Bike Snob - Anonymous [1]
And indeed it is. The Amish can resist Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, pornography, ice-cold margaritas on tropical beaches, designer drugs, fast cars (actually, all cars), thong underwear, American Idol, Amazon.com, and sneakers. But they can’t resist the bicycle. This is because the bicycle is a Truly Great Invention.
A bicycle is a Truly Great Invention because it is part of the entire range of human existence, from frivolity to necessity. A bicycle, if understood correctly and used to its full potential, is actually a key to a completely different, and in many ways more rewarding, way of life. Sure, there are limits to the ways in which you can use a bicycle, but those limits are surprisingly few. A bicycle can give you the feeling of freedom and speed you get from riding a motorcycle, the sense of well-being and peace you get from meditating, the health benefits you get from an afternoon in the gym, the sense of self-expression you get from learning to play guitar, and the feeling of victory you get from completing a marathon. It’s an invention that was in many ways ahead of its time, and whose time has finally come.
Like a computer, or a guitar, or a motorcycle, a bicycle is also an invention you can misuse through ignorance. You can miss out on its full potential (think using a computer only for playing solitaire and looking at porn. I mean, you can do both those things, but you should do other stuff too). You can annoy others and look like a complete idiot (think the guy with a Fender and a Marshall stack who has no idea how to play). And, of course, you can die (everything you can do on a motorcycle you can also do on a bicycle, including kill yourself).
In the coming chapters, I will explore all of these things—including the porn. So turn off the TV, stop fiddling nervously with your zipper, tell your friend who’s calling you from the speedboat that you’ll call back later, and enjoy one Truly Great Invention through that lesser but still occasionally handy invention—the written word.
PART ONE
the Basics
DIALING IT IN
The History of the Bicycle
When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.
—H.G. Wells
The bicycle is one of those simple inventions that seems like it’s been around since the dark ages. After all, it’s entirely mechanical and doesn’t really require anything especially modern, such as electricity or internal combustion. So you’d think that sometime back in the 1600s someone might have looked at a horse and thought, “Hey, we should make one of those, but with wheels!” But that didn’t happen until 1818, when Baron Karl von Drais of Germany patented the Laufmaschine, which was also known as the “dandy horse.” Basically, this was a vehicle with two wheels that you straddled and then propelled by pushing yourself along with your feet Fred Flintstone—style. But even though it had two in-line wheels and was a precursor to the bicycle, it was really mostly just a rolling crotch-crutch and it went out of style fairly quickly for a number of reasons, chief among them being that it lacked pedals and it was stupid.
After that, there came a series of Victorian contraptions with pedals and wheels in various configurations, and these were generally called “velocipedes.” Eventually, in the late 1860s in France, one velocipede got the configuration almost right. Unfortunately, it was also made of iron with wooden wheels and was punishing to ride, which is why it was referred to as the “boneshaker.” Still, it had two wheels of more or less equal size, as well as pedals, which meant you weren’t essentially just running with a pair of wheels under your groin like you were with the “dandy horse.” But the boneshaker had its own problems. Apart from the torturous ride quality (I’m sure today the boneshaker would have been called the “ballbreaker”), the