Nationally and in towns large and small, bicycle sales have been skyrocketing over the past six weeks. Just to pick one of countless stories about this trend, let’s go to Missoula:

Missoula Bicycle Works reports sales and service calls are up.

Although they’ve seen an uptick in bike service, they are also seeing new faces too.

“It seems like there’s a lot of people who have decided this is going to be their year to get back on the bike go and explore local roads and trails,” Missoula Bicycle Works owner Alex Gallego said.

They say more parents are coming in with their kids to keep them busy while out of school.

Will this significant lifestyle/transportation change be lasting, or will there just be that many more unused bicycles eventually gathering dust crammed in garages and closets around the country, and more to the point of this blog, around Albuquerque?

Is this a craze temporarily forged in crazy days, or are we at the start of a fundamental re-thinking of what it means to get around our neighborhood and city? Which gets me to this photo/tweet:

Will this young woman grow up in a neighborhood/city in which she continues to feel comfortable cycling on its streets? Is this bike just her first of many, or her one and only?

We have a chance here to undo decades of physical and psychological discomfort and make riding our streets sane again through her many, many upcoming decades.

We have a chance.