What is it about bikes that makes them so enjoyable to ride? It must be a toned down version of why people like riding Harley Davidson motorcycles. The wind rustling past your face, the feeling of moving along much faster than you can walk or run, the feeling that you are not separated from what is around you by windows and doors.
When I was 12, I worked in my grandfather’s upholstery shop so I could save my money for a very special bicycle. It was a Huffy and it had a half-circle shaped steering wheel instead of standard handle bars. It had flared chrome fenders and a banana seat that sparkled in the sunlight. It was the coolest bike I ever saw and I dreamed of the day that I could walk into that bike shop and walk out with that bike.
The day I took that bike home, I wanted every kid in the neighborhood to see it. Not only was it fast, but you could hit the brake and skid for five feet. Except when I was in school, there was rarely a time I was not riding that bike. It never occurred to me at the time that I was getting a whole bunch of exercise.
Fast forward 44 years and the exercise has become more important with my current bike, but the enjoyment still trumps everything else. The freedom of getting on a bike and riding several miles while the scenery passes by both sides is as exciting now as it was back then. I think that my current bike is pretty cool, with its dark green paint job, 21 speeds, fancy derailleur, trip computer and comfortable seat, its different than my first favorite bike, but every bit as enjoyable.
12-year-olds never hop on a bike and think “I need to get some cardio today.” They just think about doing one of their favorite things. The old saying goes; “It’s like riding a bike, you never forget it.” The saying should be; “It’s like riding a bike, you never stop enjoying it.” Some well-known people have expressed their affection for the simple joys of riding a bike. H.G. Wells once said; “When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.”
Ernest Hemingway may have captured the experience of riding a bike best when he said: “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”
But it was the late president John Kennedy who said it most simply and expressed the way that I feel about a bike ride: “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.”
