"My Bike Is Everything to Me"

When I lived in China, it was very easy to bike. China's infrastructure is new and it has dedicated lanes. It can be very stressful though because it's so dense, and since there's general lack of any culture or manners, people on scooters can be very rude and pushy. Also nobody would help you if you fall, they just keep passing by (source: fell 4-5 times in my 12 years in China).

Now I'm living in Bangkok which looks like cyclist's hell: horrible pavement, narrow roads, motorcycles, and constant traffic jams. However, I find it easier to bike since everybody are generally courteous to each other, and I fell once and had like 10 people rush to help me. Very heartwarming.

The point is, you can build a great biking infrastructure, but culture is very important as well.

That sounds about right for a bike on a paved road, but I would assume over uneven ground the ratio of efficiency is less? Is a hiker on a trail that much less efficient than a mountain bike on the same trail? I would think that at higher slopes the efficency ratio goes down even more due to the mass of the bike?

I experienced this this week. Started having lateral foot pain while walking and standing over the weekend. But no pain while pedaling. I walk considerably less when biking to work than driving to work because I keep my bike in my office instead of walking from the parking garage. What a relief it was to move without pain.

[0]: https://archive.org/details/towardhistoryofn00illi/page/134/...

It bothered me (and was a financial burden) when that stuff was stolen. But when my $400 hybrid bike was stolen a few years later, it bothered me twice as much, if not more. I think because a bike is a durable, daily thing that you come to depend on, while expensive gadgets are just gadgets.

> I worked on both the retail and manufacturing side of bikes for a couple of decades, seeing it from the early days of MTB to its current form. I really love riding, but the moral high ground of the bicycle purist has also sheltered a commodity-driven, economically-rarified (in the US), and not very diverse industry from some necessary critique and change. Celebratory statements about bikes are often made by people who have the civic or trail infrastructure and economic freedom to experience just the positive sides of cycling. There are many places where the engineering advantages aren't enough, for reasons that include geography, climate, gender, and labor rights. There are also huge issues around the increases in traffic in formerly remote areas, due in part to the ease we can access those areas on our comfortable and fast bikes.

Last year I bought an ebike. I love it. Cycling is different with a ebike. Hills don't particularly matter, you choose the speed you want to go, and all leg energy simply moves you faster then that speed. You put in the same amount of workout, as much as you please, and when you get tired, the bike takes you home. You also reach much further distances then you normally would without, so you get to see more.

But my bike means nothing to me. I will replace it in an instant if the right opportunity knocks.

No more obesity epidemic. Cleaner cities. Cheaper cities! Less micro-particles from tires filling our waterways. Less traffic, things that actually need to be transported by cars can get where they are going faster.

But then how do the road construction firms and automobile manufacturers make their bread?

My father was big into cycling. Diagnosed with diabetes as a juvenile, he believed if he stopped cycling he would die (unfortunately, the disease ultimately won, as it always does… but the last thing he was doing before going to the hospital for a 5 month ordeal after which he died was riding his bike). He participated in endurance races and tours, he rode his bike 20-30 miles each way to work and back almost every day of the week, the Tour de France was his Super Bowl and local or other international races were his college bowls. He spent a lot of time reading biographies of renowned cyclists. Some of my most cherished memories are our several TOSRV tours together on a heavy steel Japanese tandem, even the days of icy rain, baking sun, or when Dad had a reaction and I had to pedal us both… uphill with a headwind.

My riding dropped almost completely off, with spikes of interest here and there. I rode my bike multiple times a week to visit him in the hospital before he died, a 40 mile round trip. Those moments alone (other than the terrible traffic) were moments of respite and quiet in my fear and anxiety over my dad’s descent, my recent and failing marriage, my trouble with alcohol, my trouble with my career. He died and left me his bike, a Masi Gran Criterium that he bought around the time I was born, rode every day, painstakingly overhauled and sunk ungodly amounts of time and money into over the years he had it.

I rode it on and off. I’ve done a few smaller tours in the 2010s until I had a health concern. I rode it during the pandemic with my mom until I started getting bad saddle and wrist pains. I started becoming afraid something would happen to the Masi and I would lose a deep connection to my father. But I’ll be god damned if I don’t feel he’s right there beside me when I ride it, and all the world goes quiet except the soft clicking of the bike and the woosh of air blowing by. Yet, I keep making excuses for not riding.

I’m gonna get that god damned bike off the wall and go for a ride.

See eg here: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/11/e-bikes-are-radically-m...

Trully one of the noblest inventions humanity has made.

How so?

what does "low-key" mean here? seems an adverb.

> Walton knew: the bicycle is low-key one of humankind’s greatest inventions