Why do I cycling
Thursday, March 6, 2008 | | |The reason for cycling are not listed in order of importance, nor can they be.
1) Cycling is fun.
As a child, my bike was my favorite toy, it was my horse, my Fokker triplane, my bike and my race car. But he also is pleased as a bicycle. We played children hunting, waterfalls made, on horseback and thousands of kilometres in our neighbourhood.
As a young man in college, I thought of my bike as a magic carpet or seven league boots. With little money, I was able to travel across Alabama and northern Ontario.
After I returned to cycling to forty. I noticed that I was a little drooling while cycling. The party was due to have just quit smoking, but part is due to this little boy inside me really enjoy himself.
2) The bicycle is an opportunity to experience a different world.
Is there something more beautiful than the race late at night with the stars above and, occasionally, down stars?
Is there something more enchanting than riding after dark with your beacon of light and agitation snowfall?
Is there anything more satisfying than deeply seated beside a lake or river, next to your tent, bicycle, and cook, and eat the food you caught and / or collect?
Is there anything Stranger Than explore a cave you've discovered by the roadside, using your bike a little low light?
Is there something hairier trip through a dark tunnel on your bike when you can not see or wall or ceiling?
Is there anything more than exultant bicycle in the clouds in the high mountains and see spots of green and the toy houses below?
Is there anything more humiliating than a flat tire during a heavy rain without shelter?
Is there anything more nostalgic than being a bicycle route on a long bike trip and suddenly recognize where you are from childhood memories?
Is there a greater satisfaction than to return to the place where another trip had ended, and go?
Is there something more powerful than to make after being put in place all summer that you can cycle all day and all climb the mountain without getting tired?
Is there anything more wonderful than to transform your dream into a reality?
3) The bike is in good health.
In the midst of a hundred miles of racing, I was climbing a mountain when I noticed measures have been reduced to a huge boulder to search. As I pulled off the road, a car stopped and the occupants themselves painfully from their seats and discuss these measures. "I'm not climbing up there," the woman said flatly: "I'm too tired to travel, and these measures are too strong." At this point, I had reached the base of the rock. I am appuyais against my bike and it ran up. It is good to have a chance to catch my breath! I'm down, jumped on the bike, and began to climb again.
One day, returning to Alabama in cycling, I stopped to wash my clothes in Roanoke, Virginia. Two fellows were also doing laundry. They admired the courage and my physical condition, and one of them said: "I want to do something like that, if I were as young as you are." "How old are you?" I asked. He said: 'forty-three. "As I said," I am almost fifty-one. "
When I started my first trip to Canada in 1966, I weighed 150 pounds, and when I came back, I weighed 165, without a trace of fat. When I started my last trip to Canada in 1995, I weighed 193 pounds, and when I returned I weighed a lean 165 pounds. My final weight is roughly the same on all long journeys.
I've never lifted weights, I've never my abs, I never stretch, I never diet, I rarely see a doctor, I just walk and ride my bike. My weight increases only when I'm riding less than 100 miles per week. Cycling keeps me lean, fit, healthy and happy.
4) The bicycle is economical.
A bicycle should not cost much. Unlike a car, a chrome-moly cycling will survive the owner, and some parts will never break or fail. Some parties will focus on: tires, chain, cogset, gables, the brake pads, and bearings. The wheels fatigue. Replacement tires is the biggest cost of maintenance. When I had little money, I was able to keep my costs about one cent a mile using tire chains and discount stores and rear wheels of a flea market. My costs are now, I paid $ 2000 over ten years and 50000 miles (4 cents per thousand), but I still have my two motorcycles and other equipment in good condition.
On the other hand, the average car costs about $ 5700 per year. These costs fall to $ 2883 for depreciation, $ 724 for insurance, $ 696 financial charges and 9.3 cents a mile for fuel, maintenance and tires, for a total cost of 45 cents per mile. For some reason, the government figures do not include repairs, the costs of parking, or taxes. They do the necessary income to $ 5700. They include a series of hidden costs, indirect costs and costs passed on to others. If all costs are included, the amount could be as high as $ 1.25 a mile.
