Hi Neighbour,
In the last few weeks, I’ve been writing about the benefits of walking and I’m really glad I got to read In Praise of Walking by Shane O’Mara. It was such an eye-opener. But, as I look back on that experience, I want to write in praise of cycling. I’m a cyclist, but I wasn’t always.
As the youngest child of six kids, living in a rural town, I had a large hand-me-down tricycle, but not my own bike. I remember, when I was older, riding a sister’s bike, which was too big for me to sit on the saddle, so I had to put one leg through the frame, under the top tube to ride it. I got good mileage out of that bike, when she was away at UBC. I had such freedom riding all over the town. In those days, there was no such thing as a helmet. But there was very little traffic, too.
Fast forward to having my own kids and bikes. One of the kids rode his bike around the city, and was enticed into a shop of pinball machines, as he told it. When he came out his bike was gone. Lesson learned. We were given a bike, shared by a few of the kids, and we bought a second-hand bike. As adults, my husband and I never had bikes, so we didn’t ride as a family. But I remember one summer in Toronto, in my 40’s, my daughter and I rented bikes to go for an outing on the Toronto Islands. It was so much fun, and we did some silly things on our bikes.
That was one of only three times that I rode a bike as an adult, under 60. Another time was when I was approaching my 50th birthday. I was given a bike and I set a goal for myself to ride up the Third Street hill, from Park and Tilford, without stopping. I trained for about a month and on my birthday, I made it up that hill and home. A major victory for me! …then I parked the bike in my basement, and never rode it again. Ha! I think I really wasn’t invested in cycling. I didn’t have any friends, living in North Van, who cycled, and in the summer I went traveling. It just didn’t fit into my lifestyle.
But when I spent the summer in Uganda, in my 50’s, I found an old bike, took it to the village bike shop—attracting a lot of attention, because a female riding a bike was definitely unheard of—and they made it dirt roadworthy, so I enjoyed riding it (…wearing pants! Imagine!) and little children had a good laugh seeing me ride by. It was another kind of awakening, for me.
When I was 60, I went to China and saw how useful a bicycle could be. I came home and bought myself an electric-assist bike and stopped driving not long after. It was meant to be, all along. Now I’m a cyclist, and I love it.
Fiona