as it cools or warms your face.

As a society we fail to question the unnatural act that driving is. At the same time, the culture we have built around our mindless reliance on the automobile also escapes our scrutiny. To make matters worse, our relentless promotion of the car keeps us bound to the non loving pitfalls of a past that we usually learn and grow from.

To show you what I mean, even though more and more of them are starting to wake up, let us take a look at many college graduates as they enter the job market. How many of them reward themselves with a new automobile for landing that first job out of college? Previously care free (note the similarity to car free), happy and content to move about town and school on a bicycle, public transportation or in their little used second hand cars, they buy a new auto almost as if some hidden force says that’s the next step on their career path. Maybe they’ve made a mental note of the fact that their new employer’s top executives get the choicest parking spots. Couple this with the onslaught of beautiful people driving bright, shiny new such vehicles on TV, billboards and in magazines and anything less than buying a new car would be an almost un-American thing for them to do.

Instead of spending far less by relying more on alternate transportation and maybe making their present vehicle safer to use, they buy the latest model car or truck and use it more. It does not dawn on them that maybe they could better establish themselves before the payments and the lifestyle that will soon build around their new auto will more and more close down their options.

Almost all of a sudden, they find that all that extra money they had for movies, and dinners, and ballgames, etc., gets put aside for their monthly car payment. Every time they want to buy new music or a frozen yogurt, they begin to ask themselves about the wisdom of such fun purchases in light of their upcoming registration or insurance payments which are always much larger for new vehicles. Their car’s health begins to take precedence over their own when all of a sudden they find they must push harder to make even more money to enjoy the new way they choose to travel about

Pretty soon they find that there are certain places they cannot leave a new car. Suddenly, they find themselves wondering about the safety of the parking in certain neighborhoods, at concerts or sporting events. Their happy, care free world begins to change as they also find that there is a certain wardrobe that is befitting of a new car as well as the passengers they want to get in and out of it with.

If they don’t like the job they’ve chosen, they’re more often than not stuck there. Any desire they may have to travel abroad or pursue other career paths is shut down by the payments they have committed themselves to. Pretty soon they begin to understand stress as the only way to keep up in life. Their lives get more and more complicated.

All of this goes unquestioned. This must be the way everyone else is doing it, they think as they observe the throngs sitting on one grid locked freeway after another. Then, once traffic gets moving again, they do not realize that the private automobile that they work so hard to own is slowing down their breathing and dulling their senses.

Unconsciously trying to model themselves after their elders, they smile at one another less and less. They rush around trying to look important, unable to take the time to smell the roses along the way. If someone cuts in front of them, they honk, they swear, they become hostile. It’s a jungle out there and they are fighting with everyone else to get to the next place and the next place. In generation after generation we create more and more people like this who are subconsciously pitted against one another.

In order to broadcast the energy of love that all of us so desperately need to be effective both on and off the road, we, as a society need to call the use of the private automobile into question. We need to make it less attractive to use. As in Europe, it needs to be more of a privilege and not a right that just gets abused.

Maybe we could label all car advertising in the same way we label cigarettes and alcohol: “Warning: Use of motor vehicles has been shown to cause harm to the planet, birth defects in children and physical disorders too many to list. Your use of it should be carefully thought out before hand and minimized whenever possible.”

It might be wise to tax gasoline more to subsidize alternative transportation. Free parking could be eliminated. We could stop building drive-in anything and levy an environmental tax on those drive-ins that already exist. We need to do whatever we can to encourage people to use their cars less.

Not only is the planet at risk but so is the very consciousness of the humans on it. Stand on any freeway overpass at rush hour and look at the drivers below. Instead of happy smiling faces, you’ll see multitudes of discouraged and dispirited people.

We are then supposed to put all of this apathy and negativity behind and live according to a different set of rules when we then get out of our vehicles. If we want to be effective with others we know that we need to understand all sides of an issue as well as that of the status quo. We know about the importance of cooperation, appreciation and communication. We know how far a smile can go. We know what it means to bless someone with our trust. However, when we drive, not only are our bodies confused by an unnatural push pull motion but so is the way we interact with life and all of those in it.

