Relevant

If I tell a non cycling friend or neighbor that I rode my bicycle 25 or 30 miles, (40 to 48 km.) they are amazed. When I started cycling in England in the 1950s, ordinary working people would ride that far on a bike to get where ever they needed to be. It was their only means of transport.

I remember talking to an old man back in the 1970s. He spoke of riding his bike in the 1930s. He was a craftsman who made furniture, and once a week he would ride his bike from Worcester, England, to Stratford upon Avon, a round trip of fifty miles.

He would buy his materials, the wood he needed to make his furniture, and ride the 25 miles home with the lumber strapped to his bike, and to his back.

He told of one time he had a sheet of plywood tied to his back, and on the way home the wind caught it and lifted him from his bike and dumped him in the hedgerow.

A friend of mine from Charleston, South Carolina, near where I live now, told me how his grandmother would speak of her father, my friend’s great grandfather.

He took part in the American Civil War (1861 – 1865.) on the side of the Confederate Army. He was taken prisoner by the Northern Forces and held somewhere in Upstate New York. After the war he was released but not transported back. He walked over 900 miles (1448 km.) back to Charleston.

People will do whatever it takes to get where they need to be. When I was 16 years old, I rode my bike from Luton, just north of London, 90 miles (145 km.) one way and back the same day just to visit a bike shop in Birmingham. I remember the shop had a sale on tubular tires, and it seemed like no great feat at the time.

If an ordinary working man could ride 50 miles on a heavy roadster bike, then surely a trained racing cyclist on a lightweight bike could easily do four times the distance? Plus I rode with two other fit young cyclists. We shared the work load.

The 180 mile trip took us 12 hours. We set out at 5:00 am. and were back home that evening. Neither my friends nor I owned a car so we simply did what we needed to do, to get where we wanted to be, and back home again.

It was relevant to that time and era.

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Passion

Cycling is a passion, or rather, it can become one. Many people ride a bike, not all of them can be described as passionate about it. Passion is one of those words that is not easy to explain, one has to experience passion to know what it truly is.

Cycling becomes a passion when someone rides a bike for no other reason than to experience the joy of riding a bike. If you have a passion for something in life, you are truly living. Without passion, a person is simply existing.

Sometimes the passion is in owning the bike, or collecting and owning more than one bike. Working on the bike, looking at and admiring the bike. Sometimes this passion goes hand in hand with riding the bike, but not necessarily so. The two passions can exist separately, and even one without the other.

There is a fine line between ownership as a passion, and simple materialism. The only way I can speculate the difference. If the object you own brings you joy, it is a passion.  If it is owning the object that brings joy, it is probably materialism.  

To put it another way few people have a passion for driving anymore. Few people go for a Sunday Drive, as one would go for a Sunday Bike Ride. Driving is for the purpose of reaching a destination. Owning a nice car, (The object,) brings joy, but roads are too congested to really enjoy driving the car, for driving itself to become a passion.

People who say, “Cyclists should not be on the road because it is dangerous,” just don’t get it. It is like telling a surfer it is dangerous to go into the ocean, the surfer who is passionate about surfing is not going to stop.

It is not that cyclists and surfers are crazy, foolhardy, with little regard for their life. In fact, the opposite is true. If one has a passion for life, the last thing that person wants is to end it. On the other hand, if one cannot engage in their passion, they are no longer living anyway. Life becomes a pointless existence. 

Passion can include anger, especially if someone suggests I should not pursue my passion, which happens to be riding my bike on the road. It is a road bike after all, and just as a surfer must surf in the ocean, a road bike must be ridden on the road. 

Some will say, “You have a local bike path, why don’t you ride there?” Yes I am fortunate to have a paved Walk and Bike Trail just two miles from my home. It is 7 miles long, so 14 miles out and home. But after riding it many times, the monotony has got me itching to get out on the open road, and actually go somewhere.

On weekends I pick quiet country roads to ride where there is very little motorized traffic, and actually I prefer to deal with a few cars and trucks over the dog walkers and runners on the shared path.

Of course, they have a right to be there too, so I am not complaining. Some of these runners and dog owners may be following their own passion. 

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Ride the Long White Cloud

The indigenous Maori people of New Zealand named their island Aotearoa, which translated means “Long White Cloud.” New Zealand is actually made up of two main islands with a short 15 mile ferry ride between the North and South Islands.

The above video shows how one man, Cameron Nicholls rode the entire length of New Zealand from top to bottom, a distance of 1,451 miles (2,336 km.) Cameron completed the ride in 13 days. People have ridden the distance in much less time, but this was a ride taken at a pace that would be a challenge, but still allow the rider to enjoy the spectacular scenery on the way.

To make the ride even more challenging, it was completed in winter. “Why do that?” was my first thought, but then remembered some of my own winter rides in England, in atrocious weather conditions.  I suffered horribly at the time, but those are the rides I remember more vividly as time passes. Another plus was that the scenery in winter is even more spectacular.

Cameron has a 13 year old cousin undergoing treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, so the ride was also to raise money for the sister charities CanTeen New Zealand and CanTeen Australia. Thus raising funds and awareness for these organizations, who deal specifically with supporting young people affected by cancer.

The six and a half minute video is produced and edited extremely well, with a well-chosen musical soundtrack. Before you view, I suggest you click on the 4 arrows, bottom right next to the word “Vimeo.” This will take you to full screen mode, then start the video, and make sure your sound is on.

Enjoy, as I certainly did.

You can read Cameron Nicholls full account of the ride here.

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Riding my bike: Then and now

It’s taken me the best years of my life to reach the best years of my life. That statement is certainly true of cycling.

