Thank you for riding with me

If you rode a bicycle today, then I wish to Thank You for riding with me.

Whether it was because a bicycle is your only mode of transport, or because you made a conscious decision to ride, or it just worked out that way, or for one of any number of reasons – your decision to cycle matters. Or, more precisely, your choice to not use a motorised vehicle (if that was an option for you) is what really matters.

When you’re ‘known’ to commute by bicycle, it’s not long before someone will feel impelled to tell you that your efforts in ‘saving the planet’ are worthless (whether or not that’s the main reason behind your decision to ride in the first place). “What difference will one person riding a bike make? It’s not going to change anything in our lifetimes anyway,” they’ll say.

Well, they’re wrong.

Consider this: one bee produces only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey over its lifetime (or to say it a different way, 12 worker bees will make 1 teaspoon of honey before they die). Yet there are jars and jars and jars of honey on the shelves in the supermarket.

Why? Because there are billions of bees across millions of hives working to produce that honey.

Although each individual bees’ contribution is so very small, would anyone suggest that a bee is worthless?!

In the same way that bees achieve more as a hive, so too does your choice of transport really matter. Because it’s not just about you. It’s about us, collectively.

You may only be contributing the equivalent of 1/12 tsp of honey to the global rescue jar, but when our ‘hive’ (i.e. the world) faces a major and increasing threat to life as we know it, everyone needs to chip in.

So… Thank You if you rode your bicycle with me today. And Thank You in advance if you’ll ride with me again tomorrow.

: )