"Why society lost the plot on riding bikes, and how we can take our power back as cyclists".
"Know your why" is an expression my primary care physician uses when recommending a lifestyle change for my health. Someone's "why" can be their kids, a goal they have in the future, or the desire to be there for others instead of having to rely on other people. When it comes to cycling, we must also know what is our "why", or "raison d'etre" for riding a bike. When most people started cycling, the reason wasn't because they wanted to compete in the Tour De France. If many of us go further back in time to our childhood, we'll remember that riding a bike was our first taste of freedom, our chance to go places without our parents having to take us there. We carry that feeling of freedom everytime we throw a leg over our bicycle. There is a sense of accomplishment when we can get to a destination on our own power. The health benefits to cycling are another reason. As a low impact but high calorie burning activity, it is something we add to our health regimen, so that we can gain overall health for the other important things we need to do in life. Our mental health is also supported, as cycling has been shown to reduce anxiety and even help individuals with ADHD to focus better when done on a regular basis. So when we know our why, then riding a bike is pretty straightforward. The problem with cycling, as is with most straightforward things, is that people tend to complicate what is simple. So where did we go wrong? How has society lost the plot, or the point to riding a bike?
A bicycle is a simple machine that is durable because of it's simplicity and use case. Unless someone uses a downhill mountain bike jumping off of 20 foot drops, most bikes will last for years when ridden on level ground. The "problem" with a secondary mode of transportation that requires minimal maintenance and lasts for years, is that well made things built to last aren't profitable in a consumer based economy. It becomes a problem, not for us, but for the people who want to sell us bicycles. Bicycle manufacturers are in a catch 22, as most people willing to pay a lot of money for a bicycle will still want a quality product and are educated enough to know what to buy. So every few years, they will re-engineer a part of the bicycle that was already functional in the name of progress. They point to the bicycle racing scene as where they draw that progress from. They know that most people will not ever compete in a bicycle race, but want people to believe that maybe with the right bike their chances of becoming faster will improve. 50 years ago, Eddy Merckx said it best; "don't buy upgrades, ride up grades". And yet, if people don't buy the "upgrades", the cycling industry ceases to exist. That is because the world is full of perfectly working, durable bikes, made more accessible to us than any point in history, thanks to apps like Facebook Marketplace. Every adult who wants a bike already has one and most new bike purchases are actually second and third bikes for guys with a bicycle hoarding addiction. Kid's however, aren't being taught by their parents to ride a bike, they are being given an iPad instead. Sadly, the new generation isn't experiencing the same freedom as ours did. Instead, the older generations hoard the bicycles along with houses, careers and the rest of the wealth they have gained.
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| My first bike bought with my own money. |
I remember the very first bicycle I bought with my own money. It was a Mongoose DH 2.5 that I bought for $99 at Academy Sports in the year 2000. The bike weighed about 40 pounds, rode like a pogo stick and the handlebars would come loose off the stem even with a stem bolt tightened all the way, but it was my bike. I rode that bike everywhere. All around town and into the next towns over. I rode it to highschool, rode it to friend's houses, rode it to the park, rode it to the gym. I would go on bike rides by myself after school and be gone from home for a few hours. I was doing road bike miles on a bike that looked like a poor man's Trek Y copycat and not a tenth as good. I owned that bicycle until my early 20's, when it was stolen from the front door of an apartment I was living at the time. Over time, I decided to get back into bike riding. Bike riding, as an adult, had turned into "cycling". Riding a bike and "cycling" had become two different things, with the former seen as an activity for kids and the uninformed, and "cycling" seen as the path to fitness, performance and racing. Riding a bike was an activity while cycling was seen as a sport. This is where I, as well as many, started losing the plot.
I no longer own just one bike. I'm too invested in cycling culture to do that. I have grown to see bicycles as pieces of traveling art, the older ones as time capsules pointing to a specific point in time. I bought a lot of them used on Facebook Marketplace for a fraction of their retail price. I keep them all in good order, so as to not be a junk hoarder. The truth is, however, one bike would do just fine, and I would be just as happy if I didn't already own all my other bikes. About 8 or 9 years ago, I used to chase every group ride and do every road cycling event in the area. All I cared about was my speed and my ego. Something quietly started to change in me after years of being this way. The realization dawned on me that this was no longer fun. I had overcomplicated what was supposed to be good exercise and freedom into a chore, working to have higher watts and better average speed. When I would hit my physical limits, then the bike was the problem and I needed a better bike. It felt like being in a hamster wheel than being outside and enjoying the outdoors. Indoor cycling technology started improving, and soon most of my riding buddies were on Zwift, logging intense hours on their trainers and smart bikes like literal hamsters in a cage. Soon after, people stopped getting together for fun rides and would only meet for fast paced group rides or gran fondos. As the curtain fell in my mind, I started to see the illusion that I had spent years carefully building for myself collapse. The moment I stopped playing the game, I started losing contact with people that I had spent years riding and training with. I found myself at the same point I was when I bought my first 40 pound department store bike. Since leaving this side of the scene, I have lost all seniority among my peers and have gone back to newbie status in the mind's of many. No matter how many KOMs on Strava I set, or how many 19-20mph group rides I was in, that didn't matter the moment I opted out.
"Have you been riding lately?" is still a question I get, even though I live right by a bike path and have logged about 600 miles so far this year alone. I'm still crushing it on gravel and dirt roads in my area. How and where I ride is what's changed. My stats are no longer impressive, and while my go to steel bike doesn't weigh 40 pounds, it does weigh around 30. Almost all my rides are in nature, in rural areas and away from the view, approval or disapproval of others. More importantly than riding, I have also been living and doing many other things outside of cycling. Riding a bike is part of a balanced life, but when we make cycling all there is to life, our lives are no longer balanced. I like to say that I rediscovered the plot. How about you?
