ahh, it's impossible to adequately express what a joyous feeling it is to be a bicycler... but i'll try.apart from the obvious and well-known financial and health benefits of cycling, it is such a nice way to integrate oneself into the surrounding environment...
although invercargill can be a hazardous cycling environment (broken glass, bad drivers, coal smoke) it is still a pleasure to be able to say hello to the people you pass, stop to sniff a flower, easily find a park in front of every shop... while drivers in their personal personnel carriers stress out, pay for fuel, for parking, for gyms...
i love my bike - i can hear the world's sounds and smell it's smells, whistle in the wind, enjoy the rhythms of the pedals - make cycling music.
i have two bikes - one a slightly rugged 'mountain' bike (try finding a mountain in invercargill!) and the other a beautifully cruisy oldschool road bike - ah, the easy gears, the mudguards, the carrier - classic.
if you don't already ride a bike regularly, consider that not only will your health and general wellbeing improve, you will be better insulated against rising fuel prices and the imminence of peak oil...
i love my bike.
inflate your spirit! cycle for victory!
3 comments:
Re cycling..
my son tells me he has a job... towing an advertising board for the Dunedin Farmers Market, behind his bike! (Peddling his wares) He gets paid in tokens, redeemable at the market. Lovely closed loop that.
that's the ticket! i've wanted for some time to build a trailer for my gardening tools... the ol' chainsaw's a tad heavy, but.
Apparently there is a 'cycle pope' in christchurch who builds bike trailers from bits and has cycling church on a sunday - "thus spoke the lord"!
When my car was in pieces I cycled around Palmy here for parts and tools and expertise. As a man on a mission, my bicycle became a means to a glorious possibility...That of becoming, or rather returning, to my natural-born condition as Modern Automotive Man. (Now With Extra Added Irony.)
Yet in Japan, I got by on bicycle quite happily - along with millions of others. I got around on a generic obasan charinko. Kind of like the Japanese equivalent of a Harley Davidson; but without an engine and less chrome. And metal. And weight. And with a basket. For ladies. I was given it.
In New Zealand, unfortunately, things are...completely terrible. Not only are the roads filled with drivers who can't drive, let alone courteously; the roads themselves are designed to make cycling the worst possible mode of transportation for any person with the tiniest regard for the value of human life, dignity, and aesthetics.
In Palmerston North, they've made - by exasperatingly slack NZ standards - heroic efforts at retrofitting the city with cycle-friendly add-ons: Cycle lanes, little bridges and the odd cycle pathway. But the original design of NZ roads and footpaths scream with a skull-penetrating intensity that the Car has priority here, or be killed, completely, to death. Thus Life is only a little bit less difficult in Palmy for the few heroic (or completely mad) cyclists who dare brave this dangerous, toxic and brutally ugly environment.
A rather nice track wends along the Manawatu River though, and at points you can see the beautiful wind turbines on the hills.
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