CycleBridge. CamBike.

Cycles are a way of life in Cambridge. (Not "bikes," which are motorcycles!) Everyone rides them everywhere. Really.
28% of Cantabridgians (why they are not "Cambridgians" is a question for Latin speakers, I'm told) cycle to work, and it sure feels like way more than that ride to the grocery store on weekends, when the street actually gets blocked by all the parked cycles.

Old women in wool skirts with heels and giant wooden handlebar baskets, kids in school uniforms with violins slung over their shoulders, parents with several children attached in various ways to one cycle, professors with their baskets piled full of laptop and books, undergrads with six-packs of beer balanced precariously on their laps, people in tuxes and evening gowns and academic robes complete with mortarboards, all these people and more astride cycles of various sizes, shapes, and rustiness are common sights on Cambridge streets, in rain, shine, snow, and tourist season.

Because cycles are the only real transportation option around this flat, congested little city of tiny streets, people are very skilled at riding them. I've seen people eating, reading, talking on their phones, and even texting while cycling. Cambridge childhood is measured based on a kid's growth from the handlebar seat to the rear seat to the tag-along attached cycle to their own small two-wheeler, creating 7-year-olds who are adept and fearless cyclers. Today was the 808th annual fair in a tiny village called Reach, and some friends and I joined a free organized cycle ride to visit the fair. It's 12 miles each way, and little kids constantly whizzed by, leaving us three strong adult rowers in their dust. I rode my bike a LOT as a kid and in college (or so I thought), and I'm still way slower than any Cambridge cycle commuter. Part of that slowness, though, may be part of the minor drive-on-the-left issue here. (My cycling mantra? "SLOW. ON LEFT." The initials for that reminder felt meaningful in my first few months here but are now purely coincidental...)

No wonder Europeans are skinnier, stronger, and pollute less than Americans. Let's start a cycle revolution!



"Staff Cycles Only." Only Cambridge would manage to make even bike parking hierarchical.