By Doug Smith
Published June 2001
You have to like bicycles. No matter how complex designers try to make them, they remain really simple. Two wheels on a frame with a crank in the middle and you just pedal.
Everyone remembers that first bike. The first freedom machine that caught you up with the older kids, made you one of the gang. Kids can be down to the riverbank and back before mother can finish with the baby.
Young parents remember the joy and ritual. Before their first born has new front teeth, they buy a bike. They remember how the eager offspring struggled and quickly mastered the skills of those special transition to maturity. Bike builders bemoan those parents who buy the first shiny “piece of garbage” that catches their eye. “A department store throw away,” they call them.
When the bloom is off and the next in line needs a bike, parents are somewhat miffed to find that the learner’s bike either has no parts available or is as costly to repair as its original price. It rusts away in the garage and goes unsold in the spring yard sales.
Too often neglected and abused by the older kids, the bike is just thrown in the landfill.
Then the kids graduate to a splendid array of bikes, which can get you a ticket for speeding on a street bike or a sore shoulder for introducing your mountain bike to an oak tree. How the stories mount.
Families load up bikes for all and ride a weekend away over trails and byways anywhere the car can take them.
Bike builders smile as the young ones get hooked and specialize in BMX and trick bikes show the skills of gymnasts in the half pipe.
Others turn to serious travel with buddies through the highlands of Scotland on cross-bikes. Extreme guys ride compression forked mountain bikes in teams for 24 hours at a time. They are so tired afterwards all they can do is party. Some crash down hills on three inch tired soft-tailed bikes.
The activity is so compelling and universally available that it has arrived in the Olympics.
Granny can ride a 7-speed cruiser with a wide spring-filled seat and smooth coasting tires while shepherding her after-school brood to the park.
Chinese farmers load their bikes down beyond belief and make it to market. Dutch riders speed across Friesland in a day. Pedicabs proliferate in Calcutta.
The whole world enjoys the most efficient power to weight ratio machine ever invented. Bike riders stay in shape and kibitz about everything. Seniors organize and trek 20 Km or so about the country.
Of course a bike can’t argue with a car but municipalities are beginning to upgrade and expand trails, flatten curbs and mark bike lanes on the streets. There are some signs that drivers are beginning to notice bicycles. It’s still best to ride away from the traffic and team up with walkers and strollers. Drivers still just don’t get it and whiz by too fast and too close. Many just don’t see you there. Their apologies do not compensate for a header on the boulevard.
Bike riding is easier than walking and takes you much further in the same time. One man uses his much repaired and bedecked bike to get from St. John’s Kitchen to the church that has his bed for the night. The bus costs $2.00 one way, even to Cambridge. In the late fall it’s cold, but the bike makes it.
Kids who don’t have the buying power to pay off a Mora BMX or Raleigh Serengeti have an alternative. They can go to Recycle Cycles in downtown Kitchener or places like it in towns all over the country. There, previously owned bikes are repaired and rebuilt. Bike owners can work on their bikes with bike owners can work on their bikes with bike builders helping and thus avoid the cost of tools. This way everyone can afford a bike.
Bike stores are a real asset. They provide old tools, used bikes and parts and much of the expertise to make the service thrive. These businesses love their work and realize anyone can someday graduate from a reconstruction to a quality pro-built bike.
Most of the tome, old and uncared for bikes are just tossed. Don’t do that just because they are no longer popular and fetch nothing in the garage sale. Phone Recycle Cycles to arrange to bring the bike down.
Recently, a south Asian immigrant picked up a reconditioned street bike at Recycle Cycles for $10.00. The look of thanks and delight he radiated was pay enough. It was his ticket to work.
Some day we will have a week where everyone will bike to work. Just think of the smog that will disappear and the lungs that will open. Maybe someday.
