I'm 52 and I often ride my bike to work. Had anyone told me when I was a kid that this was my future, I'd have laughed till my tires went flat.

Grown-ups didn't ride bikes. I have a hazy memory of my mother riding a bike one summer in the '60s. She just wanted exercise but her children couldn't have been more surprised had she bolted from her easy chair to do the twist. A few uncertain trips around the block brought enough puzzled looks from neighbors to persuade Mom to put the kickstand down forever.

Times change. Now it's patriotic to ride a bike and shield at least a few dollars from foreign oil shakedowns. Not only that, cycling to work may soon be worth as much as $20 a month to some workers, thanks to a new tax provision in the bailout bill.

Compared to tax breaks for mass transit and parking, this new perk looks merely symbolic in the national transportation scheme. Still, 20 bucks is 20 bucks, and Pittsburgh is fast becoming a cycling town, so let's take a look.

Earl Blumenauer, the bike-riding Democratic congressman from Portland, Ore., has been pushing a biking tax break for years. It's ironic that Senate leaders included it in the $700 billion bailout package with other tax credits, because Mr. Blumenauer voted against the bailout bill twice.

He didn't think the bill did enough to keep homeowners in their homes. It may not put many people on bicycle seats, either, but he sees it as a start toward transportation parity.

"It establishes the principle that people who burn calories instead of fuel ought to be entitled to something," Mr. Blumenauer said.

But it's a far cry from the expansive breaks for parking and mass transit.

Here at the Post-Gazette, a couple hundred people get those breaks each month. People turn in parking, bus and van receipts. A worker can claim up to $220 each month in parking expenses and/or up to $115 a month for riding the bus, the T or a van pool, but the total can't exceed $220.

Workers turn in their receipts at the end of the month and, in one of the following weeks, that amount of their pay is shielded from taxes. So, depending how much is shielded, the worker might see $30 or more in additional take-home pay.

Cycling is different. There are usually no receipts. Somebody who can't find a free place to lock up his bike isn't trying very hard. But the new law, which goes into effect in the 2009 tax year, wouldn't allow an employer to simply shelter from taxes $20 a month from a cyclist's pay.

An employer could pay the cyclists $20, tax free, above their pay each month and then deduct the payment as an expense from their federal corporate taxes. It's hard to imagine too many employers looking to add costs in this economy.

Even with the occasional receipts -- for tune-ups, a new seat, a new bike -- it appears employers would have to reimburse in addition to regular pay. And bike commuters would not be allowed to receive transit or parking benefits atop the bike benefit. For the many workers who cycle and ride buses, the more lucrative transit benefit would still be the way to go.

With all those restrictions, the estimated cost to the government is about $1 million a year for the bike exemption, a wisp of the nearly $5 billion for transit and parking exemptions.

It appears that cycling to work must remain its own reward. There may not be any bump in the paycheck, but the daily savings should be obvious enough.

Pittsburgh has quietly become a cycling town, by the way. It's not yet Portland or Minneapolis, and it will never threaten Shanghai, but the U.S. Census says that about 1.1 percent of workers who live in the city biked to the job last year. That put us 11th in the nation, as Bike Pittsburgh recently pointed out.

Put Pittsburgh's walking commuters together with its cyclists and none of those granola-eating, latte-drinking West Coast cities measure up. The census says 12 percent of city residents walk to work, which is second only to Boston. So our walking/biking quotient is 13.1 percent. I don't know where that ranks nationally, but it beats San Francisco (12.2 percent), Seattle (10.5) and Portland (8.3).

Put that in your Venti Mocha Frappuccino and slurp it. You won't need the receipt.