The bike is an efficient invention. With it, I can integrate my task list. Dropping my daughter off at preschool is the same thing as getting a work out. Going to work is exercise. I don’t have to schedule time for each task, they are automatically integrated.
When I bike I stimulate my blood flow which excites my brain, fuels new ideas, and thus en-livens me to work the tasks at hand. It is a fact that humans think better when they move. It is a commute that wakes me, readies me and invigorates me.
Bikes are also energy efficient. The food I eat, powers the many aspects of myself; my thoughts, my feelings, my words, my fingers and my legs which power my bike. It is a functioning process and beautiful in its efficiency and multitude. Compare that to a car, whose sole purpose is to propel people from one spot to another and yet 87% of the fuel put into the car is wasted.
Biking is also clean. I take joy thinking that I have had a carbon-lite day when I choose my bike over the car. With my choice I have, in a small way, slowed the rate of carbon emitted into the atmosphere and frankly, I’m proud of that choice.
There is no better place for my personal health than outside, even in urban areas. Indoor air quality is 2-100 times more polluted than the outdoors and we spend 90% of our time inside. As I bike, I know my lungs, heart, head, skin are in the healthiest place, not trapped in a box with pollutants and chemicals.
Cyclists are happy. We cheerfully greet each other as we cross paths. Strangers that would usually never speak share a common bond instantly as we cycle together to our various destinations and lives. I often catch myself smiling as I bike, swept up in the moment of the pure freedom, the feel of the wind and the closeness to the world.
It is a human truth that we are made to move, from our hunter and gathering ancestry to our collective thirst for international travel now, humans want to go. To me, it is all the more satisfying when I do it with my own legs.
By Marika Reinke
Last Updated March 7, 2014