Years ago I attempted to bike into work as part of my commute. Headed from home to the office was a slight decline or flat all the way there. The distance was about three miles. Depending on the time of year I could arrive relatively unsweaty, in about 18 minutes. Roughly 50% more than my driving time of 12 minutes. Biking back took a little longer, but usually I wasn’t as in a hurry going home. 

I’m not, however, a bike person. While I did find it freeing, I also found it frustrating. The route from home to work was not bike friendly. I had to decide between the street, which was not anywhere near my comfort level, and the sidewalk. Depending on the time of morning I’d have to dodge sprinklers and ride carefully to avoid a splash line all the way up my rear. 

I wanted to make it work. But each day felt like rolling the die with a slight chance of a flat tire, something acting up with my gears, and in general having to keep an eye out for crazy drivers. The idea of biking is amazing. It calls me. Much in the way that running daily in the woods energizes me, I love the idea of hopping on a bike and just sailing along a sunlit path through along a river. 

The reality, though, has often been frustrating times dealing with seat posts, stripping gears, flat tires, sweaty helmets, and struggling to make the temperature work just right. Probably some of this comes from the fact that I’m cheap, never willing to drop the kind of money that may be required on bikes. But it seems like I’m not alone. Biking, at least the kind that is intended for really moving, costs a lot. 

It’s through this lense that I read the fantastic piece in The New Yorker on The Art of Taking it Slow. 

In the past forty years, cycling has increasingly been branded as a form of exercise, one that emphasizes speed, optimization, and competition.

…

Most new, high-end bikes are compact, lightweight, and hyper-responsive, with carbon-fibre frames, drop handlebars, and disk brakes, some of which are hydraulic.

That’s a good take, and one that resonates. Some bikes cost as much as my car, and most of the time I don’t want to go fast, I just want to move unencumbered by a large, multi-thousand pound, tank of metal. Just today, during my run in the woods, I thought about the time where I may transition to more bike riding, and immediately felt the weight of all the cost and decision ahead of me. Running is so much easier. Find some shoes and start moving. 

But, something about bikes still calls me. Maybe it’s the time I’ve spent borrowing an e-bike, or the times I’ve enjoyed long rides through the country with a friend, nothing around us but the rolling hills and setting sun. The distance I can travel in a day, the sights I can see, are just far more than I can reach by foot. 

[Petersen] is an advocate of pleasurable, unhurried riding—alone, or with family and friends—and is obsessive about comfort.

There may be another approach I can take, and I appreciate that others are already thinking about this. Where the time on a bike is focused on moving as part of your life, not solely as a way to move from point to point. Also, the bikes referenced in the article are 2-5 grand. Not horrible by some standards, but far more than I’ve spent on a bike up to this point. 

There may come a point where I switch more from running to biking. We’ll see what the years bring. 

Via The New Yorker. 

Note: I don’t often use Apple News+, except when I need to source from an article where I don’t have a premium subscription. This was such a case.