People like to travel: that is why the grass is greener over the
fence. We are walkers --- our natural means of travel is to put one
foot in front of the other. The bicycle seduces our basic nature by
making walking exciting. It lets us take 10-foot strides at 160 paces
a minute. That's 20 miles an hour, instead of 4 or 5... It is not
only how fast you go --- cars are faster and jet planes faster still.
But jet-plane travel is frustrating boredom --- at least the car gives
the pictorial illusion of travel. Cycling does it all --- you have
the complete satisfaction of arriving because your mind has chosen the
path and steered you over it; your eyes have seen it; your muscles
have felt it; your breathing, circulatory and digestive systems have
all done their natural functions better than ever, and every part of
your being knows you have traveled and arrived.
--- John Forester, Effective Cycling, Chapter 22
I suppose that was what attracted me to the bicycle right from the
start. It is not so much a way of getting somewhere as it is a setting
for randomness; it makes every journey an unorganized tour.
--- Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles, Chapter 5
The world lies right beyond the handlebars of any bicycle that I
happen to be on anywhere from New York Bay to the Vallee de
Chevreuse. Anywhere is high adventure, the walls come down, the
cyclist is a loner, it is the only way for him to meet other
loners. And it works. One seldom exchanges anything but curses or
names of insurance companies with another driver, the car inhibits
human contacts. The bicycle generates them; bikes talk to each other
like dogs, they wag their wheels and tinkle their bells, the riders
let their mounts mingle.
--- Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles, Chapter 6
She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain
the mastery of life.
I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.
That which caused the many failures I had in learning the bicycle has caused me failures in life; namely, a certain fearful looking for of judgement; a too vivid realization of the uncertainty of everything about me; an underlying doubt -- at once, however, matched and overcome by the determination not to give in to it.
I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all earn to ride, or fall into the sluiceways of oblivion and despair. That which made me succeed with the bicycle was precisely what had gained me a measure of success in life -- it was the hardihood of spirit that led me to begin, the persistence of will that held me to my task, and the patience that was willing to begin again when the last stroke had failed. And so I found high moral uses in the bicycle and can commend it as a teacher without pulpit or creed.
--- Frances E. Willard, How I Learned To Ride The Bicycle, 1895
Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. It has done more to emancipate
women than anything else in the world. It gives a woman a feeling of
freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman
ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.
--- Susan B. Anthony, New York World, February 2, 1896
The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it
gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one
without shocking the entire community.
--- Ann Strong, Minneapolis Tribune, 1895
One of my favorite things about biking (vs driving):When I used to
drive, I always drove with my doors locked...I would play my stereo,
and mostly avoid any contact with other drivers on the road (just
stayed in my gas-guzzling box..) But now, I ride my bike and oddly
enough, I'm less afraid of all those things..And when I am at a
stoplight and another cyclist is also there, I usually know their name
by the time the light turns green! Its like all these walls come down
and although it seems more dangerous than being in a car, I am less
afraid!
--- Joni Mehler, 1995
Roads are just congealed oil slicks
--- Alliance for a Paving Moratorium
--- Trouble on the Trail, Washington Post op-ed, May 18, 1993
Shark-nosed automobiles streamed in endless caravan through the
gentle acid rain, spraying one another with a film of insoluble filth,
a vicious servility oozing by in grease. .... (p. 102)
"Doctor Sarvis, laboring on his bicycle up the long grade of Ninth South toward his home on 23rd East, was not unaware of the pressure of the traffic accumulating in his rear, the clamor of horns pounded by impatient fists, the motorized hatred fermenting at his back. But he thought, "Fuck 'em". Let 'em wait. Let 'em fester. Let 'em walk. Let 'em ride a bike like me, would do me and them and everybody a world of good. Cleanse our city's air, reinvigorate the blood, tone up the muscles, strengthen the heart, burn up that surplus fat, stave off arteriosclerosis, cut down on bypass operations, eliminate transplants, lower the cholesterol count, prolong lives. Yes and reduce oil consumption, slow down the waste of steel and rubber and copper and glass, free human labor and engineering skills for important work -- anything bad for the auto industry and bad for the oil industry is bound to be good for America, good for human beings, good for the land. .... (p. 107)
--- Edward Abbey, Hayduke Lives!
People do not 'drive' cars, they steer them. --- A. N. Mouse (submitted by Mark Atkins)
Above all, it is the young who succomb to this magic. They
experience the triumph of the motorcar with the full temperment of
their impressionable hearts. It must be seen as a sign of the
invigorating power of our people that they give themselves with such
fanatic devotion to this invention, an invention which provides the
basis and structure of our modern traffic.
--- Adolf Hitler
In the prehuman environment much of that carbon removed from the
atmosphere by green plants was locked safely away in the earth, where
it could not be returned to the air by respiration. Disregarding his
own need for a nearly carbon-free atmosphere, man perceived the
deposits of coal and petroleum not as safe underground storage of
natural pollutants, but as 'fossil fuels'; he set about eagerly
unearthing them to fulfill his growing demand for energy.
--- William R. Catton, Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, p. 99
From an airplane above an American city, the only human activity
visible was the movement of cars. [....] From a closer view, the
movement and noise of cars dominated the urban landscape. In human
minds routes and the vehicles that connected them often seemed more
compelling than the places the routes supposedly served [....] At any
given moment, a vast part of the population was busy manufacturing or
repairing cars, or servicing cars through highway and street work, gas
stations, police forces and courts, licensing and taxing bodies,
insurance companies, hospitals, morgues and mausoleums. Everything
considered, the automobile consumed well over an eighth of all the
productive capacity of the American economy [....] Drivers thought of
their vehicles merely as convenient (though increasingly expensive)
machines to convey them from place to place. But cars inevitably
functioned also as parts of the biosphere. In each one, a powerful
internal combustion engine turned over insatiably, gulping in several
gallons of gas per hour, mixing it with large quantities of air, and
expelling the polluted air exhausts, like one long, continuous,
carcinogenic fart. So markedly did the voracious cars out-breathe
humans that there was no particle of air in metropolitan areas that
had not previously passed through the cylinders of at least one car,
and bore in the noxious gases and particulates that it carried the
traces of that passage.
--- Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia Emerging, p. 77-78