I've never had a driver's license.  I never wanted one.  I hate cars.  Too much responsibility.  If I was driving one of those giant homicidal wrecking machines around, other people would definitely get killed.  I don't wanna kill people!  That's not good.  So, I ride a bike instead.  The only person gonna get killed if my bike-riding goes astray is me.  I can live with that. Every once in a while someone will ask me, "So, why no car?  You've got a DUI or something?" Charming question... Douche.  I'm happy to say," Nope, I've never even had one drink and gotten behind the wheel of a car in my entire life!"  That's not from a lack of drinking, however, just a lack of driving.  I've only been behind the wheel of a car, like, a 1/2 dozen times or so in my entire 47 years on Earth.  I just hate driving.  But I love drinking!  Well, I used to...  but that's a different story. The truth is that the #1 reason I didn't get my driver's license at 16 years old like everyone else in my high school is because I started drinking...  a lot...   at 15 years old.   Thanks to public service programs like MADD and the like, I was well aware of the dangers of drunk driving, so I decided to just be drunk.  No driving for this guy! That didn't stop me from being a passenger in no fewer than 4 alcohol-related automobile accidents before graduating from high school, but at least I wasn't the driver!  Ooftah.  I would feel horrible if I had been responsible for injuring, or killing one of my high school buddies.  Take it from my one friend _____ who went to jail after rolling his car into a ditch while shit-faced, killing my other friend _____ who was passed out in the back seat.   Are you kidding me?!?  One life gone, and other changed forever.  Booo.  Kids, do NOT drink and drive.  I mean that. For many hundreds of years I was a city-dwelling, bus-riding, subway-taking, multiple block walker.  I lived in cities with great rapid transit systems and condensed, multi-use neighborhoods that had just about everything I needed within a few mins of my apartment.  It was great!  Fuck cars!  They just seemed to cause my friends a lot of grief and rage, and cost them ass-loads of money at all times.  I'll never forget one friend telling me, without any sense of irony at all: "The number one problem this city faces today is parking." Wow.  What a fucking mind-set.  This was in Boston, which has, y'know, rapes, and murders, and domestic abuse, and child abuse, and homelessness, and drugs, and violence, and theft, and graft, and...  the list goes on and on and on.  Yet, parking  is "the number one problem" according to my friend the driver. Fucking car people.  The universe revolves around them.  Did you read about Boston's "Big Dig" project?  It was the World's largest and most costly cluster-fuck in the history of humanity.  For real.  Wiki that shit and you'll see.  Traffic was an issue, everyone agreed, so the city planners decided to open the roads up...  to more traffic.  Boston laid itself bare, splayed its legs, and begged to be further infested and violated by a never-ending, ever-increasing stream of poisonous metallic insects.  Terrific.  There's a saying, "nature abhors a vacuum."   So does car culture.   The space created by the Big Dig was instantly filled by cars, and trucks, and fat dudes on 3-wheeled motorcycles.  Traffic remains a huge problem in Boston to this day. Well, of course it does, you fucking idiots!!!   You invited more of it, and you got more of it.  Cars are like vampires.  If you invite them in, you're doomed.  The more you invite, the more blood-sucking monsters you have to contend with.  No thanks.  I'd rather un-invite them.  I've got this crazy idea that we should be moving towards a world with fewer and fewer cars in it.  It's a dream I have.  A beautiful, impossible, pointless dream, that I need to abandon right now, because it is never going happen. OH WELL.  FUCK YOU.  I LIKE TO BIKE. Biking is clean, quiet, affordable, healthy, and enjoyable.  It gets me where I need to go, and it burns calories while I do it.  One of the reasons I can eat like a pig as The Food Critic, and remain fit as a fiddle, is that I ride my dang bike to and from just about every restaurant I go to.  Mmmm...  Pig...  Fiddle...  BBQ...  Hungry now. Of course I rode a bike when I was a kid, but I first started biking again in 1999, when I moved to Cape Cod, and realized that I was trapped at home in a town without sidewalks, let alone any kind of transit system.  Huh...  I thought about driving a car...  for a minute...  and then I bought a bike.  Best move ever. When I moved back to Chicago after the Cape, I was pleased to find the streets to be very flat and the system to be very grid-based.  Nice!  Riding a bike in Chi-town was easy-peezy lemon squeezy.   Although dangerous as fuck, with the giant trucks, and buses, and crazy drivers everywhere.  I nearly got crushed on a bridge once.  It wasn't until I moved to Asheville, however, that I got hit by my first car... and then my second car...  then a 3rd...  plus a car door.  WTF, Ashetown?  Can you pay some fucking attention, please? The worst was the car door.  That fucked me the fuck UP.  Holy shit.  BAM!!!   Surrrpri-ise!   Car door: Full-force, into my right shoulder as I zipped downhill on Broadway past Henco Reprographics.  Me:  Laying in the middle of the street, swearing a blue a streak, surrounded by a large circle of free condoms I had just grabbed and stuffed into the pocket of my hoodie, while two oldsters from the hinterlands got out of the car and apologized profusely.  I was NOT happy. "Holy fuuuuuuuck....  ohhhhhh...   fuuuuuuck....  holy fuck...  that fucking hurts...  what the fuck???  You gotta fucking loooook!" Bikey was fine, thank God, and I was only bruised and battered for a week or so.  I think Ma and Pa Hinterlander were more traumatized than me. Pa (later that night): "We damn near got kill't by a horrible little man in Asheville today!  I opened my car door and, BAM, a bunch of Hellfire, rubbers, and curse words came flyin' out of him, right at us!  I ain't never going back to that cesspool of sin for as long as I live." Ma: "Amen, Sweet Jesus." Anyhoodles...  (I know you guys love it when I say "anyhoodles.") I remain undeterred by the crappy drivers and car door surprise parties in Asheville, and I will continue to brave the streets of Downtown on the newest incarnation of Bikey.  OG Bikey got crushed by a ladder...  different story for another time...  New Bikey is a beaut.  I got him at Youngblood on Merrimon Ave.  Those are my go-to guys for bikes and bike service.  When I need a flat fixed, or a tune-up, or a new bike, I go to Youngblood.  When I need to find my stolen bike, I go to Hearn's. True story...  thaaat I'll tell another time. I have lot's of true tales of my adventures with my best pal ever: A tiny, black, two wheeled friend named Bikey. I'm happy that Asheville Grit has given me a platform to tell my stories.  I'll be back next month with more! Unless I get killed on my bike.      - Stu Helm