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We were hunter folk, and we saw hunters and dogs, bears and young women, all manner of things of interest to us. When seventeenth-century European sailors first saw the southern skies they put objects of seventeenth century interest in the heavens – toucans and peacocks, telescopes and microscopes, compasses and the sterns of ships. If the constellations had been named in the twentieth century, I suppose we would see bicycles and refrigerators in the sky, rock-and-roll “stars” and perhaps even mushroom clouds – a new set of human hopes and fears placed among the stars.

–Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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…what right-thinking girl of seventeen would hesitate between a throne and a bicycle?

–1897 article in the New York Tribune, as attributed in Pete Jordan’s book, In the City of Bikes.

I love this one, because the girl in question is expected to choose the bicycle, and not the throne. Great stuff.

The book where I found the above quotation has not yet been published and thus its contents, presumably including quoted sources, are subject to change.

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Learn to ride a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live.

–Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain

I think there is a little hidden joke in here somewhere. 🙂

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When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.

–Arthur Conan Doyle

Ahh, exercise, the greatest antidepressant I know! It’s an unfortunate cycle (no pun intended) that when I am off my bike for several days at a time, I start feeling down, and then am less likely to get out for a ride which is just what I need most. But I mostly know myself well enough to recognize that a bike ride is the best cure for most anything that ails – even a little 30 minute spin. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to solve that puzzle!

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Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond existence as mere clients and consumers – those people ride a bike.

–Wolfgang Sachs, of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy and the former Chairman of Greenpeace, Germany.

I have long found it strange that we talk about “driving” cars and “riding” bicycles, when it fact it seems to me the opposite: when we operate cars, we take a more passive role, sitting (or slouching) and working the controls; whereas on a bicycle, the operator sits, stands, works every second, pedaling, and making micro-adjustments to balance and handling and interacting with the outside world directly. No glass, plastic or metal separates the cyclist from her surroundings, and every shred of power and maneuvering is her own. Therefore I think of us more as driving a bicycle while we ride in cars. And that is part of what Sachs’s statement, above, means to me.

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Tens of thousands who could never afford to own, feed and stable a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life.

–Frances Willard, suffragette and author of How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle.

Frances Willard lived before automobiles were common and well before our roadways were designed with cars in mind, but her concept here can easily be translated to the modern world.

[See an earlier Willard two-wheeled thought here.]

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Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.

–John F. Kennedy

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Next to a leisurely walk I enjoy a spin on my tandem bicycle. It is splendid to feel the wind blowing in my face and the springy motion of my iron steed. The rapid rush through the air gives me a delicious sense of strength and buoyancy, and the exercise makes my pulse dance and my heart sing.

–Helen Keller

Thanks, Pops, for this week’s two-wheeled thought. Lovely. Couldn’t have said it better!

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