North­ern Al­abama drips in the sum­mer heat. My par­ents ride bi­cy­cles four miles to the river after din­ner. They come upon friends along the path, and fly along in a swoop­ing wasp-like pack. The green­way runs along a drainage creek, wide enough that they ride in side-by-side pairs talk­ing, or peel off and go on ahead, watch­ing for a heron and lis­ten­ing to the wall of in­sect sound. The sum­mer’s new bik­ing friends seem in­ter­est­ing from the news that trick­les across the coun­try through the phone lines. One cou­ple shares with neigh­bors their mar­garita ma­chine, an ap­pli­ance as large and com­plex as an espresso maker. An­other man is sev­enty-five and has al­ready ac­com­plished his re­tire­ment goal of rid­ing 100,000 miles. My par­ents and their new bike friends have din­ners to­gether and take dri­ves to Mis­sis­sippi and Geor­gia to ride the rail trails.

To keep cool my dad rides in a wicker mesh gar­den hat. Here is a man whose daugh­ters once had to coax him away from the tele­vi­sion to go on a walk; now he coaxes his wife to ride in the heat of the af­ter­noons, not want­ing to wait even for the rel­a­tive cool of after din­ner. One week­end he went with the sep­tu­a­ge­nar­ian to Geor­gia and rode sev­enty-two miles in one day. Could I be­lieve it? Boy, was he sore after, but it felt… good.

They took their bikes with them to Florida and rode along the open roads, en­joy­ing the beach winds. The cars and RVs that lum­bered by did so in ac­cor­dance with the state park’s speed limit, my mom re­ported tri­umphantly. It was re­ally nice.

But then, last week Mom boasted that they’d biked all the way across town to have din­ner with my sis­ter, a 28-mile round trip. I found my­self imag­in­ing the route. Did they re­ally bike on Bob Wal­lace? My par­ents, rid­ing their low-to-the-ground re­cum­bents?

Last year a car a hit a cy­clist on sim­i­lar road nearby. A friend sent me the ar­ti­cle in which most of the on­line com­menters blamed the vic­tim. “Even chil­dren know not to ride their bikes in the street for fear of being hit by a car.” “Save your b.s. about the ve­hi­cle op­er­a­tor being at fault. If peo­ple want to ride their bikes on busy pub­lic streets they’re tak­ing their own chances.” An­other com­menter noted that “Re­gard­less of the laws, its kinda hard to see a bike in that kinda traf­fic esp in the dark with the head­lights shin­ing in our face.” In Al­abama, “the streets are made for CARS AND TRUCKS!” they said, and bike rid­ers de­serve what­ever they get.

Some peo­ple gen­uinely feel that they should not ever have to move over or slow down to pass a bi­cy­cle on the road. I could just imag­ine the “bro” bear­ing down on my par­ents (he would be dri­ving a lifted truck with a mud­din’ snorkel). In the cold cal­cu­la­tion in his face, there would be a right­eous glint in his eye as he got ready to give them a lit­tle scare. My dear sweet par­ents, bik­ing on the road with those heat-crazed ma­ni­acs?

Wait a minute. My par­ents are bik­ing. They are ex­er­cis­ing, being so­cial, spend­ing time out­side, watch­ing less tele­vi­sion. Let’s talk about my dad, com­pare the risks of being hit by a car while bik­ing with what he was doing be­fore. Which life choices are bet­ter for his health?

Amanda Hein­bockel

My dad is an en­gi­neer, a mas­ter of mak­ing com­plex draw­ings on the com­puter, a man who can build any­thing. After dri­ving his 30-minute com­mute, he crunches his 6’4” frame into an of­fice chair for eight hours, then dri­ves the half hour back home. He pro­ceeds to watch (by his own es­ti­mate) an av­er­age of four hours of tele­vi­sion per night: keep­ing up with at least twelve shows (plus the Braves) on the gi­gan­tic flat screen that dom­i­nates the liv­ing room. Four hours a day? That’s less than the na­tional av­er­age, but still the time equiv­a­lent of work­ing a sec­ond part-time job. A full time job, an hour com­mut­ing, and a sec­ond part-time job com­mit­ted to tv-watch­ing. My dad is a busy man, but he spends a lot of his time pas­sively being en­ter­tained. He does not have a lot of time left over for sleep. Or ex­er­cise, or time with friends, or time out­doors.

