I thought of that while riding my bike.
-Albert Einstein, on the theory of relativity
I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.
That which caused the many failures I had in learning the bicycle has caused me failures in life; namely, a certain fearful looking for of judgement; a too vivid realization of the uncertainty of everything about me; an underlying doubt -- at once, however, matched and overcome by the determination not to give in to it.
I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the
world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all earn to ride, or fall
into the sluiceways of oblivion and despair. That which made me
succeed with the bicycle was precisely what had gained me a measure of
success in life -- it was the hardihood of spirit that led me to
begin, the persistence of will that held me to my task, and the
patience that was willing to begin again when the last stroke had
failed. And so I found high moral uses in the bicycle and can commend
it as a teacher without pulpit or creed.
--- Frances E. Willard, How I Learned To Ride The Bicycle, 1895
"Doctor Sarvis,
laboring on his bicycle up the long grade of Ninth South toward his
home on 23rd East, was not unaware of the pressure of the traffic
accumulating in his rear, the clamor of horns pounded by impatient
fists, the motorized hatred fermenting at his back. But he thought,
"Fuck 'em". Let 'em wait. Let 'em fester. Let 'em walk. Let 'em ride a
bike like me, would do me and them and everybody a world of
good. Cleanse our city's air, reinvigorate the blood, tone up the
muscles, strengthen the heart, burn up that surplus fat, stave off
arteriosclerosis, cut down on bypass operations, eliminate
transplants, lower the cholesterol count, prolong lives. Yes and
reduce oil consumption, slow down the waste of steel and rubber and
copper and glass, free human labor and engineering skills for
important work -- anything bad for the auto industry and bad for the
oil industry is bound to be good for America, good for human beings,
good for the land. .... (p. 107)
--- Edward Abbey, Hayduke Lives!
"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 "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 "I love the bicycle. I always have. I can think of no sincere, decent human being, male or female, young or old, saintly or sinful, who can resist the bicycle." William Saroyan "When I go biking I am mentally far far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart." Diane Ackerman "If the wind is not against you, it is not blowing." James E Starrs "I never want to abandon my bike. I see my grandfather, now in his seventies and riding around everywhere. To me that is beautiful. And the bike must always remain a part of my life." Stephen Roche "Like dogs, bicycles are social catalysts that attract a superior category of people." Chip Brown "You never have the wind with you - either it is against you or you're having a good day." W. Somerset Maugham "Whoever invented the bicycle deserves the thanks of humanity." Lord Charles Beresford "There is nothing, absolutely nothing, quite so worthwhile as simply messing about on bicycles." Tom Kunich "Don't buy upgrades, ride up grades." Anonymous "It is no longer a beast of steel . . no it is a friend . . it is a faithful and powerful ally against one's worst enemies. It is stronger than anxiety, stronger than sadness. It has all the power of hope." Maurice Leblanc "Since the bicycle make little demand on material or energy resources, contributes little to pollution, makes a positive contribution to health and causes little death ro injury, it can be regarded as the most benevolent of machines." Stuart S Wilson "A road rider who is not practiced is merely an athlete on a bike, half-educated, a pedaler - not a complete cyclist." Maynard Hershon "Really steep climbs are not my forte, so I always dread that lowest gear because I figure, god, I'm doomed." Juli Furtado "Cycling is just like church - many attend, but few understand." Jim Burlant "The grace and charm of the bicycle lend added warmth and contour to the persons of the lovers it joins." James E Starrs "Smooth, predictable riding when you're in a group isn't just a matter of style. It's survival." Geoff Drake "Marriage is a wonderful invention; but then again, so is a bicycle repair kit." Billy Connolly "Just go steady and hard up all the hills. People don't mind riding fast and slow, fast and slow, but they hate a hard, steady pace." Heidi Hopkins "People are screaming and the next thing you know you're going too hard. You're out of the saddle sprinting up a hill or something and because of the cheers you don't feel a thing until you get to the top. Then you pay." Alison Sydor
