A rewarding ‘exercise’ in self-deception
Petrolhead Bruce Robertson teaches vehicle engineering at the University of Canterbury yet is often seen on a bicycle. He explains his commute.
It’s been said that nobody preaches like the converted, so let’s put that to the test. I’m one of them. A rego-dodging freeloader on your road, to be saluted with an angry honk and a wave of the fist. Yes, I’m a cyclist. Let the sermon begin.
Anyone who’s been to Napier will know that it’s more or less flat, with lonely Bluff Hill in the middle of it and some hills around the periphery. I grew up in Napier and, in what I thought was a karmic payback for unspeakable crimes in a past life, my family lived on one of those hills. The views were great, but riding my bike uphill every day after school was an extortionate and entirely unacceptable price to pay.
Deliverance came by way of a Morris Mini and a driving licence at age 15. I swore out loud that I’d never suffer a bicycle again.
I was flush with cash thanks to a part-time job pumping petrol. Cars were it, then. They earned me money, consumed my money, and shielded me from the sweating, puffing indignity of the bicycle.
Fast forward another ten years and my automotive dreams were flourishing. I studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Auckland and was now employed in Manukau as a Product Design Engineer by Ford Motor Company. We were one of the last holdouts of automotive design and manufacturing in the country, and I was as proud as a peacock to be part of it.
Then something happened that was even more relentless than the steamroller of manufacturing globalisation.
The factory was OK (it held out another five years before going to China), but I had a realisation that would change everything.
I started to get a sense of my own mortality. Specifically I could feel my arteries clogging more with every one of the uncountable minutes that I commuted in my car every day.
My lifestyle was bad: long commute, long days at work, long commute, repeat. Fortunately, I didn’t waste all my commuting time making false diagnoses of my cardiac condition.
I also applied myself to the problem, in a rational engineering way, of how I could overcome this entirely imaginary (but certainly worsening) condition. Exercise wouldn’t work, because I’m just too lazy to move without a productive reason. Then an epiphany struck: the bicycle!
If I commuted on a bike rather than in a car, it wouldn’t be exercise, it would be transport. If I wasn’t doing exercise then laziness would be no impediment. My brain and my body agreed on this fragile but convenient rationalisation. My grown-up engineer self told my long-gone 15-year-old self that there was a new sheriff in town, and he was pedalling.
Even good plans take time to realise, but patience is a virtue. Within a year I had moved my career along and accepted an exciting new job located in Christchurch, by chance nothing to do with cars. The day I went to pick up the keys for a rental house, the landlord mentioned he had a spare bike that he was leaving and I was welcome to use it if I wanted.
Fifteen years later and the number of times I have driven to work would be fewer than the number of minutes I spent driving each morning back in Auckland.
I ride about 15 kilometres every weekday. Usually I ride in the brilliant, occasionally Antarctic-like, Canterbury sunshine. I also ride in the rain. My favourite is to ride in the snow. I’ve even ridden during earthquakes and through rubble and ruins. Always I’m riding for transport, and my brain still isn’t aware any exercise has happened or it would almost surely put a stop to it.
I feel fit enough and my imaginary cardiology concerns have evaporated. At times these have been replaced with the fear of a car door opening in front of me.
Happily though, with the new dedicated cycleways spreading as though the Christchurch City Council has been over-run by the Dutch, my alternative fear is arising less and less.
With all this encouraging talk of cycling it might appear otherwise, but my green credentials are questionable. I now work at the University of Canterbury, mentoring students who are designing and building cars. I encourage them to build cars that are scarily fast. Some are cutting-edge electric, and some are turbocharged ozone-eating monsters. Some are so efficient they make a Toyota Prius look like an environmental calamity. It’s a matter of horses for courses.
So, do I preach like the converted?
It’s probably clear that I fail this test anyway. I really don’t feel like I’m converted at all.
The car is still it for me. Still does everything for me now as when I was 15.
I’m nuts for cars in a way that I have trouble explaining even to myself. If I see a Porsche 911 or a BMW M in the distance, I’ll pathetically pedal harder to catch it at the next lights just to hear the exhaust note.
But I still wouldn’t swap my saddle for the driver’s seat in either for my daily commute.
About the author: Bruce Robertson owns two 500hp petrol-burning cars and is the faculty adviser to the award-winning UC Shell Eco-marathon and UC Motorsport teams.
Deliverance came by way of a Morris Mini and a driving licence at age 15.