Last night was a quiet, drizzly Sunday evening in the Ville de Luxembourg. I commuted home carrying a snowboard. Not apologetically. Not as a prop. I held it surfer-bicyclist-style: one hand steady on the steering-&-brakes, and the other doing what hands have always done when humans move freely through cities . . . improvising.
In the cargo-box of my Riese & Müller Load75 sat two unlikely passengers: a giant stuffed grizzly teddy-bear and Youth4planet’s Climate Action Tiger.
Unconventional? Perhaps. Unsafe? No. Illegal? Also no.
What it was, unmistakably, was visible. Timing the lights, I rolled through green-light after green-light: karma doing what karma does when you move at butterfly-speed. I passed neighbors sealed inside their cars: their expressions somewhere between confusion and disbelief. Two bus-drivers noticed too. They slowed, stared, smiled . . . the kind of double-take that tells you something in the script is new.
That is the point. Why do we reduce “active mobility” to commuting with a coffee cup? We congratulate ourselves for this modest victory, and then we stop imagining.
Communities were never meant to be navigated empty-handed. They were meant to carry life.
At Aspen Skiing Company, as one of hundreds of certified PSIA – AASI Professional Instructors . . . I taught Joy + Critical Thinking + Respect. The mountain taught a simple lesson: gear belongs with the body, not locked away from it. A snowboard is not luggage. A tennis racket is not freight. A cello, a yoga mat, a baguette longer than your patience: these are extensions of who we are, not inconveniences to be hidden in a trunk.
Cars excel at this kind of forgetting. Cargo-eBikes do the opposite.
Cargo-eBikes remind us that movement and meaning can share the same vehicle. That a trip through your own neighborhood can be playful, uncoventional, and still entirely functional. That when people see something unexpected done calmly and safely, it unsettles assumptions far more effectively than any awareness campaign.
This about reclaiming “permission.” Permission to commute as yourself.
Permission to bring your passions into public space.
Permission to remind our communities that they are not logistics corridors, but shared stages.
Here is a small proposal: the next time you bicycle to work . . .
Carry your tennis racket.
Carry your skateboard.
Carry your violin.
Carry something that makes no sense in a car, and perfect sense on a bicycle.
Not for performance.
Not for Instagram.
Do it for visibility.
Because “culture” changes when people see new normalities pass quietly by at 20 km/h.
Peanut butter and chocolate.
Some combinations don’t need defending. They just need to be tasted once for the logic to become obvious.
Questions? Ideas? Chat with C.A.T (“Climate Action Tiger”) and Christian: christian@youth4planet.org +352 621613164
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Further Reading:
How To Carry a Cello on a Bicycle https://www.mundomusicgear.co.uk/blogs/latest-news/how-to-carry-a-cello-on-a-bicycle?srsltid=AfmBOoqnyBAskiJn70bGKtP-Wu8x1Q8IZq7tKf4z6SA71XCg0g93da9z
Bicycle Snowboard Rack available on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1604164273/bike-snowboard-rack-easy-mount-snowboard
How To Carry a Tennis Racket/Backpack on a fold-able Brompton Bicycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFn33n0aSqM
Bicycling with Butterflies – Active Towns episode 261 (season 8): https://www.activetowns.org/2024/09/19/bicycling-with-butterflies/
