The most common question i get is why bike when you can take other faster and more comfortable forms of transportation. This blog is going to try and answer that question

The cycle treatise

 

There is something to be said about being able to have all that you need to survive with you at all times.  There is a liberation that is felt and achieved when having all that you need to survive with you at all times.  You can move, you can stop, you can turn, go straight, head down, head up, swerve, jump, push, skid, ride, eat, talk, wave, blink, and even high-five, whilst having all you need for your personal preservation attached to you.  You have no fear of getting lost, because when you have your home with you you are never lost.

As a bicycle tourer you are no longer a tourist, you are not sitting in the back seat observing the world around, you are a part of this new world.  You are braving all that it can throw at you, whether its wind, hail, mud, or fruit, you push forward because that is the only direction to go.  This can cause you to cry, to shiver, and to smile but that’s what makes the journey.

So why not take some time off the bike and lay on a beach with a huge margarita in one hand, and a coconut in the other, which i enjoy doing, but not for longer spans of time. The amount i experience in half a day of cycling in a new land is equivalent to a week on the beach.  In a fifteen minute bike ride at 30Km/h you can see a woman hanging sheets, a pig being slaughtered, a waterfall, waving children on a horse; you have heard dogs barking, birds chirping, tyres rolling, water falling, and new languages being spoken.  What is life if not experiencing the world that we live in.   Being in motion and feeling, tasting, smelling, touching, and seeing everything around you is experiencing a new place not just visiting it. And by experiencing a lot in a short amount of time you are essentially time travelling.

If time is relative; a person that walks to work everyday is essentially in motion perhaps an average of 3km/h the entire day.  As a cyclist you are averaging at least 20Km/h and sensing more of the world, not to say motion is the only factor involved, there are other forms of transportation that are much cheaper, faster and with motorized assistance.  But in a motorized vehicle you are no longer a participant but merely an observer.  The fact that you have to experience the fatigue, the cold, the hot, the wet, the dry, the humid, and rely on the people, the land, the atmosphere that makes up your new surroundings is what makes travel.

The bicycle is slow enough to pass the world whilst still experiencing it.  And by having to invest your own energy to get from A to B there is a greater reward involved.  Food tastes better, sleep is better, drink is better, strangers treat you better, and you treat your own body better.