Moving the body from place to place on a velocipede has many advantages over using a motor vehicle, or walking. To ride bicycle, to mash velocipede, is to issue a clear and open declaration of one's physical exuberance, hurtling, sweaty proof that one is in both good health and high spirits. During one's travels, one learns the rhythm and character of a region's unique micro-climates, so that the brow gets cooled by a secret breeze and one can weather the noon-time heat in a cool and shaded grove. The bicyclist searches without pause for routes he can ride that lack cars, whose roads are newly paved, or those that are superior to the traffic-choked byways frequented by slave's charioteers, the drivers of cars; so long as he keeps looking, his town provides unique views of treasures previously overlooked and beauty previously ignored. He explores secret places he would likely never chance upon in a car while covering more ground than if he were traveling on foot, and the smogsled requires neither metered parking nor paid attendants. The only exhaust vapor created during cycling is one's own vital breath, and the only waste heat produced drips as sweat from the ruddy and invigorated skin. He sleeps well at night knowing that he dragged himself across the phaltscape burning only the fuel found in his tender guts.
As a silent propulsion system, bicycling resembles the Russian caterpillar drive of Hunt for Red October myth but where the Commies used fusion-powered, the velocipedist puts to work his piston-like legs and stout heart. To move the body from place to place without a nuclear reactor takes time and effort, and bicycling is time spent in honest effort. Dust off your wire donkeys, ye lazy carbuncles, and display your independence from want one pedal-stroke at a time.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
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