Editorial: Happy National Bike Month

May is National Bike Month and we here at East-West Brothers Garage encourage everyone to join us in celebrating by using your bikes in place of your car for some of the more mundane tasks in your daily life. If you can safely do so, consider using you bike to commute to work or to go to the store to grab groceries. Grab a ride from someone to get to school? How about riding a bike instead? Heading to a buddy's place to watch the game over some beer and pizza? Actually, consider calling a cab for that one.

The bike is no longer a purely recreational means of transportation. Yes, there are many people who do ride on the weekends, decked out in full kit (I am certainly a part of this group), but there are also lots of people who use their bicycles as a primary means of transportation. In fact, it is likely that many of those people who ride hard on the weekends also ride a bike during the week. Whether that is commuting to work or running errands, many people in cities all over the country have discovered the joy of riding a bicycle. Half the fun is figuring out how you can get everything you need where you need to go without relying on a single drop of gasoline to do it. Best of all, do it enough and you can enjoy the added health benefits as well, such as weight loss, better cardiovascular health, and those rock hard calves that everyone will be envious of.

Of course, please be safe, especially if you do not ride regularly. Make sure to wear a helmet, even if your state technically does not require it for adults and make sure that if you are expecting to ride later in the day to get proper lighting for both the front and rear of your bike. Follow the rules of the road and make sure you share the road with everyone else. For more information on bicycle safety, check out your local bicycle advocacy group. In the Boston area, it is the Boston Cyclists Union.

For this month, we will be making our own effort to take part. We will revisit some of our more bike focused articles and will even be focusing our car reviews around some cars that are popular with cyclists. To kick things off, I have already logged 39 miles this month on the bike and I hope to have the chance to log many more. Throughout the month, I will be updating our Facebook page with my experiences from the road and hope that you too can share yours in the comments below or via Facebook.

Happy National Bike Month and we hope you enjoy the ride!

Tags: bicycle, Bike Month, cycling