"But the fact is that I wouldn't have won even a single Tour de France without the lesson of illness. What it teaches is this: pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever." -- Lance Armstrong in Every Second Counts, chapter 1. "It never gets easier, you just go faster." -- Greg LeMond "Cats don't like riding on a bicycle....no matter how much duct tape you use." -- Anonymous "How fast can you go downhill?" "Pretty fast" "Well, you better ride like you stole something 'cause you are about to win a stage in the Tour de Fance" -- Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis. Unfortunately, this German guy messed up the plan. "What's with these recumbent bicycles? Listen, buddy, if you wanna take a nap, lie down. If you wanna ride a bike, buy a >#*%^* bicycle." –- George Carlin "The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard." -- Sloan Wilson "Bicycling is a healthy and manly pursuit with much to recommend it, and, unlike other foolish crazes,it has not died out." -- The Daily Telegraph (1877) "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." -- Anonymous "The bicycle has a soul. If you succeed to love it, it will give you emotions that you will never forget." -- Mario Cipollini, on why he retired, then unretired to win the 2002 World Championship "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 "Work to Eat. Eat to Live. Live to Bike. Bike to Work." "Given the remarkable growth in support for gays and lesbians, I think there is a chance that recumbents might someday be accepted." -- RAAM rider, 2005 "Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle." -- Helen Keller "The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance 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 the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking." -- (Sir) Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes), in the January 18, 1896 issue of Scientific American Magazine "Finishing a ride is mandatory. Finishing a ride fast is optional." "The reward for riding up hill, is the fun of riding down them." "Wind is just a hill in gaseous form." -- Barry McCarty "Bicycles have no walls." -- Paul Cornish "The bicycle is a curious vehicle. It's pasenger is it's engine." -- John Howard "You never have the wind with you. It is either against you or you are having a good day." -- Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles "Cycling is unique. No other sport lets you go like that - where there's only the bike left to hold you up. If you ran as hard, you'd fall over. Your legs wouldn't support you." -- Steve Johnson "All creatures who have ever walked have wished that they might fly. With highwheelers a flesh and blood man can hitch wings to his feet." -Karl Kron, Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle "When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me." -- Emo Phillips "Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use." -- Charles M. Schulz "Sometimes the pain of quitting can be worse than the pain of going on." -- Anonymous "I would rather ride my bike with a headwind, then to drive my car in heavy traffic on downtown street." -- Tobias "The world is my church, the wind in my ears is the choir and my handlebars are the alter I pray at." -- zcubed "Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen." -- Louis L'Amour, novelist (1908-1988) "If Huffy made an airplane, would you fly in it?" "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive" "Mend Your Fuelish Ways" "Irritability means too much on your mind and not enough bike riding" -bumper sticker "Burn Carbohydrates, Not Hydrocarbons" "Brains before Beauty, Wear your helmet!" "This is your interview." -- Cadel Evans, tossing his crushed and cracked helmet to a journalist after finishing stage 9 bruised and blooded from a high-speed crash during the 2008 TdF. ------------------------------------------------- "If were not a man, I would like to be a bird. As I am a man, I do the next best thing, and ride a bicycle." -- Rev. Maltie, ‘How to Bicycle’, 1892 “Truly, the bicycle is the most influential piece of product design ever.” -- Hugh Pearman, Design Week, 12 June 2008 “When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.” -- Sherlock Holmes author, Arthur Conan Doyle, Scientific American, 1896 “Nothing compares to getting your heart rate up to 170-something, riding hard for an hour-twenty, getting off and not hurting, as opposed to 24 minutes of running, at the end of which I hurt. When you ride a bike and you get your heart rate up and you’re out, after 30 or 40 minutes your mind tends to expand; it tends to relax.” -- President George W Bush, May 2004 “When you ride hard on a mountain bike, sometimes you fall, otherwise you’re not riding hard.” -- President George W. Bush, July 2005, following a crash into a bike cop at the G8 summit, Gleneagles, Scotland “[Commuting by bicycle is] an absolutely essential part of my day. It’s mind-clearing, invigorating. I get to go out and pedal through the countryside in the early morning hours, and see life come back and rejuvenate every day as the sun is coming out.” -- James L. Jones, former US Supreme Allied Commander Europe, now Barack Obama’s national security advisor Ned Flanders: “You were bicycling two abreast?” Homer Simpson: “I wish. We were bicycling to a lake.” -- The Simpsons, ‘Dangerous Curves’ (Episode 2005), first broadcast, November 10th 2008 “An engineer designing from scratch could hardly concoct a better device to unclog modern roads - cheap, nonpolluting, small and silent…” -- Rick Smith, International Herald Tribune, May 2006 “I used to work in a bank when I was younger and to me it doesn’t matter whether it’s raining or the sun is shining or whatever: as long as I’m riding a bike I know I’m the luckiest guy in the world.” -- Pro racer Mark Cavendish, after the second of his four stage wins in the 2008 Tour de France. “Riding a bike is everything to a cyclist. The friendship and camaraderie you have with other cyclists …to a cyclist, it was the be-all and end-all of your life.” -- Tommy Godwin, double bronze medal winner in the 1,000m time trial and the team pursuit in the 1948 Olympics in London. “It’s a risky business being a cyclist in the UK, there are a lot of people who really dislike us. It’s the Jeremy Clarkson influence – we’re hated on the