Bikes rule the roads in Palo Alto

Posted By Hup | May 16, 2008

If you all think hard enough, I’m sure that all of you can remember the days when your only mode of efficient transportation to any place outside of your neighborhood was to hop on your bike and pedal your ass off. I mean, pedal your ass off ALL day long and not even care about it. We were young, we wanted freedom and it’s way better than having your mom drop you off.

I can honestly say that I haven’t consistently ridden a bike since back in the day when I was fifteen years old and had acne that even Proactiv would be scared of. Back in the day when I would dream about being behind the wheel of a new ride as I rode my bike to Drivers Ed each morning at 6am. Man, those were good times, but the days of peddling, peddling and peddling some more have been long gone up until I moved out here to Palo Alto. Now the bike is back and it’s back in a BIG way. Old people ride bikes, young people ride bikes, girls ride bikes, guys ride bikes and this one guy even rides one of these bikes and I have no idea why.

After becoming part of the biking community I came up with a few reasons of why so many people around here choose the bike as their main mode of transportation around town:

- It’s safe and very bike-friendly: There is a bike lane on EVERY road out here besides interstates. There’s even a Bike Boulevard that runs through the middle of the city and cars are only allowed to travel on a very small portion of it.

- Palo Alto is a VERY environmentally friendly place: It’s amazing how much people care about the environment out here on the West Coast. The only reason why I can think of why they’re so far ahead in the ‘going green’ game is that out here in California you have the most beautiful landscapes that you could ever imagine, which everyone loves and appreciates. When you have mountains, oceans, bays, amazing forests and everything else I think that you tend to want to protect it.

- Healthy and fit is the way to go: I rarely ever see anyone who is overweight out here in Palo Alto and I still have yet to eat any fast food at all. The amount of health-conscience people out here is amazing, which explains why people don’t mind taking the bike to work, etc. My landlord rides his bike 30 minutes away to work every single day and doesn’t think twice about doing it. Amazing.

Anyways, as you can plainly see, the bike definitely rules the road here in Palo Alto and even I ride the Brown Beast (my loaned bike) about two miles to work each morning, which I have totally grown to enjoy over the past few weeks or so. It gets you moving, it’s always amazing outside and burning a few calories in the a.m. never hurts, right?

I will try my best to give you updates on all of our biking adventures and I’ll keep trying to add a few photos like the ones below as well. Enjoy!

UPDATE: I was just reading the Palo Alto website and it appears that we are only one of four cities who have been designated with a ‘Gold Level’ designation. Sweet!

In May 2003, Palo Alto was designated a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists. This three-year designation ranks Palo Alto with only three other “Gold Level” communities (Portland OR, Corvallis, OR and Boulder, CO). The award is only presented to communities with remarkable commitments to bicycling. The League cited Palo Alto’s strong commitment to education efforts and model policies in their commendation.

Stephanie cruisin’ on a beautiful day