Within my first few months in New York City, I knew I wanted to use a bicycle for transportation. I’d grown up riding a bike, and through much of my first 17 years, it was my primary mode of transportation on the hot country roads just outside Birmingham, Alabama.
It was 1989, and Manhattan’s gridded streets, wide avenues and winding narrow paths downtown seemed custom-built to be conquered on a light-a-feather road bike, weaving through automobile congestion like quicksilver.
I was also in my early 20s and felt invincible on the city’s largest public space: its streets. That confidence took a scary body blow a few years later, when a car swerved, hit me and I crashed onto the street. There were no broken bones or head injuries, but I was instantly humbled by a hard truth: Bicyclists are little more than fragile human eggshells on wheels…