His new-found love of cycling even led to a career change, going from a job in facilities management to full-time bicycle mechanic, with his own mobile workshop opening this month.

Initially he took the step as the biggest achievable way to reduce his carbon footprint. “I tried being vegan and vegetarian and I can’t personally do it. I need protein and I like fried chicken.”

Part of the motivation was for his future self to be able to front up to his three daughters, aged ten, 12 and 14, and say he’d done what he could to limit climate change.

“I had a real desire to be on the front line [fighting climate change]. I didn’t really know what the front line was, and I’m not going to join Greenpeace or Sea Shepherd, but I was watching people working in environmental science literally crying into spreadsheets every day.”

He says riding a bike offered a simple solution to a lot of tough questions. “Bikes just clicked.”

Although his original motivation for going car-free was to combat climate change, the experience changed his life in unexpected ways. “I initially wanted to ride bikes for perhaps idealistic reasons. But now I ride bikes because it’s fun and the planet-saving stuff is way down a list of residual benefits.”

He says it’s hard to quantify the benefits. “I am healthier, fitter, more adventurous, more self confident, and more aware of my actual physical capacity. I see the world in a whole new way.”

Living in Christchurch’s CBD makes it easier - as well as the access to Christchurch’s bike paths. But when he first tried to leave the car at home he was commuting to Rangiora for his job as facilities manager at Waimakariri District Council. “I was commuting an hour a day, 300 km a week.”

Hours in cars “wasted”

He says all those hours in the car felt wasted. “I was looking at the fuel cost and the time cost. We don’t count that time in our lives. By the end of the week, by the time you’ve done some kids’ sports and stuff, you’ve spent the best part of eight hours in a car.”

He wanted to ride to work but he thought there was “no way” he could ride 30 km and an e-bike seemed unaffordable. “I got a single-speed for $150. I thought: ‘I’ll try it and see.’”

The first time he tackled the 30 km ride to work was tough. “It took an hour and a half and I was a sweaty mess.” With the salvation of a shower at work, he made a goal to ride regularly.

Ironically the pandemic helped, with days working at home making the mix of biking to the office something to look forward to.

He steadily built his fitness and within a year took on a bikepacking tour on a cheap alloy Trek bike, covering 900 km and 10,000 m elevation in 10 days. He did the Little River Rail Trail, the Paparoa Great Trail and the West Coast Wilderness Trail, cycling to each of the rides and carrying everything he needed with him. “I’m still wondering how I did this ride. But the experience was incredible and has me hooked.”

Joining the cycling community

Cycling also led to new ways to get involved with the community. “I was riding more, breaking my bike more, and paying other people to fix it. It got expensive. I discovered RAD Bikes and fixing my own bike.”
 

RAD Bikes, short for “Recycle a Dunger”, offers weekly workshops, tools, and parts for those wanting to fix their own bikes. Through RAD he met long-time volunteer Ken Ching, owner of bike shop Action Bicycle Club. This led to his new-found love of bikes becoming not just an ongoing obsession, but a career as well. Ching gave Kong an opportunity to leave the desk job he says “slowly ate my soul” and he became a full-time mechanic.

He has switched up his working life again since then, but bikes are still firmly front and centre. As well as becoming workshop manager for RAD he recently launched his own business, BAD Bikes Workshop, with the tagline “for carbon-conscious people.”

Bicycles outside Christchurch's Riverside Market. PHOTO: Simon Kong

Fighting climate change one bike at a time

He enjoys the tactile problem-solving of working as a mechanic, and loves the feeling he is fighting climate change one bike at a time. “If I fix a bike and I hand it to you, you ride away. It’s happening in real time.”

As well as helping reduce carbon by getting people on bikes, he says RAD Bikes is trying to save as many bikes as possible from landfill. “My heart is really where RAD is at.”
 

RAD also works with Bike Bridge Christchurch, teaching refugees and migrants how to ride, and with BuyCycles, a Canterbury District Health Board project providing bikes for people with mental health conditions.
 

Kong also regularly blogs all things bicycle under the moniker Jimmy Kimchi on Facebook and Instagram. “You wouldn’t blog about driving around in a car but it feels fun and engaging to do that about a bike.”
 

He says he’s happy to have found a community of like-minded people through bikes. “People like me are a bit lost, asking ‘how do I deal with this crushing reality?’ It’s great for people to come to RAD with worries about climate change and do something about it.”
 

“Then we all have bikes and ride them and it’s hilarious! It’s all about having a really positive lifestyle.”
 

With this sense of community engagement, he is planning to run for Community Board in the next local body elections. “I hope I can make a difference that way.”
 

He says Christchurch is “incredible” to cycle around. “Within the four avenues I’m quicker than a car. To the edges of the city it’s not quite double time. But the return on that time is way more, even in the rain and freezing cold.”

At the moment his main bikes are a Radkutsche Rapid front box cargo bike and a DIY fixed gear bike “for street cred”. All his bikes are second hand apart from his cargo bike.
 

His younger daughters will happily travel in the cargo bike. “But the oldest refuses to be seen on or in or around a bike.”

“Bikes are the new techno”

Kong loves navigating the city using the rivers and the red zone, discovering places you’d never find travelling by car. “It’s such a different experience to being in the car - the way you navigate the city, conversations with the kids, and their experience of the city are all really different.”
 

He no longer enjoys being in a car.  “I’m bored, disengaged, and my anxiety is higher - which is funny as the risk of being on a bike versus in a car is higher.”

“We’ve built ourselves into a car-based world and that’s going to get harder to sustain. I wanted to get in early and figure out how you would do it.”

He says some days a bike ride is as good as, or better than, an overseas holiday. “There’s that feeling of exhilaration, being in the open and having a sense of space. The reasons we travel are to transform our sense of time and being. Being on a bike you can have those experiences daily.”

As a former rave DJ, Kong tells his old-school friends that "bikes are the new techno."

“The passion, creativity, excitement, expression and adventure that I found in dance culture, I have rediscovered riding a bike.”

“For me, bicycles have provided the capacity to address climate change on a practical daily basis within my own means and time. The best bit is that this is actually not even the best part of riding bikes: Riding bikes is the best part of riding bikes.”