Why I ride.

Commuting back and forth today along the diversion channel, I passed by a discarded bike tire. On the way to work, I didn’t think much of it.

On the way home, I stopped and picked it up.

How did this tire get there? How did the rider get home? Who just leaves an old tire sitting along the path?

Folding up the battered rubber and tucking it into the straps of my pack, I got to thinking about how all riders are different. We all have different motivations for being out here. Most folks get excited to ride for health or money or environmental concerns. Maybe the person who left the tire is motivated by all these reasons. Maybe the person is motivated by none of them. I will never know and that history is unimportant. What is significant is that the tire got me thinking.

It got me genuinely thinking about why I ride.

Robert Pirsig said it best in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He is, of course, talking about traveling on a motorcycle, but his thoughts can easily describe the most exciting part of the bicycle experience:

“You see things… in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through the car window everything is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

“On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming… the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.”

This is the beauty of bike commuting: everyday we are in direct contact with the world around us, at a pace that is in rhythm with the world around us. We are very much a moving part of it all.

This is why I ride.

Why do you ride?