A cyclist unmarried living in the South can live very comfortably on $ 5700 per year. An apartment costs $ 200 per month, utilities (gas, electricity, telephone, Internet, and water) from $ 100 to $ 150, and food $ 60 to $ 100, leaving $ 300 to $ 1400 per year left over for miscellaneous expenses, such as bicycle tires. Because to be a cyclist, I can save half of my income while I'm working or I can afford to take a year off to return to school or write.
Some people have said that a cyclist must buy special clothing or eating more foods. First, no clothes are needed, with the exception of a rain as well in place of an umbrella. Secondly, if the cyclist would buy special clothing and footwear, articles take the place of other clothing and shoes the cyclist would have to buy anyway. The clothing and bicycle lasts only as long as the others. Cycling clothes must not be expensive. With regard to eat more, I do eat more when on a long journey, can I add more rice or pasta to my diet.
5) Cycling is environmentally sound.
Each person who rides a bicycle rather than drives a car is to help save our planet. Our civilization has been burning huge quantities of coal, natural gas, oil and its byproducts, thus pumping of carbon dioxide in the ecosystem. The living creatures absorb much of this carbon, but too much accumulates in the atmosphere. The result was 1) a longer growing season, 2) more hot days, 3) more rain, and 4) strengthening drying. Prédits, but not the results are as follows: 1) more frequent violent storms, 2) drought, famine and destruction of forests, and 3) the flooding of coastal cities. Of all our uses of fossil fuels, automobile travel is the least defensible.
The amount of carbon dioxide from motor vehicles products is enormous. The average car to the USA burns about 650 gallons of gas, producing eight tonnes of CO2 (total production is 20 tons per person). Although fuel economy has risen to 19 mpg, travel has reached 1.6 trillion kilometers per year, then (adding the use of trucks), we burn 338 million tons of gasoline and 246 million tonnes of diesel and other fuels each year. Global oil consumption rose to 3.2 billion tons of oil, so 10 billion tonnes of CO2 are produced annually from oil alone.
But 3/4rds of automobile travel to the USA are for distances of less than ten miles, and more than half are distances of less than five miles. In riding my bicycle on errands, work weekends for recreation and summer holidays, I have greatly reduced the use of automobiles, and I had a better life.
6) Cycling is environmentally friendly.
Ronald Reagan used to announce GE, "is our only product." People are often so committed to this ideal of progress that they do not see that "progress" has been very destructive. We sold our birth and have little to show for it. Our forests have been stripped clean, our farms are heavily polluted, our children are abandoned and bear arms, our cities have become slums, our countryside is a maze of highways, our lives are empty, taxes and fees make sense eat up our salaries, the trade balance and public debt has reached crazy amounts, and our heroes are constantly in trouble on sex and drugs.
Henry Thoreau, speaking 150 years ago, foresaw the problems of our civilization was headed toward. He did not challenge the change "(" When a man made a reduction of the imagination to be a reality in his understanding, I foresee that all men throughout their lives on this basis. "), But it pointed out that we were not happy ( "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."), we had the wrong objectives ( "Our inventions are used to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from the serious things . They are only improved means to an end naked One end of which it was already too easy, but to arrive at. ") And what we were expecting a free meal at a given moment (" Men an indistinct notion that they maintain this activity common stocks and pique long enough that all goes to last round somewhere, in no time, and for nothing. ").
The solution, both for us as individuals and as a nation, is to quit following the Piper and to reorganize our priorities. True improvement is not always outward ( "The kingdom of heaven is in you"). We must learn to appreciate people over property, the more upscale nature, love and affection over sex and money, and experiences on financial success. If I recognize that the bicycle can not solve all these problems, I think that cycling can help people start making healthy changes in their own life. Cycling, by itself, can be a good alternative to massive traffic jams, a million wounded and 42000 deaths per year, high insurance costs, double bypass surgeries, high taxes, and miles of sterile, God abandoned asphalt.
I know that my back on the market of the motorcycle was the best decision I ever made.
(Louis J. Halle, Jr. spring in Washington)
In these circumstances it is right to wonder why our trap multitudes do not seek escape from the hive, once again assert their independence than men. The door is open to the outside world. I conclude that we lost our knowledge of the outside world, and fear of the unknown is greater than all the usual horror. I saw a bird cowering in his cage when the door was open for his escape.