Could bik­ing be a way for my Dad to re­dis­cover what he ac­tu­ally likes doing, re­con­nect with him­self and find some ad­ven­ture? He and my mom bike for an hour and a half every evening now. Nearly every day, for the past six months. And my dad, my dad, is the di­rect mo­ti­va­tor, en­cour­ag­ing mom to brave the heat and bike down to the river. They started slow and have moved to longer rides, bik­ing forty or fifty miles along trails. My dad’s emails con­tain a new sense of pride, a sur­prised hap­pi­ness that his body can do such things on its own. His knees feel bet­ter since he started bik­ing. He’s talk­ing about long bike tours next, overnight tours.

They’ve made new friends, and started in­ter­act­ing with na­ture with an in­ten­sity I haven’t seen in them since my child­hood camp­ing trips. Where they live is built around the au­to­mo­bile and the tele­vi­sion and the air con­di­tioner. There is no mass tran­sit, things are spread out way be­yond walk­ing dis­tance, and there are few good gath­er­ing places. You see your friends in the aisles of Wal-Mart and catch up briefly, and then re­treat to the next re­frig­er­ated box. It’s a sys­tem that is hard to es­cape.

Yet they’re doing it. They rode in Crit­i­cal Mass last month. My dad now knows about Warm Show­ers, and he watched that viral video of Am­s­ter­dam and found out that streets and even street lights just for bi­cy­cles exist. He’s read­ing blogs by peo­ple who are tak­ing a while to bike across coun­try, and mak­ing plans for next sum­mer.

There is some mea­sure of peace to be found by bik­ing down to the water, a self-suf­fi­ciency in find­ing your body can go places under its own power. They are mak­ing them­selves happy, their daugh­ters proud. Still the pic­ture of the grin­ning good-ole-boy bear­ing down on the two lit­tle re­cum­bents on the road lingers. I’ve learned in pub­lic health classes that peo­ple tend to be bad at es­ti­mat­ing risk. Any­thing that is in­vol­un­tary, rare, or fear-based seems more risky, while things like car wrecks and heart dis­ease seem al­most nor­mal. We can’t for­get that sta­tus-quo has risks as well, and that peo­ple chron­i­cally un­der­es­ti­mate the risks of the things they al­ready do.

Do not fail to un­der­take new ad­ven­tures be­cause they might be risky. What you are al­ready doing might be risky. If you live a seden­tary lifestyle and pick up bik­ing, your over­all risk of death de­creases. The crazy-eyed SUV dri­ver is out there and so are other ob­jec­tive haz­ards: par­al­lel cracks in the side­walk, rail­road tracks, and the door zone. But you’re ex­er­cis­ing and so­cial­iz­ing and prob­a­bly get­ting hap­pier, putting you at less risk for obe­sity and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease and the other re­ally big killers in the US.

And why talk just about death. Maybe in­stead we can give a nod to the emerg­ing field of he­do­nis­tic psy­chol­ogy and talk about hap­pi­ness right here and now. Why not ride down the hill with the wind in your hair and go on long bike rides through the town and coun­try­side and eat at din­ers and swim in rivers or go raid dump­sters at mid­night and ride through the streets stuff­ing rolls in your mouth and howl­ing at the moon. So what if cars have to go a lit­tle slower, and you have to keep your wits about you to avoid the right turn­ers and cell phone talk­ers on your morn­ing com­mute. At least you ar­rive awake, and full of en­ergy, re­turn home with the stress burned off. So I can’t wait to see where my par­ents go next. Es­pe­cially if it’s on the road.