Op-Ed: When fear meets technology, your evening walk ends up on video
I’ve had many days spent walking or riding my bike without a phone. I’ve also had plenty of occasions where I ended up having my phone to call someone who couldn’t make it over there. The one common denominator in both of these scenarios is that these are very rare day-to-day occasions, and when I did get my phone out of my pocket, I always made an effort to keep it out of my hands.
I have very rarely experienced phone in a pocket situations. The first time I had one of these situations where it was completely legitimate to do so was at the beginning of the summer 2016 for a cycling adventure I was planning to embark on together with my husband, Steve. We had been together for a few years by then and had already embarked on a number of weekend adventures. At that time, we had a plan to cycle from Boston to Cape Cod, with a stop in New York on the way back. Steve had been looking forward to it for some time, but I was a little hesitant. I wasn’t as keen on the idea of riding a bike with a man who wasn’t my boyfriend as I was to seeing how much I loved cycling.
We made the plan with some other people to do the trip without the boys. It would have involved taking a bus to New York, but after our discussion about the logistics, neither of us wanted to do that. My husband, however, had his bike and we met in Cambridge, where he showed up with my phone in his pocket. We decided to do the ride as planned, and it was the last day of the trip.
I didn’t expect to be walking the course that summer day. The plan was for us to make a stop in Manhattan, as the ride would take us northward through Brooklyn, Queens and then back up into the Bronx. I walked my bike in Manhattan, then Steve walked on my bike from there into Queens, then on to Central Park. I rode my bike through Brooklyn. I rode my bike with Steve across Queens, then down through the Bronx, into Manhattan, and then back onto my bike for the return trip to Cambridge.
The first time I ever rode my bike through Manhattan, I was surprised. It didn’