1) Cycling is fun.
As a child, my bike was my favorite toy, it was my horse, my Fokker triplane, my bike and my race car. But he also is pleased as a bicycle. We played children hunting, waterfalls made, on horseback and thousands of kilometres in our neighbourhood.
As a young man in college, I thought of my bike as a magic carpet or seven league boots. With little money, I was able to travel across Alabama and northern Ontario.
After I returned to cycling to forty. I noticed that I was a little drooling while cycling. The party was due to have just quit smoking, but part is due to this little boy inside me really enjoy himself.
2) The bicycle is an opportunity to experience a different world.
Is there something more beautiful than the race late at night with the stars above and, occasionally, down stars?
Is there something more enchanting than riding after dark with your beacon of light and agitation snowfall?
Is there anything more satisfying than deeply seated beside a lake or river, next to your tent, bicycle, and cook, and eat the food you caught and / or collect?
Is there anything Stranger Than explore a cave you've discovered by the roadside, using your bike a little low light?
Is there something hairier trip through a dark tunnel on your bike when you can not see or wall or ceiling?
Is there anything more than exultant bicycle in the clouds in the high mountains and see spots of green and the toy houses below?
Is there anything more humiliating than a flat tire during a heavy rain without shelter?
Is there anything more nostalgic than being a bicycle route on a long bike trip and suddenly recognize where you are from childhood memories?
Is there a greater satisfaction than to return to the place where another trip had ended, and go?
Is there something more powerful than to make after being put in place all summer that you can cycle all day and all climb the mountain without getting tired?
Is there anything more wonderful than to transform your dream into a reality?
3) The bike is in good health.
In the midst of a hundred miles of racing, I was climbing a mountain when I noticed measures have been reduced to a huge boulder to search. As I pulled off the road, a car stopped and the occupants themselves painfully from their seats and discuss these measures. "I'm not climbing up there," the woman said flatly: "I'm too tired to travel, and these measures are too strong." At this point, I had reached the base of the rock. I am appuyais against my bike and it ran up. It is good to have a chance to catch my breath! I'm down, jumped on the bike, and began to climb again.
One day, returning to Alabama in cycling, I stopped to wash my clothes in Roanoke, Virginia. Two fellows were also doing laundry. They admired the courage and my physical condition, and one of them said: "I want to do something like that, if I were as young as you are." "How old are you?" I asked. He said: 'forty-three. "As I said," I am almost fifty-one. "
When I started my first trip to Canada in 1966, I weighed 150 pounds, and when I came back, I weighed 165, without a trace of fat. When I started my last trip to Canada in 1995, I weighed 193 pounds, and when I returned I weighed a lean 165 pounds. My final weight is roughly the same on all long journeys.
I've never lifted weights, I've never my abs, I never stretch, I never diet, I rarely see a doctor, I just walk and ride my bike. My weight increases only when I'm riding less than 100 miles per week. Cycling keeps me lean, fit, healthy and happy.
4) The bicycle is economical.
A bicycle should not cost much. Unlike a car, a chrome-moly cycling will survive the owner, and some parts will never break or fail. Some parties will focus on: tires, chain, cogset, gables, the brake pads, and bearings. The wheels fatigue. Replacement tires is the biggest cost of maintenance. When I had little money, I was able to keep my costs about one cent a mile using tire chains and discount stores and rear wheels of a flea market. My costs are now, I paid $ 2000 over ten years and 50000 miles (4 cents per thousand), but I still have my two motorcycles and other equipment in good condition.
On the other hand, the average car costs about $ 5700 per year. These costs fall to $ 2883 for depreciation, $ 724 for insurance, $ 696 financial charges and 9.3 cents a mile for fuel, maintenance and tires, for a total cost of 45 cents per mile. For some reason, the government figures do not include repairs, the costs of parking, or taxes. They do the necessary income to $ 5700. They include a series of hidden costs, indirect costs and costs passed on to others. If all costs are included, the amount could be as high as $ 1.25 a mile.