I’ve tried to show what you can do to offset some of the unloving tendencies car driving can promote. There is, however, another way to move yourself about that can really supercharge the way you live your life. Besides buses, trains or the perfection of just being able to walk to your destination, as alternatives to the car, I’d like you to take a look at the world through the eyes of a bicyclist.

Bicycle Love and Power
Before we do, however, it is important to know that the bicycle helps us overcome the natural tendency all of us have to do nothing, to be lazy. It does this by moving the blood. It excites it. As it does, it flushes those toxins and other impurities that don’t like to find our bodies in motion, that don’t like to be disturbed.

Once on the two wheel road, the lesson of cooperation is a built in feature of bicycling. There is not a lot of metal separating a cyclist’s efforts from those of the cars and trucks and busses nearby. Very quickly the bike rider learns what it means to yield to the needs of others.

For him or her, instead of losing power or control, it only means that they will arrive at their destination a few seconds later. And since their bodies are already actively engaged in activity, slipping their hands on to the brake levers or slowing their pedaling down is not a bother. This, as we discussed earlier is different for the driver of a motor vehicle whose body needs to constantly be awakened by such movements.

Appreciation is continually reinforced when you make yours a bicycle trip. Always aware of the weather conditions around you, you mentally give thanks for that tailwind that nudges you along. Little things like a good road surface and a wide shoulder to ride on become sources of joy. That motorist who gave you a wide berth when passing earns your gratitude as does the car that waited for you to pass before it pulled into its driveway. When you then leave the bike behind, you enter the world with a smile on your face. You are refreshed and feel thankful for all the people around you.

It’s easy to smile when you’re riding a bike. When you feel life all around you, when you smell it, when you hear it and when you know that you are an active participant in it, you can’t help but feel glad to just be alive. And then when you leave your bike behind, the feeling of pride that you have for reaching your destination on your own power finds its expression in your entire demeanor. You are just a happier person.

Bicycling teaches you trust. When we are watching from the “safety” of our car seat, bike riding can look like perilous activity. For some, cyclists even seem to ‘come out of nowhere’. This is so because when you drive a car, you are limited in what you can see and hear. You are disconnected from the road and all those users of it by blind spots, rolled up windows and/or your radio or other music.

When you’re on a bike, however, you have nearby motorists in your consciousness long before they ever see you. You are able to anticipate their actions. You are able to hear an accelerating motor. You see all of the road, unobstructed by metal or glass. Since more data is available to you on a bicycle, you feel more confident that your passage will be safe. Long time cyclists reinforce this notion with the knowing that those cars with whom they share the road are their friends.

On my bike rides across the nation, for example, I waved at the drivers of cars and trucks like I knew them. And most of them waved back. And I still do so today, and they still wave back today, especially on the less traveled roads in my area.

On a bicycle you are always communicating. Your ability to keep a straight line and ride with purpose tells motorists what they can expect from you. The brightness of your clothing, even little things like whether you rely on a mirror or wear a helmet indicate to those in vehicles around you whether you take your own transportation efforts seriously or not.

On a bicycle, your voice is audible to all those around you. Not only can you use it to say hello to fellow cyclists and pedestrians, but you can make it loud to warn nearby motorists of your presence. When you are waiting at lights with cars, it is even easy to have a conversation about what your intentions are or just life in general.

Instead of imploding any stress you may feel in your life like you do when you drive off in your car, bicycle riding helps to eliminate it. After a day of work tedium, you can almost feel all of the little troubles and concerns you many have accumulated, melting into the road as you ride away. You find yourself gaining new perspective as the bicycle reminds you that you are not just a mind with a body attached, that your body and mind need each other to be adequately nurtured.

Nor can your nerves be placed on edge like they do when yours is a car trip. No, when you’re on a bike, any wrongdoing a motorist may cause you, gets ground up in the road. The pedaling motion keeps your aggressions from ever building up.