roads. We just hope people realise we are just flesh and bones on two wheels.” -- Victoria Pendleton, gold medal winner in the women’s sprint at the Beijing Olympics, 2008. “At that age, it’s one of the worse things in the world to wake up and not see your bike where you left it.” -- Hip-hop star 50 Cent, real name Curtis Jackson, on the theft of his childhood bike “There is something about the miscreant cyclist that seems to get people more exercised than they are about the misbehaving motorist…When people get into cars, their metal encasement turns them into robots in our minds, and we’re grateful to them for any act of courtesy. We’re grateful that they don’t deliberately kill children, then laugh a rasping, metallic laugh…[Cyclists] are more civic-minded than anyone else travelling in any other manner, bar by foot. If they do run into someone, they at least (like the bee) do their victim the favour of hurting themselves in the process, which is why, if you had any sense, you’d save your hatred for the motorist, who (like the wasp) injures without care.” -- Zoe Williams, The Guardian, 4th February 2006 “The cyclist is a man half made of flesh and half of steel that only our century of science and iron could have spawned.” -- 19th-century author Louis Baudry de Saunier “The place of cycling in our society is set to grow, and I am committed to doing everything possible to encourage that.” -- UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, June 26th 2008 “[On] Valentine’s Day, I’ll present my beloved with a shiny bauble I bought from our favorite store. Next I’ll take my honey out for a sunset cruise, maybe to the spot where we first got acquainted. Later, back home, I’ll give my baby a bath. Then I’ll gently dry my sweetie and turn out the lights… I’m talking, of course, about my bike…I humbly submit that my bike and I make a better team than most relationships I’ve seen…Your bicycle invigorates you, strengthens you, relaxes you, lets you vent your frustrations without interrupting, nodding off or making judgments. Your bicycle helps you meet other people. Your bicycle always goes where you want to go. And if you buy your bicycle a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day, you get to eat them all.” -- Scott Martin, roadbikerider.com “Devised almost 200 years ago by a practical German baron, the bicycle has evolved into an urban staple. Beloved of children, prized by inner-city commuters, it can be a lifesaver when summer smog chokes the nation.” -- ‘Globe and Mail’, Canada, 6th June 2006. “Cycling has encountered more enemies than any other form of exercise.” -- 19th-century author Louis Baudry de Saunier “Five years from now, if I’m in Texas and there is a local mountain bike race, will I go down and do it? Probably. That’s just simply as a fan and somebody who does cycling for fitness. I’m committed to the bike for life!” -- Lance Armstrong, 18th April 2005, the day he announced he was retiring. “One of the things that I wound up loving about being involved with a bike racer was learning how to bike and how that really creates solitary time for you to reflect on things and nobody can get a hold of you.” -- Sheryl Crow, talking about her [ex]-life with Lance Armstrong, cyclingnews.com, July 13th 2005 “[Jeremy Clarkson] always moans on about drivers being attacked. We should be hounding them even more - cars have no place in an urban environment.” -- John Grimshaw, founder and chief engineer, Sustrans, ‘The Guardian’, June 8th 2005. “I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle; I want to ride my bicycle; I want to ride my bike; I want to ride my bicycle; I want to ride it where I like…; I don’t believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein or Superman; All I wanna do is bicycle, bicycle, bicycle…” -- Freddie Mercury, Queen, 1978 “Bicycling…is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own. There are movements on a bicycle corresponding to almost all the variations in the flight of the larger birds. Plunging free downhill is like a hawk stooping. On the level stretches you may pedal with a steady rhythm like a heron flapping; or you may, like an accipitrine hawk, alternate rapid pedaling with gliding. If you want to test the force and direction of the wind, there is no better way than to circle, banked inward, like a turkey vulture. When you have the wind against you, headway is best made by yawing or wavering, like a crow flying upwind. I have climbed a steep hill by circling or spiraling, rising each time on the upturn with the momentum of the downturn, like any soaring bird. I have shot in and out of stalled traffic like a goshawk through the woods.” -- Birdwatching author Louis J Halle ‘Spring in Washington’, 1947/1957 “You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.” -- Playwright Alan Bennett, Boston Globe, June 2006 “The more I’ve been mountain biking, the more I see myself as a female. In letting your femininity go to become a mountain biker, you actually find it more.” -- Niki Gudex, ‘FHM magazine’, February 2005 “To me the bicycle is in many ways a more satisfactory invention than the automobile. It is consonant with the independence of man because it works under his own power entirely. There is no combustion of some petroleum product..to set the pedals going. Purely mechanical instruments like watches and bicycles are to be preferred to engines that depend on the purchase of power from foreign sources….The price of power is enslavement.” -- Birdwatching author Louis J Halle ‘Spring in