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I used to live downtown in a concrete box similar to all the other concrete boxes that made up an apartment complex when stacked in columns and rows. Isolated in this cell of mine, I could only find one outlet through which to explore a world worth exploring: my computer and a T1 line that came free with my apartment.

Today I live in a house on the Eastside. My computer is still in a box, and the thought of exploring the universe through my roommate's dialup modem sounds ridiculous. I have a much better means by which I can engage the world: my bicycle. I'm free, the entire town is mine. I can visit friends 5 miles away without thinking about bus-fare or gas-mileage.

Some days, the endorphine rush of a long peddle-trek is all that keeps me from wanting to tear my heart out of my chest at the end of the day, a feeling I frequently experienced while subjugated to apartment living. No more will I feel isolated from my world like that. I am free. Nothing can stop me. I will laugh at the cars around me as I swerve in and out of them going the wrong way down a one-way street. I will kick the shit out of your SUV just for fun if you even think of touching your horn.

You will get angry when your over-consuming vehicle is cut off by my zero-emission machine, but not because I've slowed you down. Oh no, those lights are timed. There's no way you're going to reach your destination any faster than the traffic signals dictate. You will become angry because you know that you are bound to the box that drives you around and the over-priced insurance and payments that come with it. In the meantime, I'm taking shortcuts through parks and parking lots and making lanes that your status symbol could never sqeeze into. Your sense of upward-mobility could not possibly be more violated.

And that is the distraction that WILL cause you to slosh your latte all over your new Abercrombie and Finch getup. And this is the reaction that gives me the motivation to peddle up that next hill.