rachel.blog

I want to ride my bike…..

I want to ride my bike with my two-year-old sitting in her seat on the back. She loves it. I love it. I want to ride my bike to save money on petrol. I want to ride my bike to reduce my greenhouse gas emissions. I want to ride my bike to help prevent depression and save the New Zealand tax-payer from having to pay to treat me. I want to ride my bike to ward off diabetes and save the New Zealand tax-payer from paying for my health care (diabetes runs in my family). I want to ride my bike to stay slim and fit and save the New Zealand tax-payer from funding the costs of obesity. I want to ride my bike to reduce pollution so that my children can breathe clean air. I want to ride my bike to reduce New Zealand’s dependence on foreign oil. Why does the New Zealand government not want me to do these things? Please, give me a brick wall so that I may bang my head against it.

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Rachel M

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4 responses to “I want to ride my bike…..”

  1. MikeM Avatar
    MikeM

    It wouldn't be possible in Auckland, even if the freeway capital of the world, Los Angeles, is building 40 miles of bike lanes and paths each year, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/us/in-los-angeles-drivers-and-bicyclists-learn-to-co-exist.html?pagewanted=all

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  2. Rachel Avatar
    Rachel

    Why don't you think it's possible?

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  3. MikeM Avatar
    MikeM

    It needs a creative and accepting civil disobedience culture, of which there is plenty in California, some in Sydney, but I have not noticed it in New Zealand (although perhaps it is there somewhere).Auckland Harbour Bridge: if you could organise 1000 cyclists to RECLAIM THE BRIDGE: ride across in one direction on a weekend day and block vehicles, then do it again after police charge a few token riders with some obscure offence; then yet again when the martyrs appear in court… It is no good just a handful of people doing this stuff. They get charged with traffic offences and get no publicity. It needs a thousand and a demand:Queen Street: RECLAIM THE STREET – FOR A WEEKEND! Piss off the traffic and have a street party: perhaps on an anniversary of the Great Auckland Electricity Blackout, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Auckland_power_crisisLocal government politicians are harder to shift than national ones. Their local electorates need to tell them to wake up. But is this an NZ thing to do?

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  4. Rachel Avatar
    Rachel

    Ha! I was expecting you to say something like "it's too hilly" or "it rains too much". But instead, you're trying to say – I think – that New Zealanders are passionless, just what Gordon McLauchlan has written about in his new book, "The Passionless People Revisited". But you shouldn't have to storm the Bastille to get politicians to do what is such a no-brainer it ought to be engraved in public policy.

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