The extent of my kinship to the bicycle became apparent a dozen years ago when I found myself in New Orleans for a few days with my bike, my only companion.
Setting out from the hotel in early afternoon like a pair of old chums, my cycle and I explored for the first time together a city I had known only from taxicab rides. As an experiment, I decided to give my bike its head, as if it were a horse. Some childhood fantasy, perhaps.
My goal was to find Tipitina’s, a famed New Orleans music club that I had visited just once before, at night, and whose location was unclear to me.
Amazingly, after riding 45 minutes or so, I arrived at Tipitina’s, having traveled in a fairly direct route.
My bicycle’s newfound navigational abilities gave me goose bumps as I wheeled inside a quiet Tipitina’s to order a po’ boy sandwich and an Abita beer. To further test my machine’s powers, I resolved next to try to find another music club that I had heard about, but never visited.
The only thing I knew for certain about the Maple Leaf Bar was that it wasn’t on Maple Street.
Again, by riding in a seemingly random fashion, turning down this street and up that one, whichever my bicycle preferred, we found the Maple Leaf in less than an hour. n As I pushed my bicycle inside, I noticed another bike leaning against a wall, and I parked mine next to it. At the bar the television was showing a Cubs game from Wrigley Field. We’d found a home away from home.
It wasn’t the only time my bicycle has helped reveal new insights in unfamiliar territory. Together we’ve rolled across rural countryside in Ireland, Denmark and Holland, and experienced rush hours in Dublin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
On these trips and others like them, riding a bicycle provides an immediate conversational launching point with local people in a way that seldom happens to tourists who travel in automobiles, trains or buses.
“You’re all lunatics!” was the greeting bestowed upon me and three friends last month as we entered a pub in a small Irish village after riding several miles in a chilly rain. We didn’t disagree, but did spend a pleasant hour drying ourselves and talking with local people about weather, cycling and why we enjoy taking the road less traveled.
I can appreciate the Irish barman’s questioning why seemingly intelligent adults would chose to gad about the countryside on two wheels when we obviously could afford four wheels with a heater to keep us warm and a roof to keep us dry.
But I am not alone in my affinity for bicycles. Despite its obvious disadvantages as a transportation mode, the bike’s popularity persists. After virtual banishment that began with the motor craze of the 1920s, adult bicycling began a resurgence 30 years ago that continues into the new century. Even Mayor Richard M. Daley plans a cross-country pedaling tour.
There’s no single way to explain adult bicycling’s enduring capacity to charm; it comes in so many flavors.
Some people cycle for their health, finding it more congenial to pedal than to run or swim. Others use their bikes to run errands in the city because of the convenience of parking and maneuvering through crowded streets.
But most adult bicyclists ride for the sheer joy of it. That’s certainly my motivation. Oh, I’m happy to see studies suggesting that cycling is good for my health, but I don’t pedal in hopes of warding off a heart attack.
I do it for the thrill of propelling myself at 20 miles an hour, a feeling akin to flying near the ground. It’s a fully addictive high.
Strapping my feet to the pedals not only increases the machine’s efficiency, but also renders the bicycle an extension of myself. It’s something like putting on the mythical seven league boots because it enables me to traverse 25 miles in the time it would take a pedestrian to walk five.
It’s easy to sail from Lincoln Park to Edison Park to Wicker Park all before lunch, reducing travel within Chicago almost to the scale of a large village.
Most Saturdays I ride with friends, traveling 40 or 50 miles through Chicago neighborhoods as we talk with one another, as if on a very fast, very long walk together.
During the week, I ride alone, some 20 miles or so daily, commuting to work by taking circuitous routes.
Riding by myself is a transcendental experience, a personal type of meditation. The steady turn of my pedals provides a continuing demand upon my body while the traffic and ever-changing scenery keep me alert.
But just beneath the activities of my muscles and senses, my mind is unleashed. As I pump through Chicago’s streets, I recall past trips here and elsewhere, I contemplate future journeys, and I think about stories I will write.
Unlike more traditional meditation, which begins and ends in the same spot, at the end of my reveries I have arrived at my destination, often with new ideas ready to apply to the day’s challenges.
I’m not alone in praising cycling’s intellectual benefits. Albert Einstein said his ideas about relativity theory came to him as he rode his bike. Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher, disliked the monotony of walking, preferring to bicycle because he could vary the pacing and rhythm of his travels.
The bicycle presents its rider with endless experiential possibilities. There’s a quiet cruise down a rural lane, a breakneck scramble through muddy off-road paths festooned with rocks and tree stumps, or a giddy architectural tour through downtown Chicago.
Bicycles come in all manner of designs meant to best suit the rider’s needs. The fat-tired mountain bikes are made for rigorous riding off-road or traversing slushy city streets in winter. Thin-tired racers require well-paved surfaces to glide along with an elegance that makes it feel as though you’re not even pedaling.
Cycling is nearly as accessible as walking and almost as cheap. In short, it is easy to argue that the invention of the bicycle was the apex of human technological achievement. These are machines that cause no harm to the environment, deliver great delight to their riders and actually confer health benefits upon users.
One can expound at length on the merits and joys of cycling and never surpass the eloquence of John F. Kennedy, who said it all in just 10 words: “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.”
