Very little of Hartford can be seen by driving through it on the interstate. There are buildings, cars, billboards, but no context. Driving means finding a parking space, paying to park, worrying about the car, and then sitting in a traffic jam. How much time have I squandered sitting in traffic? It’s depressing to think about.

Living near my workplaces was a major catalyst for me to move to Hartford. I grew up in a rural area where there was no public transportation. There may have been a park and ride located near the highway, but nothing available for intertown travel. As a child, I relied on my parents and friends’ parents for transportation or rode the school bus. When I was able to get a job, I needed a way to get there. There were never any options to consider but private transportation. Later, when I would become a commuter college student, I needed reliable transportation. I was driving between college classes and two or three jobs.  As an adult, I relished the thought of a shorter commute. Gone would be the days of 30-60 minute drives. Though I have lived my whole life in New England, I have never enjoyed driving in the snow. Living in a place with public transportation would reduce my snow and ice-induced anxiety.

Since moving from South Green to the West End, I have greatly increased my amount of self-propelled transportation. Being close to friends and favorite restaurants has helped. I began with small outings to a nearby coffee shop, then to the community garden, synagogue, and friends’ houses. In the summer of 2008, when gas prices were straight up offensive, I walked to work for a week out of refusal to pay such high prices. The walk takes me an hour. It was really hot and I was out of shape. Next I began to wander, investigating the neighborhood and those neighborhoods nearby. Park Street, the area of Hartford where retail is not an abysmal joke, is but two blocks away. I was once asked by an acquaintance why I would walk on Park Street if I am not a Latina.  During the winter, I began taking the bus. On the coldest of days, this was fine, but I do not like being tied to schedules. I do not like digging up quarters or standing still in the cold waiting for a ride; it’s warmer, most of the time, to just walk.

This semester, I drove to my Tuesday/Thursday job only twice. The rest of the time, I walked. But, I had been driving to my Monday, Wednesday, Friday job. Why? The distance is the same, but the latter job is located up a hill. Also, I am usually lugging textbooks and student essays with me. It seemed too unlikely that I could haul the requisite load and survive the incline of Albany Avenue.

A few weeks ago, my car informed me that she needed a repair. Since I have been saving money for a house, I figured that a car repair was not a priority right now. I began walking. The worst of it has been crossing over Albany Avenue. Although I push the button and wait for the pedestrian walk signal, cars do not seem to respect that. I’m careful and do not jump out in front of anyone, but I am annoyed all the same by it.

A holdout on selling my car has been my radio show commitment. It is not every week, but it’s in the wee hours of the morning. Last Friday, I had no car to use but a show to still do. I’m cheap and was not going to pay for a cab. A friend had already let another friend borrow his car. And while familiar with the area, the thought of getting up to walk two and a half miles in the middle of the night (an hour trip) did not sound fun. No choice. I had to get back on my bike.

My bike was a gift from my parents when I was probably ten or eleven years old. It’s from a department store — probably KMart or Sears. It’s unfancy. There is dust on the rims because it sat, unloved, in their basement, for a solid decade. No. It had to be longer than that. I’ve taken it out a few times in the past five years, but not with any regularity. One of the last times I rode it, I got cussed out by a driver who refused to respect my right of way. It was disheartening, partly because she lived in my neighborhood, and partly because I try to be cautious and respectful when on the bicycle. I’ve seen my share of maniacs swerving down the middle of the lane, going head-on into traffic, nearly causing accidents. No need to be like that.

I tried to add a rack to it over a year ago. In the process, I ended up having to make a seatpost repair. After that, it sat, unused, for more than a year.

Recently, it’s gotten more use. I rode it on some bike trails and then in a very cold rainstorm. It sat for another week, and then I had to take it out. To prep for what was looking to be a daunting middle-of-the-night ride, I went on my first Critical Mass ride hours before. My reasoning was that it would give me biking practice and biking at night practice, but within the safer confines of a group. I was told that they go at an easy pace. Not true. They were not racing, but I would hardly call the pace easy. I think I was the youngest person there, and I was also usually the slowest. I pedaled my hardest and could barely keep up. Still, someone in the group always waited up for me or rode alongside as we crossed intersections. What I thought was going to be a one-hour ride did not wrap up until something like four hours later, and then I had to bike home, with a borrowed headlight.

