Awesomeness...
I got a summer job with BEST (Better Environmentally Sound Transportation), an alternative transportation advocacy non-profit organisation. I'll be doing public outreach stuff, which looks like it'll mean hanging out at outdoor festivals around the city and talking to people, getting them to think about trying to get around by biking or otherwise avoiding use of the car.
It's also a great position to be in if I want to write my thesis on urban cycling and reconfiguring the city to be more livable. I think I have a pretty good sense of what people see as the barriers to just getting on their bike and getting around that way (i.e. sharing the road with cars feels intimidating and dangerous), but it'll be interesting to carry conversations further and see where it leads, whether that attitude is truly intractable in some people, or if it can be overcome by (nearly) everyone. I live with and hang out with mostly bike-friendly people, so if I'm really serious about writing about cycling advocacy, it'll be good to have to argue the case to non-bike people.
The truth is, I haven't really been going to a whole lot of bike-themed events here in Vancouver - people here are a lot more immersed in their scene, a whole community has been built around bikes, but it's on a level where they really identify with their bikes. I'm not like that - what I like about bikes is the social aspect, the fact that cities that are conducive to biking are usually also a lot more livable (at least in the Western context - the heavy presence of bikes in cities like Shanghai and Delhi and Bombay is due to the fact that large segments of the populations could never afford a car). I'm not so interested in the technical, gear-headed side of things, although I can hold my own in a conversation that strays that way, and also not so much into the competitiveness or athleticism that a lot of bike people are into. I just want to be able to cruise around town at a leisurely pace, dreamily experiencing the city, not having to think of it as exercise. I've never been truly single-minded about any one passion, or comfortable joining any little group wholeheartedly... I've always been sensitive to the tyranny of the group, and prefer charting a course that is always slightly off and to the side of the crowd.
But this is good - this job is just what I want to be doing right now. And I can even see how to parlay it into a more stable and long-term position with BEST after finishing up my master's - how could they refuse somebody who will have worked for them, and done deep research on exactly what they're advocating for?
Yes, life is good... it should be a fun, healthy and happy summer... heh.