The Method

Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process...Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.  Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time.  The use of the bicycle...allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, their territory and the pulse of their being...

Energy & Equity/ Ivan Illich

When I was a child, my favorite afternoon activity was to pedal around on my bike.  To invent new places traveled and take "friends" along the way.  I would ride for hours up and down the couple of streets around whatever house I lived in at the time.  The freedom which I felt while riding in the open air was indescribable.  

I look back and wonder why I allowed the temptations of "normal" life to take over the simple beauties.  Instead of riding my bike to school I rode the bus and dreamt of the day I could be behind the wheel of a massive four wheeled "beauty" of modern technology.  I dropped the simple ideals and worked towards a more established well off "style".  The bike was forgotten.  Years have passed and I think of all the lost time spent in a typical life.  I miss the bike rides, I miss the freedom.  The annoyance of consumeristic america has rocked me off the boat and I am swimming against the current, ready to be free.  

My next step is to find a bicycle.  Because so much time will be spent with her, and so much will be placed upon this endeavor, I must be wise in my searching.  A good bike which fits and flows with the ways of this path.  A bike which will take me wherever I want to go.........