A cyclist unmarried living in the South can live very comfortably on $ 5700 per year. An apartment costs $ 200 per month, utilities (gas, electricity, telephone, Internet, and water) from $ 100 to $ 150, and food $ 60 to $ 100, leaving $ 300 to $ 1400 per year left over for miscellaneous expenses, such as bicycle tires. Because to be a cyclist, I can save half of my income while I'm working or I can afford to take a year off to return to school or write.
Some people have said that a cyclist must buy special clothing or eating more foods. First, no clothes are needed, with the exception of a rain as well in place of an umbrella. Secondly, if the cyclist would buy special clothing and footwear, articles take the place of other clothing and shoes the cyclist would have to buy anyway. The clothing and bicycle lasts only as long as the others. Cycling clothes must not be expensive. With regard to eat more, I do eat more when on a long journey, can I add more rice or pasta to my diet.
5) Cycling is environmentally sound.
Each person who rides a bicycle rather than drives a car is to help save our planet. Our civilization has been burning huge quantities of coal, natural gas, oil and its byproducts, thus pumping of carbon dioxide in the ecosystem. The living creatures absorb much of this carbon, but too much accumulates in the atmosphere. The result was 1) a longer growing season, 2) more hot days, 3) more rain, and 4) strengthening drying. Prédits, but not the results are as follows: 1) more frequent violent storms, 2) drought, famine and destruction of forests, and 3) the flooding of coastal cities. Of all our uses of fossil fuels, automobile travel is the least defensible.
The amount of carbon dioxide from motor vehicles products is enormous. The average car to the USA burns about 650 gallons of gas, producing eight tonnes of CO2 (total production is 20 tons per person). Although fuel economy has risen to 19 mpg, travel has reached 1.6 trillion kilometers per year, then (adding the use of trucks), we burn 338 million tons of gasoline and 246 million tonnes of diesel and other fuels each year. Global oil consumption rose to 3.2 billion tons of oil, so 10 billion tonnes of CO2 are produced annually from oil alone.
But 3/4rds of automobile travel to the USA are for distances of less than ten miles, and more than half are distances of less than five miles. In riding my bicycle on errands, work weekends for recreation and summer holidays, I have greatly reduced the use of automobiles, and I had a better life.
6) Cycling is environmentally friendly.
Ronald Reagan used to announce GE, "is our only product." People are often so committed to this ideal of progress that they do not see that "progress" has been very destructive. We sold our birth and have little to show for it. Our forests have been stripped clean, our farms are heavily polluted, our children are abandoned and bear arms, our cities have become slums, our countryside is a maze of highways, our lives are empty, taxes and fees make sense eat up our salaries, the trade balance and public debt has reached crazy amounts, and our heroes are constantly in trouble on sex and drugs.
Henry Thoreau, speaking 150 years ago, foresaw the problems of our civilization was headed toward. He did not challenge the change "(" When a man made a reduction of the imagination to be a reality in his understanding, I foresee that all men throughout their lives on this basis. "), But it pointed out that we were not happy ( "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."), we had the wrong objectives ( "Our inventions are used to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from the serious things . They are only improved means to an end naked One end of which it was already too easy, but to arrive at. ") And what we were expecting a free meal at a given moment (" Men an indistinct notion that they maintain this activity common stocks and pique long enough that all goes to last round somewhere, in no time, and for nothing. ").
The solution, both for us as individuals and as a nation, is to quit following the Piper and to reorganize our priorities. True improvement is not always outward ( "The kingdom of heaven is in you"). We must learn to appreciate people over property, the more upscale nature, love and affection over sex and money, and experiences on financial success. If I recognize that the bicycle can not solve all these problems, I think that cycling can help people start making healthy changes in their own life. Cycling, by itself, can be a good alternative to massive traffic jams, a million wounded and 42000 deaths per year, high insurance costs, double bypass surgeries, high taxes, and miles of sterile, God abandoned asphalt.
I know that my back on the market of the motorcycle was the best decision I ever made.
(Louis J. Halle, Jr. spring in Washington)
In these circumstances it is right to wonder why our trap multitudes do not seek escape from the hive, once again assert their independence than men. The door is open to the outside world. I conclude that we lost our knowledge of the outside world, and fear of the unknown is greater than all the usual horror. I saw a bird cowering in his cage when the door was open for his escape.
