If you think about it, bicycling is an absurd activity in which to engage. There are many reasons:
TL;DR: Bicycling is a beautiful activity and sport despite all the counts against it, and as such is a great metaphor for humanity’s place within life’s rich pageant.
Time: between maintaining a bicycle, shopping for new equipment, preparing for a ride (kit, contacts, collecting of necessities), actually riding (which as you become more proficient, requires more time), cleaning up after a ride and washing kit…absurd amounts of time are spent. It’s a full time thing, really.
Danger: not only are there the dangers of simply riding down the road–wet, oily turns, railroad tracks, cracks in the pavement, debris–there are vehicles, and most notably their drivers! Not only are most of them in a huge rush to get to their important life destination, they are also texting important things while doing so, frequently paying no attention whatsoever to the road or other persons on it, assuming whatever they hit won’t be killed because of course it will also be enclosed in steel and glass. Because who would ride a bicycle on the road with these idiots?
There’s more! Dogs, one of which I encountered today. The thing with dogs is, if they bark, they probably won’t bite. It’s the ones who don’t make a sound you have to worry about. Today I was riding along and I heard* the sound of dog claws coming in rather frequent contact with asphalt. I looked back to see that the biggest German Shepard you have ever seen was almost within striking distance of me. Somehow I found some speed and outran him. He added a nice sprint interval to what was going to be an otherwise mid-tempo ride.
Then there’s racing, which if you’re crazy enough to train for and do, increases your chance of unfortunate contact with the pavement exponentially.
Cost: self explanatory. Bikes and the things they require are almost as bad as boats and Ferraris.
Pain: it’s not just the legs and lungs. Back and butt are the real problems. One must nurture and nurse a very specific area of one’s anatomy that comes in contact with that infernal device known as a saddle. As for the back, as it ages it complains ever more incessantly about the unnatural position a bicyclist subjects it to for long periods of time.
Despite all of this and more, we still not only continue to bicycle, but actually enjoy it! Even on days when I’ve ridden plenty, like today, or even days when I couldn’t ride more even if I tried, I still feel jealousy and compulsion when I see riders go by my house. I guess there’s some magic ratio when the traffic isn’t trying to kill you, and the road surface isn’t trying to break your bike, and the wind isn’t trying to slow you to a crawl, and the heat isn’t trying to cause salty sweat to pour into your eyes and weigh down your clothes, and the glass isn’t trying to force you into roadside maintenance delay…when the tempo is just right and the pedals turn with ease and the sweat actually evaporates off your body…those moments somehow fuel the fire and keep us out there day after day.
There’s a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that says this much better in panels instead of paragraphs…short of finding it, scanning it and violating ridiculous copyrights by posting it here, I recommend you read a lot of Bill Strickland, specifically that one that describes many of the aesthetic wonders of cycling (once again) better than I can.
I’ve mentioned before the current doping crisis in cycling, and the history that will need to be re-written because of the doping crisis in cycling. I don’t want to harp on it much more, but if you missed Tyler Hamilton on 60 Minutes last weekend I suggest you check it out. If you don’t realize it is still a present issue, think again. And finally if you don’t think we should be worried about past offenders, I suggest you consider this (broken link).
* If I was one of you earbud-sporting jokers out there, my calves would have been doggie treats!