I find nearly all forms of exercise a chore, with the exception of riding my bike. Although I will agree that even that is not a pleasure when I am below a certain level of fitness. It becomes a pleasure when my level of fitness allows me to ride at a level where I am happy.

I remember in the 1980s living in Southern California, great weather, wonderful terrain, hills etc. However, I didn’t enjoy riding because the pressure of my business, didn’t allow me enough time to ever get fit enough to ride at the level I wanted to ride at that time.

It had not been many years since I had quit racing, and I still expected to ride at that level. Hammer up the hills is what was in my psyche told me, but my mind was making a promise that my body couldn’t keep. The result, I suffered horribly. It became a chore.

I still had that racing mentality, it wasn't about just enjoying a bike ride, it was all about how hard could I push my body. The competitiveness of beating, or even just hanging on to the wheel of someone at a level of fitness way above mine.

When I was racing the bike was simply a tool, a piece of equipment necessary to participate. Even training rides with others were unofficial races, always trying to be first to the top of a hill, or always having my front wheel ahead of the rider next to me. (Known as Half-Wheeling.)

Today, I have reached an age where I have nothing left to prove to myself or anyone else. Just to get out and ride two or three hours is an achievement in itself. I am content to ride without pushing myself to the point of exhaustion.

Speed is less important, just the distance I can cover. More miles equate to more time on the bike, and more cycling pleasure. I now remember what it was like to ride in my early teen years before I started racing.

For me cycling started out as a means of escape from my dysfunctional home life. I would stay out and ride for hours, and on weekends I would even cover close to a hundred miles at the age of thirteen or fourteen. All this on a Hercules Roadster with a Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub gear, the bike must have weighed around forty pounds.

Mostly I rode alone because none of my friends were willing to cover the distances I did. I grew used to, and even enjoyed riding alone. This still is the case today. Now, a ride on my bike is almost sacred. I enjoy social situations, and good conversations, but not while I’m riding.

Riding is still often my "alone time," I have few thoughts and it becomes a form of meditation. I am at one with the elements, the temperature, the wind, even the rain on occasions. I am at one with the terrain, up or downhill, the road surface, smooth or rough.

Lastly, I am at one with my bike, it becomes an extension of my body. The closest thing to human flight without actually leaving the ground.

It is still not about the bike, it is about riding the bike and all that goes with it.

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Enforcement or Education

I clearly remember coming to the US in 1979 and within a week or so I was invited on a bike ride.

It was early one Sunday morning, as bike rides tend to be. There was not much traffic, and we had only ridden a couple of blocks when we came to a red traffic light. I stopped and everyone else kept going.

The reason I stopped, it was what I had done all my life. At a very young age I was taught the rules of the road in school. Especially the ones that applied to pedestrians and cyclists.

This was my rude introduction to cycling American style. Soon after I witnessed people riding bikes on sidewalks, on the wrong side of the road, red lights and stop signs were completely ignored. I was surprised, even shocked, because in England at that time I had never witnessed anyone else riding in this fashion, neither bike enthusiasts or the general public. (I understand it is different now.)

As I see it, when people get on a bicycle, they don’t see themselves as the driver of a vehicle, but rather they are simply a Pedestrian on a Bike. (POB) And just as pedestrians walk where ever they please, they ride a bike in the same manner.

The reason I come to this conclusion is because whenever I see someone riding with complete disregard for any rules of the road, I think, ‘These people probably own a car, or at least have driven a car at some point, and they would never drive a car in this fashion.’  They must believe that the rules of the road don’t apply to bicycles.

I still stop at red lights, stop signs too if there is someone waiting ahead of me. I never ride on the sidewalk or the wrong side of the road. Why? Not because I am a perfect law abiding citizen, but it is what I was taught as a child.

The reason the majority of people don’t kill each other, or steal each other’s property, is not because we fear law enforcement or prison, it is because our parents and teachers taught us moral standards. In other words, education.

On the other hand, give a child a bicycle and send him out with no guidance what so ever, and he will ride that bike where ever and in any way he pleases. He gets away with it as a kid, because he is just a kid, and no car driver wants to hit a child. But what he learns as a child he carries into adulthood.

He learns about momentum, and how stopping and starting again requires effort. I witness so many cyclists on arriving at a road junction will not stop. If there is no gap in traffic they will turn towards traffic, or turn onto the sidewalk if that is the direction they need to go. I have seen people on bikes ride in a circle at an intersection, rather than come to a complete stop and wait.

In large cities like Chicago there are now so many cyclists that it is becoming a problem. I quote from one article, “There are getting to be so many cyclists, and so many are being killed or injured, something has to be done.”

Law enforcement in Chicago has stepped up the issuing of tickets for cycling violations, and now there are cries of unfairness, because more tickets are being written in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Does anyone consider that low income African Americans and Latinos, are being forced to ride bikes for economic reasons?

Law enforcement is not the answer anyway, any more than incarceration is the only answer to the crime problem. Education is key. Start teaching cycling proficiency in schools, and when issuing tickets to offending cyclists, give them the option of a hefty fine, or attend cycling classes over several weekends.

That would be both a deterrent and more useful. Motorists "Dooring" cyclists and other infractions involing cyclists, should attend the same weekend courses on road safety as the cyclists.

Also in large cities speed limits should be lowered to 20 mph. and enforce that. It is not that cars and bicycles don’t mix, it is the difference in speed that is the issue. Cyclists, even one’s riding badly are not the main problem, it is simply one of too many people in too small a space. We can’t all have the luxury of driving cars at high speed.

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