Welcome to the jungle.

My name is Kase Jackson. I am quite possibly the only 290-lb bicycle commuter in East Texas. I was born and raised here and recently moved back after a 2 1/2-year stay in the meth-addled tweaker Nirvana that is central California. There is but one positive thing I have to say about that ugly, diseased place and that is I started my bicycle commuting endeavor there. My goal is simple: Never drive a car when I can ride a bike.

I began bicycling as a way to lose weight, improve my general physical health and reduce stress. Apparently, this has been successful. My weight is down from an all-time high of 360 pounds, I certainly feel healthier and I haven't had the urge to climb a bell tower with a high-powered rifle in at least a month. Oh, I tried several different weight loss/exercise scemes over the years. There was the 24-hour gym where I could go and jiggle off the fat in the dead of the night when the rest of the general population was asleep. Of course, the rest of the general population eventually had the same idea and wound up jiggling away in there right next to me at two in the morning. There was the upscale gym in California with row upon row of gleaming exercise devices. In addition, there were always dozens of image-obsessed meathead roidasauruses hanging on the equipment jawing about whose junk they stuck their junk into the night before. I even tried simply walking on outdoor tracks. That loses its charm when the ambient temperature and humidity levels meet in the high 90's. Obviously, exercise does not endear itself to me. Nor does dieting, for that matter. With apology to the nice people over at the Quaker company, rice cakes are not food. Rice cakes are synthetic, marginally edible foodlike objects which taste like something that would get the food replicator repair guy on the USS Enterprise flushed out an airlock by his disgruntled shipmates in the dead of night. So I needed a form of exercise that was entertaining, solitary and burned enough calories to let me eat normal portions of normal food.

I started riding about two years ago. I bought an old, badly used Raleigh SC-7 from a coworker's kid for $55 and rode it like a rented mule for a year and a half before buying a brand new Giant Cypress DX. There have been problems, sure. I got so frustrated with a perpetually busted rear wheel on my Cypress that I stopped riding it for months at a time. For a while there, I didn't do anything but work and sit at home. But I always came back to the bike. I never went back to the gym or the track, but I eventually would find my way back on the bike. That's when I decided that bicycling was for me. It was great exercise, allowed me a relatively liberal diet and best of all, it was fun. Even in California, where the dominant color is 'dirt' and the most-heard songbird is a Mexican fighting cock. Moving back to East Texas took my riding enjoyment to an even higher level than it had been in California. With the exception of a few well-known tourist destinations, California is a wasteland. Especially the central valley. It is a brown, blasted, postapocalyptic dust bowl. An ugly place filled with ugly things and ugly people. There, I would just put my earbuds in, crank up the mp3s and zone out until I got to where I was going. I didn't want to think about where I was or what was going on around me. My time in California was dark. I was almost completely isolated from everybody. Every day was the same: I closed my eyes tight, turned the music up loud and tried to imagine myself somewhere, anywhere, but there. Here in Texas, it's a different story. I like this place I like the feeling of gliding silently through the living world. On a bike, you become an observer. When passing through neighborhoods, I hear television programs floating out from houses, halves of cell phone conversations about babydaddies from front porches and laughter from backyard barbecues. Farther out in the country, I hear cooing doves, hooting owls and the thumping rush of fleeing deer. It's an almost voyeuristic thrill. I zip through the world alone and relatively unnoticed, listening in on thousands of living creatures as I pass by. There is lush green all around me. I smell flowers and the spice of pine needles. And every crested hill just brings more beauty. Here, I have yet to listen to music while riding. Here, I want to be tuned in to what's happening around me. This is my place and I love it.