On September 19, 2007 after almost 14 years working at Grouse Mountain, I started a new job. Of course I was nervous and needless to say this was a very big step for me. 14 years is a long time and almost everything I know, everything I have become and nearly everyone who is important to me, including my wife and 2 boys has come to me in some way thanks to my experiences at Grouse Mountain.

But the move came at a very good time and among other things it has allowed me to take a couple of steps back and evaluate what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, where I'm going and my reasons for wanting to get there. This move, if nothing else has reminded me of the importance of "rule number 6". (a great topic for another time).

So with the job change came an opportunity to make a bunch of pre-new year resolutions and one of the things that I promised to do was to ride my bike to work more often. Despite the cold and unforgiving weather of late this has been a relatively easy promise to keep especially since my new job is about 7 km closer to my home and some 900 feet closer to sea level (it really couldn't be closer to sea level). My former colleagues at the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition would be proud as last week I managed to ride 4 times (only a mid day dentist appointment prevented me from riding all week) and notwithstanding a few minor pains, I'm also pretty pleased with my accomplishment.

I made the decision to ride more for three reasons. First I wanted to reduce my own carbon footprint. Anyone who has visited here before knows that I believe we all need to make important changes in our own routines before we can expect anything from anyone else, including government. Second I wanted to save a bit of money by visiting the pump a little less, but most importantly my decision to ride was made to achieve the mental and physical benefits of the cycling. As I approach 40 I figure that its time I do something nice for my body.

Along with this resolution to cycle more came another important decision to trim some of the fat that I had accumulated through volunteering a bit too much of my time to a variety of organizations. This time last year I was involved with no less than 8 different volunteer boards, committee's, sub-committee's, coalition's, association's, team's and organization's. Way too much... just ask my wife. The challenge here was which ones to leave since all were important to me for one reason or another? After a fair bit of consideration and a little bit of frustration my decisions were made and one of the groups that I have since left is the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition.

One of the great benefits of cycling to work is the opportunity that it gives you to think. My particular route is relatively calm, it takes me about 20 minutes to make the 10 km trip to and from work which is plenty of time to think about the day ahead and forget about the day behind. Interestingly one of the things that I have been thinking about the most lately is cycling.

Despite my growing passion for cycling it was pretty easy for me to leave the VACC. Despite the fact that I am cycling more these days it is becoming quite clear to me why more people aren't doing the same. Unfortunately, in my opinion this has little to do with poor cycling infrastructure and a lot to do with the cycling community. There are many types of cyclists but I think they can all be put into two general categories, the transportation cyclists and the recreational cyclists. In my own experiences (this is a bit of a generalization of course) I have found that transportation cyclists don't really like recreational cyclists and this is a problem for me. I attended a meeting several months ago where the key topic was about finding better ways to communicate with cyclists and get more people involved in our organization and with cycling as a form of transportation. The transportation cycling movement needs a stronger voice in order to deal with some of the very real infrastructure issues within our community. To get a stronger voice they need more members, simple right? One of the questions I asked was why we didn't communicate and ally ourselves more with other cycling organizations like the North Shore Mountain Bike Association, after all I was a mountain biker first and most of my mountain biking friends also cycle commute at least some of the time. Shouldn't it be easier to convince someone who already cycles in one form or another to also cycle commute than it would be to get someone who has never ridden a bike to attempt it in traffic for the first time? All but one person in the group looked at me as though I had a horn growing out of my head!

To be fair not all transportation cyclists feel this way, nor do all members of the VACC. Don't get me wrong, I also believe that the VACC is a good organization and a lot of its members are as reasonable as they are passionate about improving conditions for cycling, it just seemed to me at times that those with the most negative outlooks also had the loudest voices and I often felt as though I had to defend myself and my friends because we sometimes ride for fun!

The next observation that has lead me to believe that transportation cyclists can be a miserable bunch comes directly form my own commute. Each morning I meet the same half dozen or so cyclists along the way and each morning as I meet them I attempt to brighten an otherwise cold and wet experience by shouting out a "hello" or a "good morning", even a short "hi" in our often brief passing. I almost never get a reply, in fact I've had 2. Why are these people so grumpy? Is this what I have to look forward to as I get older and continue riding to work? I sincerely hope not. I concede that it is not always an easy decision to choose the bike over the car and some of the rides are more challenging than others but the one thing that I have found so far is that no matter what the weather or how wet I am when I get to work. No matter how tired or sore I am, how bad the traffic was and so on, I always feel good about myself when I get to where I'm going and I look at the bike that got me there.

There are at least three very good reasons to choose cycling but unfortunately it isn't, nor can it be for everyone. Transportation cyclists need to understand this and be a bit more willing to accept cycling in all of its forms if they truly hope to attract more members and the respect of other commuters. There are a few transportation cyclists out there that could really benefit from the valuable lesson contained in rule number 6.