In a town where you are what you drive, I don’t. Which implies, I suppose, that I’m not.

I can drive. And do when I have to. I’d just rather not. It’s a New Yorker thing probably, and after 20 years in LA, I should just shut up, eat my CPK “pizza” and drive. I should take the thrill of driving seriously and trade in my perfectly serviceable cars for ultimate driving machines.

Sorry, no. While most men my age pore over slick sports car brochures, I’ll have to find a non-fuel-injected way to assuage my midlife crisis. (My plan to preempt it by slowly venting disaffection since age 14 hasn’t worked at all.)

Good news: I’ll have plenty of time to think about it on my bicycle commute. That’s right, LA, I’m part of the solution now. Getting more exercise, producing less greenhouse. Don’t thank me…. Really, after all this planet’s done? Nothing rotates like Earth… and that Van Allen belt - crazy! Greatest planet in the Solar System, ladies and gentlemen…. ...It’s the least I can do. Besides, now my wife can drive our gas-guzzling Prius and I can save the penguins.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not squeezing my buns of steel into bike shorts; not stretching a brightly emblazoned Spandex jersey over my sinewy frame like some juiced-up Belgian. No special shoes, no clip-on pedals That’s cycling. That has allure like all things European. I’m biking. The only ones I’m impressing with my “wheels” are kindergartners looking to upgrade from their tricycles.

I’m all the more self-conscious because of my route: five miles from South Pasadena through San Marino and into Pasadena. I’m navigating some pretty exclusive real estate and I’m well aware that middle-aged dorks on bikes are part of what they’re looking to “exclude.”

But one day, riding past Cal Tech, it hit me like a ton of neutrinos (yes, they have mass). This is the land of make-believe. Tom Cruise isn’t a spy; Ryan Seacrest isn’t “talent.” So why couldn’t I - on my unglamorous bike, bespectacled, be-backpacked, pasty and helmeted - pass for a professor? A Caltech professor… yah! Image problem solved.

Now, when those lawyers and producers and investment bankers whiz past me in their finely tuned suspensia, for all they know, I’m an internationally renowned scholar in a field they’ve never heard of. I might be some shmuck leaning on the curb, panting… or maybe I’m a Nobel Laureate. Suck on that, Mr. 9 to 5!

And as you drive off, you’re regretting having picked on nerds like me at school. You’re reexaminging your whole cruddy suit and tie existence, the rat race, the toadying to the boss. While I - Einstein-like on my bike… am conquering cancer, perfecting cold fusion, transplanting flavor genes into supermarket tomatoes.

…Of course, if I had a shred of sense I’d have patented my Alzheimers cure or nanotechnology, rounded up some investment capital, floated an IPO with Bear Sterns, and pocketed a billion. Then I could be off in Marin County somewhere, driving something nice instead of riding to my cramped, dingy office on this piece-of-shit bike. Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!

by Toby Muller