We want you to ride your bicycles

Our View

Do you see all that free parking next to the high school? All those open spaces practically in the building’s doorways? That bike rack is just begging to be filled.

Very few students ride their bike to school. That really should change. The kind weather that has shone on Cedar Falls for the past weeks means you could actually look forward to coming to school in the morning, feeling a pleasant breeze and the sun and listening to the birds chirp instead of sheltering yourself with nausea-inducing thud subwoofers and air conditioning.

Taking your bike to school will mean you can probably wake up later and leave your house later and still make class on time because you’ll have no concerns about getting to school early in order to finding adequate parking. If you are one of the students who begins the hectic search for parking near the high school 10 minutes before the first hour bell, you could easily leave with an easy alternative for transportation — and still arrive 10 minutes before the bell.

We feel terrible when we step out of our cars every day in the car-filled parking lot and see another student cruise her bike past us. It’s a feeling of guilt because we know, given the distance between our houses and the high school, many of us could just take our bikes instead. Also, we become all that more self-conscious about our personal contributions to pollution and climate change — bikes are carbon-free, after all, and with a fine tune-up, will run unlimited miles. For free.

It’s stylish. It’s healthy. It’s fun. Do it and count the pluses.