I have learned a lot about urban cycle commuting in the two years since I moved to Boston. I commute by bike pretty much every day, save only days when there is deep snow on the streets or I am going to go from the office to the airport. I thought I knew something about urban cycling from my years in Vancouver, where I have cycled all over the city and go just about everywhere I want to go by bike. But cycling in Vancouver, with its well-paved streets, bike lanes and relatively heavy bicycle traffic (though not compared to a European city, or even to Tokyo) is relaxed compared to downtown Boston. In Vancouver if you know how to dress, follow the rules of the road, and pay basic attention to where you are and what you are doing, you will get home most days. Boston requires a different state of mind.
My morning commute is more relaxed. North on Dartmouth and over Storrow to the Charles River. Then up the river on the Boston side for as long as I have time, then back down the Cambridge side and into the Canal Park complex by the Lechmere canal. Most of the time I am on cycle paths (well mixed use paths, with massive bumps where tree roots are growing under the pavement). The most dangerous thing tends to be random dogs or, in late summer, swallowing bugs.
Coming home is a different story. It is usually late, I am stressed and tired, and I want to take the shorted route home, especially when my wife is in town (she travels even more than I do). So I take the direct route, which takes me along the Charles to Mass Ave. and then over the Harvard Bridge. This is a relatively long bridge, the longest to cross the Charles, and the buildings of Backbay glitter to the left with the river stretching out on either side. The water is generally black by this time of night, and has a coldness coming off it. It can feel like a tunnel of cold leading one into the lights across the river. And there is a bike lane on the bridge (probably courtesy of Cambridge, which in general treats cyclists better than Boston). so I like to dial up the speed on the bridge. I ride a fixed gear, and can accelerate pretty quickly to 45 plus kilometers per hour (just over 28 miles per hour). At one point I used to carry some of this speed and aggression with me into the city. But after a few scares I learned not to do this, and on the last 200 meters of the bridge I reset.
As I enter the Boston section of Mass Ave. I turn the aggression way down, open my peripheral senses as wide as possible, and ride a clear line just out of range of car doors (I have gotten doored twice in my life, once riding in Tokyo and once in Vancouver, I have no desire for another encounter). It has taken a lot of mental training to get into this zone that combines maximum calm with maximum awareness. At this point in my life it is not really something I can maintain for more than thirty minutes or so. It seems to be similar to the condition aspired to when sitting Zen, something that I also do from time to time. Calm, alert, open to what is happening, ready to respond instantly to what happens - a car veering, a new hole in the road (Boston has truly dreadful road surfaces), a person stepping out into the street. I need all my senses on to do this - peripheral vision, hearing - you generally here a change in the underlying thrum as something happens and the micro traffic patterns change - the kinesthetics of the bike and the road - even air pressure plays a role.
I have some confidence that I can slip into this zone, at least for a few minutes, anytime that I need to on a bicycle. I am now trying to extend this in two ways - to stay in the zone for longer periods and to call it up in other situations. In some ways this zone is like the mental space you need to be in to walk safely on dangerous streets, where the trick is to project confidence, belonging and an absence of threatening vibes at the same time. Being non-aggressive and alert is also the key to active listening in business meetings. When tensions are running high in a meeting, or just in the office overall, as when we are trying to make a new release available, it helps me to walk around and just listen to what is happening. I don't necessarily take any action, at least not at the time, but the sense that one gets of how things are working can be the ground for later decisions. It will be interesting to see if and how this can be translated to a more distributed working environment, something I expect my team will need to do over the next few years. Meanwhile, I work on learning how to slip seamlessly from zone to zone, how to listen (with all senses) and keep myself lightly bound by dependent phenomena.
