In 2016, I moved to suburban Atlanta. Suddenly, I vaguely wanted to buy an SUV. A lot of people had them, and the idea of sitting in a leather recliner while driving at or above everyone else’s eye level sounds nice. If you’re going to be a road warrior, you might as well drive a tank.

Instead, I bought a bike from the 1970s.

I’m legendarily cheap, and the idea of skipping out on tens of thousands and spending tens on Craigslist is cheap ($85, including spare tires and a helmet). But this purchase was more about what I want to aim for than what I want to skip out on paying for.

I wanted to be the kind of person that bikes to work.

Biking to work isn’t really a statement about the planet, nor is it about health. Breathing in the exhaust of idling traffic probably isn’t great for me. But as someone who spends life on a screen, I need some time to see things through air, not glass.

Instead of seeing the world from a climate controlled box, through glare resistant glass, I like feeling the air. Bugs could and do fly into my mouth. Once, early on in my bike commute, I hit a squirrel. Instead of pressing a pedal to burn some gas to fly up a hill, I like pressing pedals with my legs and burning muscles to inch up a hill.

There’s something good about it not being fast or easy. I know the hill better for the act of pedaling up it. I know my four and a half mile commute better. I treasure more arriving at work or arriving home when I’m a bit hot and out of breath from the getting there.