The bicycle has been my primary mode of transportation since around eight years of age. My youth was spend gorwing up in Tyler (Smith County, TX), where brothers and I would use our bikes to explore the world as we knew it – our neighborhood and town. Perhaps it was coming of age in the small town environment of rural East Texas, but we always traveled on the roadway and, for the most part, operated in a vehicular manner. Doing so was intuitive and common sense.
As is usually the case as childhood gives way to adolescence, reaching the age at which I could legally operate a motor vehicle resulted in temporary abandonment of the bicycle as my primary means of transportation. For several years I did little more than offer a passing glance toward my trusty steed at the time (a Schwinn Varsity) on the way out to my car.
A few years later, I met the woman who would later become my spouse. Both of us shared a love for the outdoors and one of the activities we enjoyed during our courtship was riding our bike through the countryside. Our weekend jaunts would take us to several of the surrounding communities on a regular basis. Whether Whitehouse, Noonday, New Chapel Hill, Bullard, etc, we always took the roadways and always operated in a vehicular manner.
While attending University, I lived close enough to campus that pedestrian locomotion was all that was needed to get to and from classes. Bicycling nevertheless remained a regular part of my daily activities, as I used it as a mode of recreation and fitness. During holidays and on those weekends I would return “home”, Elizabeth and I would often take rides together. During the week, I would ride in the Central Texas countryside in lieu of heading to a gym, as well as exploring this or that community.
Eventually, I found myself living and working in the DFW Metroplex. At first, I continued my routine of coming home in the evening, getting on the bike and riding through the northern suburbs and rural communities of northern Dallas County. However, as our family grew in population, time became a precious commodity. Any opportunity to consolidate other activities in order to spend more time with and attending to the other members of the household became a priority. Following several months of consideration, I decided to try my hand at bicycle commuting. Why not? I spent close to an hour stuck in a car every evening on my way home and then another hour and a half or so riding my bike. It would be quite easy to consolidate two and a half to three hours into a period half that length.
Not being one to rest on my laurels, it did not take long until I was interested in becoming more involved with bicycle advocacy. I served as a grunt to the organizing committee of the Dallas Bike Summit (1996) and was a member of the organizing committees for the NCTCOG sponsored Ciclo en Mayo events (1997 and 1998). In 1998, I was invited to become a member of the NCTCOG Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Task Force; an entity on which I served for over ten years. In 2008, I was invited to become a regular member of the DART Bike & Ride Advisory Panel.
I hope it can be appreciated that vehicular cycling and the statutory rights enabling its practice are subjects on which I am quite passionate. It is, in part, for those reasons that I have created this site. My hope is that the content here will serve to encourage and educate those who are new to the concept of transportation cycling and will strive to protect our existing rights and be strident in the fight against those who – well meaning or antagonistic – seek to stifle limit full access to the public roadways through legislation and segregationist facilities.
