Cycling: My Summary

I believe that you have read at least a few of my previous cycling articles written here. Otherwise this article may not make sense.

I believe nothing in life is possible without being a fanatic. Call me a cycling fanatic if you will. Sometimes you wonder, are there not better methods to be fit and save the planet? Of course there may be, but this is a method that I know and enjoy to the hilt and that’s why I write about it.

Just because I write this article, I am not the best cyclist in town. In fact, I don’t even qualify to be called a good cyclist! I am not into competition or macho stuff. That’s way beyond my interest. I slog and sloth it out to office at an average speed of 17-20kmph. There are a lot of guys who are intensely passionate about cycling, much more than I am. I salute them for their spirit and consider it an honour to know them, though I cannot list out all their names here.

My writing about cycling is not to exclude or ridicule other means of transportation. That will be stupid on my part. But know one thing: a cycle is one of the most efficient means of transportation known to man today. Why do I say that. If you have a packet of 1 byte with a 10 byte header, would you call it efficient data transmission? Yet that is what we IT guys do when we drive a car alone to office. A person weighing 70 kgs riding a car weighing 1400 kgs to take him to work. Where is the efficiency? Its like 20 bytes of header to take 1 byte of data! Whereas if he is cycling the weight of a good cycle is about 15-18 kgs. See the optimization.

I always believe that something that is simple to do (like cycling) is also simple not to do and that is a trap where most of us fall. I respect your right to cycle, I respect your right not to cycle. If you look for reasons to cycle you will find them. If you look for reasons not to cycle, there are plenty too. The choice is completely yours!

To me, the reasons *for* outweighed heavily the ones *against*. The feeling of the nice morning bangalore wind and sunshine on the skin and the slight sweat far outweighed the so called risks and other perceived notions. When I am on the bike two things come to a standstill - world and time. In a way I found my own private "get away" for the time I am on the bike. My own heaven. All the worries and tensions and such tend to amazingly melt away when I am on the bike. This one reason alone is enough for me to continue cycling for my life time.

Cycling is not an answer to all of humanity’s problems. It is not so glamorous as we think. It is not a magic solution for weight loss. You will not suddenly look like those ancient greek sculptures of men just because you started pedaling a few kilometers a day.

Good inclines will make you huff and puff, like a steam locomotive in full traction, inspite of having all those gears. You may look plain stupid to others.

There is sweat, rain, heat, irritated car and bike riders, cow dung on the road and that occasional idiot spitting on you accidentally from bmtc buses. Dogs run behind you, barking menacingly in dark alleys. All that happens. Or as we saw in Forrest Gump, “shit happens”. So what?