It needs to be said that I have been well-alerted to the opinion that women should not travel alone at night. Some would even say women should not do this during the day. I fight this sexist ideology each and every day I decide I want to live without first arranging for a male to escort me to my destination. Also, there’s no point in telling me not to do something. I’m stubborn and will often take that advice/order as a challenge or dare. Things I have been told I should not do: live alone, live in Hartford, drive at night, go to nightclubs, travel alone to Alaska, discuss religion or politics, wear black with brown, date outside my race, walk by myself ever, go south of Farmington Avenue, talk to strangers, talk to the homeless, talk to strange men, and live without a cellphone. Am I really going to obey those commands?

When I got home, my jiggly legs basically gave out. I had only a few hours to nap before my radio show, and I had no idea how I would be both well-rested and physically able to walk again, let alone bike, in another three hours. When the alarm rang, I felt more repaired than I was expecting to. I got geared up (that means I put on a helmet. It does not mean I wore bike shorts.) and headed out.

Hartford in October at 1:30 am is cold. It’s dark, even with the moon. It’s quiet. Streets that are noisy and chaotic during the day are calmer. There are a few people up and about, but they seem purposeful, rather than loitering. The only people I had any interaction with were the security guards who sit at the checkpoint to enter the campus that the radio station is located on. All semester they have been out there, asking for ID from people trying to enter campus. Pretty much everyone else arriving on campus at the hour was in a taxi cab.

Nobody bothered me.

On the way home, there were a few more cars. This made navigating around the huge piles of leaves dumped in the bike lane on Scarborough Street less fun to manage. I learned on Monday, while biking to work for the first time, that this street is scarier in the day time than it is at night. One would expect the opposite.

Anticipating vehicular madness during Monday’s commute, I rerouted myself so that I avoided South Whitney and most of Whitney Street, opting for streets that were either quieter or with actual bike lanes. Back on Scarborough, I stayed in my lane as cars sped by, way over the speed limit. A landscapers’ vehicle abruptly pulled into my lane and stopped right in front of me. After barely avoiding collision, I had to dodge another landscapers’ vehicle that was parked ahead, fully blocking the bike lane. At 0130 or 0600, this would have been simple, but during Monday morning commute time, there were frantic motorists whizzing by. And I still had to figure out how to cross over Albany Avenue. Not having a total death wish, I rode on the sidewalk instead of actually on The Ave. This would have seemed bogus except the car traffic was backed up so far, I was able to be smug about having a smooth, separate sort-of lane entirely to myself. I passed many cars stopped in traffic. On my return trip, I discovered even more enormous leaf piles on Scarborough blocking both storm drains and the bike lane. The road is not overly narrow, but cars often convert the one-lane street into a two-lane. Once I escaped this madness, my ride was better. I off-roaded it through Elizabeth Park, then zigzagged around sidestreets.

A man pushing his bike up Farmington yelled to me, giving me props for riding. Not once in all my years of driving a car did anyone give me props for doing so. When I arrived at my building, a woman whose car parks near mine (where I was locking up my bike) started a conversation with me about riding. I had seen her fairly often and we had never spoken before that.

There are certainly some ways that riding a bicycle can make one more vulnerable. There’s no considerable shelter from the elements. No speedy getaway. If I sing while biking, my off-key screeching is not contained by glass and steel. Many motorists do not know and/or do not care about laws forcing them to share the road. But there are advantages.

Can you park your car inside your office at work? Does driving give you any exercise at all? Do you get to actually experience the change in seasons? Have you gotten mad props hollered at you for up to a half-block away for representin’?

After a long period of car dependency, I am working on recovery.