“One thing that keeps me safe on the roads,” David told me over tea at Elliot’s Fair Grounds one night, “is I assume all drivers are trying to kill me.”

On bike the morning commute goes from a grind to a grind of gears.

David is compact, about five foot six, with muscled calves, a narrow build, and a soft round face that makes him look younger than his 27 years. He still occasionally gets carded at R-rated movies, in spite of, or maybe because of, the unconvincing tuft of goatee that he’s growing. When he moved to Hampton Roads from Arizona two years ago, gas prices had topped four dollars a gallon. He was finding his commute from Portsmouth to Virginia Beach more and more expensive. He looked for ways to save money.

He might not have had a lot of money, but David did own a 50-pound beach cruiser. Knowing the price of saving a few dollars a week would be putting his body in danger in this very car-centric culture we have in Hampton Roads, David decided he’d start cycling to work.

David knew he couldn’t just get up an hour early and start peddling. Before his first ride, he drove the route to find the best paths. He also researched the laws of Virginia governing bicycles. He read The Art of Urban Cycling for tips on how to handle yourself in the streets to avoid problems with drivers and the roads. He purchased a helmet, lights, a repair kit, and even borrowed a portable video camera (Hello Kitty edition) from his wife. His final route included a ferry ride, a cycle through downtown Norfolk, and a long ride along Virginia Beach Boulevard.

In his first month of daily cycling, David lost 15 pounds. He found it exhilarating and liberating to be free from cars. He felt he had conquered the problem, but not just the money issue that had led him to commuting by bike.

Without trying to, David had used cycling to work to solve a problem he never even knew he had. Now, he was free.

But freedom has it’s price. In 2007, the year David started riding, government statistics show that in all of Virginia there were 839 cyclists injured in collisions with cars; seven of those cyclists died. (In 2008, fourteen cyclists died in bike-car crashes.) David might be riding his beach cruiser still, if he hadn’t had his first serious accident in August, just a month after he had started regular commuting.

He was cruising down a sidewalk in Virginia Beach (he had not yet learned to confidently ride on busy roads). He saw a Hummer stopped at a cross-street in front of him, waiting for the traffic to clear. David attempted to cross the street just as the the Hummer accelerated into a right turn. He didn’t even have time to apply the brakes before he smashed into the side of that iconic vehicle. He broke his left hand and scraped up his arm, his knee and his face, and his bike was smashed beyond repair. He happened to be riding with a video camera attached to his bike. There’s a clip of the accident available on his blog.

Who wouldn’t have quit then, gone back to the sensible, safe, conventional commute in a car? David. Within a few days, thanks to Craigslist, he had a new bike and he was riding it decked out in a wrist cast. Actually, David had already been planning an upgrade, even before the crash. He’d been doing research, and had decided to reach for a “fixie,” a breed of bike that’s been an underground standard for urban cyclists for the past few decades. A fixie, or fixed-gear, has no deraileur and no freewheel on the rear hub. In other words, if the wheels are moving, your feet are moving. They are revered for their simplicity and stylishness.

They are also, for the unfamiliar, difficult to ride. The first time you get going down a hill with a lot of momentum, there is a tendency to freak out when you realize you can’t stop moving your legs. Some people panic and crash at this point, or just get off and trade the bike for one with gears and a freewheel. But David stuck with it, posting videos of himself learning to “track stand,” or balance the bike upright, without moving forward or back, for minutes at a time.

Shelden Brown, a guru of fixed-gear riding, explains, “there is an almost mystical connection between a fixed-gear cyclist and bicycle, it feels like an extension of your body.” Since switching to his fixie in 2007, David has never looked back.

In 2008, David got a job at the Norfolk Naval Base, doing computer support as a civilian employee. He kept biking to work, but he needed a new route. His schedule requires him to be at work before the Portsmouth Ferry even starts running. He now drives to Ghent at 5am every day, parks at the Dairy Queen, and rides the rest of the way to work.

On a warm, humid Monday morning I head to the parking lot behind the Dairy Queen on Colley Avenue in Norfolk. Light pinks the clouds to the east like blood seeping into a white handkerchief. Raucous little birds dart through the nearby trees, overjoyed to hear each other singing before the cacophony of cars pushes them into the background.

I’ve ridden my bike here, in the dark, to wait for David Buchta, so I can join him on his bike commute to work, to try a bit of what he’s been doing nearly every day for the past two years.

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