the humble bicycle
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. ~Ernest Hemingway
When
I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the
human race. ~H.G. Wells
When
I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations:
bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so
on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the
clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on
nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road,
of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from
civilization. The world is breaking someone else's
heart. ~Diane Ackerman
The
bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its
engine. ~John Howard
The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.
Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only
the bicycle remains pure in heart. ~Iris Murdoch, The
Red and the Green
When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his
attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for
the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for
man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body
became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was
entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation
to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the
bicycle. ~Elizabeth West, Hovel in the Hills
A bicycle does get you there and more.... And there is always the thin
edge of danger to keep you alert and comfortably
apprehensive. Dogs become dogs again and snap at your
raincoat; potholes become personal. And getting there is all
the fun. ~Bill Emerson, "On Bicycling," Saturday
Evening Post, 29 July 1967
The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets
old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without
shocking the entire community. ~Ann Strong
Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling. ~James E. Starrs
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live.
~Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must
keep moving. ~Albert Einstein
Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the
attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of
backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops
would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our
lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by
saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the
effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has
gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of
history. ~P.J. O'Rourke
After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable. A
memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and
round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on
wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow. ~H.G. Wells, The
Wheels of Chance
Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride. ~John
F. Kennedy
Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. ~H.G. Wells
It is curious that with the advent of the automobile and the airplane,
the bicycle is still with us. Perhaps people like the world
they can see from a bike, or the air they breathe when they're out on a
bike. Or they like the bicycle's simplicity and the precision
with which it is made. Or because they like the feeling of
being able to hurtle through air one minute, and saunter through a park
the next, without leaving behind clouds of choking exhaust, without
leaving behind so much as a footstep. ~Gurdon S. Leete
You never have the wind with you - either it is against you or you're
having a good day. ~Daniel Behrman, The Man Who
Loved Bicycles
If you ride you know those moments when you have fed yourself into the
traffic, felt the hashed-up asphalt rattle in the handlebars, held a
lungful of air in a cloud of exhaust. Up ahead there are two
parallel buses. With cat's whiskers, you measure the
clearance down a doubtful alley. You swing wide, outflank
that flower truck. The cross-street yellow light is turning
red. You burst off the green like a surfer on a wave of
metal. You have a hundred empty yards of Broadway to
yourself. ~Chip Brown, "A Bike and a Prayer"
All bicycles weigh fifty pounds. A thirty-pound bicycle needs
a twenty-pound lock. A forty-pound bicycle needs a ten-pound
lock. A fifty-pound bicycle doesn't need a lock.
~Author Unknown
Think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the
world. ~Grant Petersen
More bike touring resources, bicycle touring videos and tour updates:
Bicycle touring bests and worsts from 4 years on the road: part 1
How to stay for free while Bicycle touring
Bicycle Touring in Brazil and French Guiana-update from the road
What are your thoughts on bikes
and bicycle touring?
Please share in the comments section below.
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