It’s time. I am 66. After a lifetime of bike riding and watching otherwise intelligent people riding bicycles not fit to be used or struggling along with terrible form – I am driven to put this bizarre American phenomenon to rest. In a nutshell, adults don’t give themselves or their bikes a fair chance. It is not the biking, but rather the hang-ups we bring to the handlebars, that prevent most of us from getting the most from our bikes.

My perspective in this new column is based upon a world of riding experience. Hopefully, a fresh way of looking at the bike will get more people riding. Any healthy person with a willing mind can easily learn how to ride a bike better. Patience is the key. Truly worthwhile things can’t be hurried, and getting comfortable on a bike is one of those very worthwhile things.

Our first of many bicycle hang-ups is that we are supposed to outgrow this machine. But it doesn’t go away. The bike remains a mainstream form of recreation. It is imbedded deep within our psyches, even while buried deep in our garages. Virtually every child has a bicycle on the brain and every adult’s been there and done that. Some are still at it and many think wistfully of healthier, happier times where the bike was central to life, but that was when we had nothing better to do and no other way out.

Biking Well is 90% Brainwork

Once upon a time we taught our unworldly, ignorant little selves, by doing what came naturally. Life’s not that simple anymore. The adult brain is cluttered with distractions and pre-conceived notions that pass for knowledge. Pedaling is no longer natural. It’s a chore, which is why doing it wrong is epidemic.

Bikes are good for everything that ails us. Their versatility accommodates every mental and physical quirk. And biking is still fun. So if it is fun doing it badly on lousy equipment, you ask, what is the problem? Why this column?

Because we can do it better, that’s why. Nobody begins a scuba dive with a ripped wet suit. Nobody willingly jumps out of a plane with a half-packed parachute. Few of us would be caught dead swinging a 20-year old tennis racquet with broken strings.

But people routinely ride around on half-full bicycle tires, frayed cables and lousy brakes, while wearing clothing that gets in the way. These and a host of other problems sabotage the world’s most efficient machine that was designed to maximize momentum.

To enjoy this column, all I ask is that you forget what you know about bikes and riding. Let us apply for a moment the same focus to riding a bike as to learning about golf, tennis, scuba diving, skiing, hiking, sky diving, or whatever sport busy people pursue for fun these days.

As physical as it may appear, bike riding is 90% mental. It’s about mind immersion and becoming a kid again by turning everything off but the bicycle portion of the brain. It begins with the understanding that pain in the pursuit of fun takes you nowhere in a hurry. Less, as the mantra goes, is more.

Cycling is the easiest sports discipline at which to become accomplished but it’s also the easiest to abuse and the easiest to swear off. Okay, the second easiest, if you count sky diving. It is also the only recreational sport that gets increasingly useful as the price of gas rises. So until our next installment -- read on, ride on.

Copyright (c) 2005 by David Balkin. All rights reserved.