Since bicycle trips require that you fully engage all of yourself in the activity, they make you an active participant in life. Because every journey you make on two wheels is an exercise in cooperation and appreciation, you are never lulled into the mental laziness of thinking that it’s you against anything. You begin to develop an awe for all there is around you and you see the harmony in all issues having many sides.

Bicycling slows time down. Life becomes a lot more than just what happens at the destinations at which you arrive, it also becomes everything in between. Instead of endlessly rushing from one endpoint to another with little patience for your travels, you can make your trips the highlight of your day when you ride a bicycle. And with no radio or other car noises to distract you, you can use your time on two wheels to think in a meditative way, rebuilding what already took place or planning for what lies ahead.

Safety in Traffic
If you want to bicycle more but cars worry you, most any road ride you do will not be an escape from them. Learn to love them. When you are off your bike, look forward to being that part of traffic that is not being slowed down by the gridlocked reality of modern day driving.

Make your ride a moving meditation, where like the tiger in the jungle, you are comfortably aware of all that is taking place all around you. For such an awareness to best be practiced, when in traffic, pretend that you are having a conversation in your highest unseen, unheard mind with all of the highest such selves of everyone else with whom you share your part of the road. Pretend that you are all mindful of one another. Trust that that person in the car next to, ahead of, and behind you knows you are there and that you anticipate his or her every move and vica-versa. Make it a dance of which you are the grand choreographer..

Whenever what a car ahead, behind or next to you does or may do to threaten your path, try to establish a telepathic conversation with its driver. Many long time cyclists that I know make this game of make believe a part of the sixth sense they have developed for the road. Many are not even conscious of the fact that they are doing so, but when asked, they will realize that this technique has subconsciously slipped into their arsenal of safety gear for quite some time. Even as a game of make believe, it still gives one a sense of security, however real or imagined it may happen to be.

Something else that has helped me over the years is to see my path as filled with light even before I embark upon it. Doing so, knowing where I am going, establishing purpose for my travels beforehand adds to my feeling of confidence. This also is a communication that other souls (I base this on the assumption that we are all spirits or unseen energy moving about in physical bodies) pick up on in their ability to predict my actions on the human level as they subconsciously listen to the dictates of the spiritual level that exists far beyond this one.

When your miles find you riding in the dark, imagine that you are a ball of blinding light going down the road. Whenever you hear a car approach, turn this awareness up to make yourself stand out even more. In addition to your bike lighting and any reflective gear you may happen to be running, you will begin to develop the sense that this is helping you to be seen. It is this confidence that goes out into the universe and additionally communicates to all of the other spiritual beings that are having the same human experience with you that you demand to be seen and made exception for.

The Recumbent Bicycle
On a bicycle, you get to return to the wide open experience of your youth. Instead of looking upon the world around you with all the judgement and discernment that seem to be required of adulthood, on a two or three wheel pedal machine you once again begin to see as does a child. A sense of wonder returns as you start to feel like you are a part of the world unfolding all around you. Once again is your curiosity aroused. You live, you love!

Because of their comfort, recumbent bicycles take this experience to higher and higher before unthought levels. Even those in motorized vehicles can better identify with recumbent cyclists. They are seated in the same way they are – comfortably!

Nor do you pose a threat on a recumbent. You don’t lord above the automobiles with which you travel in a fighting position ready to pounce. No not at all, you are at the same level of your motorized brethren seated in a non threatening way.

You are saying all is well, the world is a safe place for me to be. Instead of presenting a menacing appearance, on a recumbent, you offer your heart. It is as if you are saying, “love me, don’t fight me”.
Try to imagine just for a moment what our world would be like if love was the dominant theme on our roads. Harmony, tranquillity and joy would abound. There would be a true heaven on earth. All would be a playground — National Bicycle Greenways would fill the land!! It is toward this end, then, that I say that those on recumbents can very well be be the ambassadors of such good will as we move through the new millennium!!

These recumbent bicycle businesses have pledged their support for a world that is dominated by Love:

Don’t just read the book, Get In It!!