The first pair was silver. Their cute peek-a-boo openings often revealed a long-overdue pedicure.

Unlike most aspects of my life, I never planned for the once-shiny shoes to set my reputation on a path less traveled. Like a drive-through coffee shop makes caffeinating easier, so did pedaling in my heels. For a decade, every work night ended by selecting my business casual for the following day, rolling my attire into a towel, stuffing the wardrobe into a bike bag and topping it ever so sweetly with a pair of heels. I set the bell curve on time management because I carefully planned each day with enough time to arrive at my destination, unpack the bike, control the sweat and don the heels.

Logistics overload became my new normal, but then I got lazy, so I started riding in heels.

I can’t remember the last time I rode in my high heels and didn’t have a stranger comment on them. It’s what I’m known for; it’s unusual. And that’s the part that I love.

At Mixte, we’re in the business of empowering nice companies because we want riding in high heels to be the new normal.

We want to see our streets overrun with two-wheeled commuters rolling from destination to destination.

We want skirts on bikes to be an everyday occurrence so that the San Diego Bike Coalition can claim it made “Life by Bike” in San Diego.

We want clean air, walking and biking paths and public transit for every resident of San Diego County so that Environmental Health Coalition doesn’t have to exist.

We want plentiful and clean water for all so that San Diego Coastkeeper and Orange County Coastkeeper have to develop new missions.

We want workplace wellness, everyday health and fitness, and preventative healthcare so common that American Council on Exercise has to define a new 30-year vision.

We want so much compassion in our region that 8700 hundred pairs of shoes reduce to zero shoes representing the number of homeless on our streets every night.

It’s energizing and motivating to work for the region’s most-needed causes. And it’s rewarding to see the successes in their communications, just like it’s fun to hear how impressive it is to bike in high heels. But at the end of the day, I wish the good and essential work of our clients were the new normal. I wish our community were so healthy and so compassionate that clean air, walking, biking, healthy living and clean water were a given.

I wish we all rode in heels.