Cycling nutjobs

I don't make any secret of my passion for riding to work. However, I'm not doing it because it is environmentally friendly or un-polluting or un-congesting or any of that other rot. I do it for two main reasons:

• I am in search of a flat stomach, and
• It is the best form of stress release apart from sex

OK, for the ski-mad amongst us, I will also add that it is the best form of stress release after sex and skiing. If I had the opportunity to ski to work each morning, life would be peachy.

I have a reasonably stressy job. Yes, it shouldn't be - I am a pube after all, and pubes are reknowned for never getting their grey cardigans sweaty from stress. Well, I'm not the grey cardigan wearing type. I need to relax, or my eyelids start twitching. Meditation is for ducks as far as I am concerned, and the idea of a flat stomach and drinking away my worries do not go hand in hand, so exercise is my best option. Hard, nut busting, physically exhausting exercise. It's hard to have insomnia from stress when you are simply collapsing into unconciousness from pounding the pedals.

If I wasn't stressed, and parking was cheap (or free) I would happily fire up the 4WD and drive to work. That ain't going to happen anytime soon, as I have discovered that driving in peak hour does nasty things to my blood pressure. It's not the congestion or the million other cars that does it to me - it's looking at the bike path next to the road and knowing that I could be zipping along, miles away (mentally) from all the crap that comes with sitting behind the steering wheel. I get stressed from not cycling.

I'm clearly going whacko.

Anyway, all the whale saving benefits of cycling can be blown out my arse for all I care. I'm doing it for me, not the planet. Trouble is, the greener brethren in the cycling community have extrapolated cycling into some sort of mantra about it producing a lovely world where the car will be banished etc etc. What a pile of crap. Let's just say that cycling is very good for you, and it would be good if more people did it more often, but we are not about to see a revolution where the car is swept away and replaced by LPG powered buses and bicycles and other non-emitting transport thingys. If you want to see a society without cars, wind the clock back and visit Romania in say 1989 (before the Berlin wall came down) and tell me if that is a fun place to be.

Not likely.

What is the first thing that people in the 3rd world buy when their incomes reach a bit over $1,000 a year? A motor bike. Hence the billion motor bikes careering around the streets of Bali.

What happens when average incomes get to something like $5,000? They buy cars. Just ask the Chinese.

If you want to save the planet from the car, convince the Chinks to hang onto their bicycles and to not buy a car. Somehow, I think that campaign will go nowhere.

Why?

People are pre-disposed to doing nothing and getting fat. Life before industrialisation was pretty hard. Most people were short, thin and malnutritioned. They died young, probably without teeth. Getting rich is all about getting away from having to do manual labour. Cycling is manual labour. People in the 3rd world want to get off the bike because being fat is a status symbol. It's only us loonies in the west that think that being fit and healthy is a good option. I guess that is because we are the only societies that have people living long enough to have to worry about the diseases of old age, and things like gout and that are no fun.

Anyway, back to cycling as a transport option. The thought of cycling up to the shops to do my weekly shopping fills me with horror. Partly because I ride a road (racing) bike which is totally unsuited to carrying anything but me. It doesn't even have mudflaps, which means it is nasty to ride in the wet. Don't even think about carrying a bag of groceries.

I could make the switch, but it would involve buying another bike with panniers. Yes, I could probably get one for about $1,000, but I'd have to cycle to the shops for about 10 years before I got a payoff. Put it this way - you don't change over to a bike part time for financial reasons. You do it because you are a nutter. The bike mags that I read usually have a few articles about someone who has given up their car and now does everything on a bike and they are saving heaps etc etc etc, but they must live a pretty restricted life in a magical suburb with absolutely everything close at hand. Most people unfortunately don't live in a suburb like that. Yes, that is probably the fault of the car killing off the local shops and producing the rise of malls, but that's life.