“Hey there, how’s it going?” a wholesome-looking fellow greeted me as I scooted over to make room for him on the bike rack in the Safeway parking lot.  I was fastidiously loading groceries by order of weight into my panniers, when this young man with an outdoorsy beard and a loose polo rolled into my equation.

            “Hiii,” unnecessarily lengthening the salutation, “going good here, how about you?”  I attempted to act normal talking to a stranger, and instinctively scanned the sky to comment on the weather.

            “I’m just happy not to be paying those gas prices,” he replied, referring to our eco-friendly, two-wheeled, leg-powered vehicles.

            “I know!  I heard it’s nearly five dollars down on the Kenai!”

    “Yeah, I just returned from a trip down in Montana and they were whining and complaining to me about…” pausing to recall just how oblivious the lower 48s were about truly high gas prices.  “... It hadn’t even hit three eighty there yet.  Those guys think they have it bad—they don’t even know about the rural parts of Alaska where people are paying ten dollars per gallon.  And some of these rural people don’t even have jobs!”

            We shook our heads together at the downward economic spiral our nation has been heading toward.

    Will people still be pumping when $10/gal reaches the major cities?

    More than once, I’ve wondered if the rise of prices is just a sneaky tactic to jolt people into greener lifestyles.  I realize the probability of this being true hovers around zero, but I still feel that intentionally or not, this inflation could have some positive impact, if we can make significant change before chaos strikes.

            The outrageously high fuel price that American citizens are compelled to pay has crept into the everyday consciousness of us all.  It has made people think twice about the escalating costs of their hard-earned vacations, weekend road trips, or even about a short trip down to the ice cream shop.  And many fear that the culmination is nowhere in sight.

    On the renowned online classifieds website, Craigslist.org, rideshare offers and requests are swarming the community forum.  Why sit in your SOV (Single Occupied Vehicle) paying hundreds of dollars to sit idling in traffic when you can share the costs and meet new people by sharing a ride?  While some people may see the gas prices as a limitation, others are using it as an opportunity to change for the better.

    Spending a significant amount of time outside the U.S. has drastically influenced my view on transportation.  Packed like sardines into rattling South American buses, demonstrated how many people can survive and rely on public transportation to make their daily commutes.  Bicycle touring in Europe taught me how unimaginably autonomous I could manage with the bare necessities.  It was just me, my bike, my maps, and my small heap of bags bungeed onto the back.

    I was free from speed limits, bus schedules, and gas prices.  I inhaled a breath of every town and felt the magnitude of every pebble.  The bike-friendly European cities were also a pleasant surprise: utopias with sanctioned bicycle lanes, public bike hire stations, and a community that supported the idea.

    A little over a month has passed since I returned to Alaska, and I’ve only been inside a car a handful of times.  Fortunately I have inherited a reputable mountain bike to borrow while I’m here, and after some basic upgrades (a rear rack, a couple panniers, and some fine tuning) I’ve built up a fair number of miles on this bike already.  It has comfortably become my chief mode of transportation and I have yet to encounter any serious holdbacks.

   “Alright then,” his bike was locked securely into the Safeway rack and he was about to head towards the store entrance.  “Take care and be safe; there are a lot of reckless drivers out there—and they’re looking out for motorcycle riders now, but not us!”

   So watch out Anchorage drivers, bicyclists are here and we deserve to be noticed just like any other vehicle of transportation.  A bicycle is not merely a toy for ages 12 and under, it is a respectable mode of transportation to be reckoned with.  Whether drivers wish to concede the presence of bicyclists or not, we are not planning on disappearing anytime soon.  And if people do not proactively evaluate their consumptive lifestyles, they may be forced to park those gas-guzzlers in the garage and join us on the pathways, using the innate energy that we were all born with.  And then, with hair blowing in the wind and flowers passing by their feet, they might see how much better this is.