June 3rd is World Bicycle Day and I spent a very pleasant portion of today on my bicycle. This is not an unusual thing for me, the bicycle has long been my preferred mode of transport. Even though I have built myself the solar-assisted three-wheeled pedal car that Christine and I call Daisy, I still prefer two wheels to three or four.
This past Monday I drove Daisy down to Amnicon Falls State Park which is about 17 miles south of Superior. Whether I'm driving Daisy or riding my bike, I stick to trails and low traffic roads and while I made it "there and back again" as the hobbits say, the trip did point out some of Daisy's limitations. The trip to the park involved a steep descent into the Amnicon River valley on a gravel section of County Road U. Daisy's motor is in her front wheel and tends to lose traction on a steep gravel climb, so for the return trip I opted for the flatter Tri-County Trail, which is an old rail route without any steep climbs. But the Tri-County trail is coarse gravel and potholes and Daisy lacks suspension. And, I realized, a three-wheeled vehicle has a three times greater chance of hitting a pothole compared to a bicycle, where the two wheels are in line. The bumpy section was only a few miles long, but it was a teeth-jarring experience.
Today I rode my bike to Amnicon Falls, exploring some alternate routes. There doesn't seem to be a good, bike or trike friendly route to Amnicon Falls that doesn't involve gravel, but today I was struck by how much better my bike handles the rough stuff. Even though my bike doesn't have mechanical suspension, by using the natural flex of my leg muscles and keeping my elbows bent, I am much more comfortable on the bike than I am on Daisy. Of course, I have biking reflexes honed over tens of thousands of miles of riding, including riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike route a couple of times on unsuspended bikes. I am just naturally at home on a bike.
I also prefer the fact that my bike is 100% me powered. Daisy's extra weight really means she needs the electric assist to be practical transportation and even though the solar plus human power is a neat trick, it's a trick that doesn't need to happen if I keep things simple and just bike.
Biking is also a better work out and I think using my muscles is a good thing. My friend Andy Goldfine has convinced me that the act of balancing a two-wheeled vehicle engages the mind in a way that doesn't happen when we are piloting three or four wheeled machines and I think that balance is an important thing. One more advantage of the bike.
Christopher Morley wrote that "The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets." I agree with that sentiment.
I also think Ernest Hemingway got to the heart of the key difference between a bike and a motor car when he wrote "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."
Christine and I will still be driving Daisy to church on Sundays and she will be in Superior's 4th of July Parade and Car Show, but for most of my daily trips my little green bike is still the best machine for the job.
