Getting Lost
My first city experience was when I interned for a TV production company in Boston for a summer in college. I knew nothing of Boston except for a few stops on the Red Line. Suddenly I found myself being sent to all ends of the city on foot, by car, driving the company van, and even by borrowed bicycle.
At first I was overwhelmed and terrified of not knowing my exact route. But then I discovered that getting lost was no big deal and learned to embrace it. I loved having an adventure.
Now that I mostly bike around the city, I try not to get intimidated by unfamiliar places and keep the same sense of adventure. I just take each street it as it comes.
And I skip the ones I really don’t want to take. After all, on a bike I can just hop off onto the sidewalk.
Sometimes when I get lost I discover things that I would miss entirely in a car…
…And I then I stop and eat them.
Ms. bikeyface, your talent and whimsy are incredible. For sure. Thank you for sharing it so generously.
We now know bikeyfaces kryptonite.
Ayup, cake and coffee will do it for me every time! As a matter of fact I route my ride to include a stop at a coffee shop. I’m not proud. I’m food motivated, just like most of the bike riders that I know.
You will have realised that one of the many advantages of riding a bicycle as opposed to driving a car is that if all else fails, you can always turn back into a pedestrian and negotiate obstacles pushing the thing – or if even that doesn’t work, hoist it onto your shoulder and climb flights of stairs, use lifts (elevators?), go across stiles, shoulder through hedges or even wade shallow rivers as I’ve done once or twice in my career. Also you’re travelling much more slowly and have better all-round vision, so you tend not to get lost quite so easily. I always find that carrying a small compass hung round my neck is a great reassurance.
No need to apologise for the cake: for a regular cyclist even the most calorie-packed foods are permissible. Fruit cake; bread and dripping; malt loaf; pemmican; smoked whale blubber; you name it. A great traditional cycling mainstay here in the UK was always lardy cake; something so laden with saturated fats and sugar that for a non-cyclist a single slice of it would bring on an immediate heart attack followed by Type 2 diabetes.
Love it.
Oddly enough, people always ask me directions because I look like I know things.
Even down to several times being in a new city and being asked within hours of being there for directions (and each time weirdly enough I knew exactly where they were looking for and could direct them!)
Michael