The thing I like about Bixi is the chain and gears are all covered, so I could wear my dress pants and dress shoes and not worry about getting grease all over them.

A co-worker took some photos of me with the bike.

I’ve kept my list to bike-related stuff. I’ll tag people at the bottom.

1. I know squat about bike maintenance. I can clean the grime off my bike, and de-grease and re-lube my chain… and fiddle around with my brakes a bit, but other than that, I know nothing about bikes. I’m kind of an anti-“gearhead”. I know in theory how to change a flat, but have never done it – but I don’t mind giving the business to my favourite bikeshop – and at $10 a pop, it’s about the only fairly regular expense my bike incurs, which is loads cheaper than car ownership and year-round TTC reliance. Don’t even mention derailleurs to me… they’re mysteries wrapped in enigmas to me.

2. I’m generally lazy about everything regarding my bike. It takes me weeks to go from thinking “I should clean my chain” to actually doing it. When I think I should go and buy some more lights for my bike at MEC.ca, it takes me a while to do it although MEC isn’t really out of my way on my bike-commute home from work.

3. I’m a slow cyclist. I don’t pretend to be racing in the Tour de France like some cyclists seem to. I generally bike along at a comfortable pace, according to how much energy my legs have and the traffic conditions around me. I coast when I can. I yield to stopping streetcars, and pedestrians in general.

4. I’m impulsive. I’ll go on a long ride through the ravines and trails of Toronto with very little preparation. In fact, I’m more likely to do something like this if the thought comes to me at the last second. A good example is from last March when I biked the waterfront, the Humber valley, over to Eglinton & the Allen, down the Beltline, through Mount Pleasant Cemetary, the Moore Park Ravine, the Brickworks and the Lower Don Valley in a big circuit, just to see if I could do it. It’s by far the longest ride I’ve done (51 km) and it took me 4 hours (see point #3), and it was something I thought of and started on with zero preparation. I did take my camera and one water bottle though.

5. I’m a calm cyclist… until I snap. Most of the time, in my cruising and slow cycling through Toronto, I do it with a Zen-like attitude… life is good… biking is fun… la-de-da. I can even shrug off minor transgressions against me… the car passing a bit too close, the FedEx truck parked in the bikelane.  Sometimes though, all these things add up and I tell a driver everything they are doing wrong.