Washington’, 1947/1957 “The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time. They can spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of others. They become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the bicycle is self-limiting. It allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered traffic are obvious, and ignored. That better traffic runs faster is asserted, but never proved. Before they ask people to pay for it, those who propose acceleration should try to display the evidence for their claim.” Ivan Illich, ‘Energy and Equity, Toward a History of Needs’, 1978. “Drivers wish for better roads and less congestion, but are unprepared to make personal sacrifices by reducing the amount they use their car in order to achieve this outcome.” -- ‘Counting the Cost, Cutting Congestion’, RAC Foundation, 2004 “[A bicycle is] an unparalled merger of a toy, a utilitarian vehicle, and sporting equipment. The bicycle can be used in so many ways, and approaches perfection in each use. For instance, the bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon. A person pedalling a bike uses energy more efficiently than a gazelle or an eagle. And a triangle-framed bicycles can easily carry ten times its own weight - a capacity no automobile, airplane or bridge can match.” -- Bill Strickland “Bicycles are almost as good as guitars for meeting girls.” Bob Weir, Grateful Dead “In the past two decades, thousands of miles of trails have been paved in the United States, but many of them look as if they were designed by someone who’d never ridden a bike. By consulting more with the people who do a lot of travelling under their own power, transportation planners ought to be able to come up with imaginative schemes for making roads, paths and sidewalks more usable to them, and maybe help cut down a bit on our reliance on the automobile.” -- Trouble on the Trail, Washington Post op-ed, May 18th, 1993 “My wife…thinks cycling is great way to spend time as a family while burning a few calories. For her, the family ride is quality time. Then again, she does not have the trailer with 50 or so stuffed animals and the 2-year-old singing “Old McDonald” attached to her bike as we climb what must be Mont Ventoux. Hmm … now that I think about it, cycling is the best way to burn a bazillion calories and hang with the family.” -- US bike shop owner John Kibodeaux, VeloNews, 2005 “Highway engineers are responsible for the nation’s obesity. They’re obsessed with roads that just encourage a sedentary lifestyle…The police want us in cars because they say there is less chance of being mugged, but if you encourage more people on to the streets, either walking or cycling, they will be safer.” -- John Grimshaw, founder and chief engineer, Sustrans, ‘The Guardian’, June 8th 2005. “MOTORISTS: Cyclists are not another species - most of them drive cars at least some of the time - and they’re not, by and large, wilfully stupid or reckless. But they experience the roads differently from you…So be patient. After all, it’s not as if getting rid of cyclists is a realistic option now - there are too many of them, and the numbers are growing all the time. And a few years down the line, as petrol gets more expensive, you might well end up as one of them yourself.” -- Robert Hanks, ‘The Independent’, 12th June 2006 “I expect to see the day when not to ride a wheel will be a mark of a defective education, and people will say to such a person, ‘Why, where have you been brought up?’” -- Reverend W.J Petrie of Chicago, ‘How to Bicycle’, 1892 “Cyclers see considerable more of this beautiful world than any other class of citizens. A good bicycle, well applied, will cure most ills this flesh is heir to.” -- Dr. K. K. Doty of New York, ‘How to Bicycle’, 1892 “As a means of pleasure, cycling stands in the foremost rank, but in common with all the great pleasures, it may easily stand in the foremost in abuse. The desire to ride at an unreasonably high speed may become morbid…The ever lasting scorcher, bent like a hoop, and with sunken cheeks, ought to be quite sufficient warning against this abuse.” -- L. F. Korns, ‘How to Bicycle’, 1892 “Cycling fills the remotest cells of the lungs with outdoor air. The pores are opened and the dead secretions are thrown off. It aids the peristaltic movement of the bowels" -- L. F. Korns, ‘How to Bicycle’, 1892 "Man is by nature a risk-taker, a challenger of limits, or he would not have evolved. An individual human life without risk would result in a stagnant personality. Thoreau was right: When it comes time for me to die, I do not want to look back on my life and find that I have not lived. "Responsibility to family remains a disturbing and pertinent point. However, I would rather take a small and calculated risk to be a fit, alive, interesting and exuberant cyclist than come ponderously home each evening to the TV and snack tray. "The risks of that lifestyle may be less obvious than those of cycling, but they are more insidious, more deadly and, to my mind, far less acceptable. Perhaps we can't choose the time and manner of our deaths, but we can have a say in the style and quality of our lives. "How can I justify cycling when I have a wife and son? In the final analysis, it is the time spent away from them while training and racing that enables me to return changed -- added to somehow by the experience, made more than when I left. And that, it seems to me, is justification enough." -- Coach Fred Matheny when ask "What's your perspective on cycling and danger?"