How Has A Bike Changed Your Life?

[jabberwocky]

@Dirt 24983 wrote:

I’m not going to say anything here. It would be completely inappropriate and in poor taste.

Notice I didn’t capitalize “dirt”. I imagine that capital-D Dirt tastes like chicken. :p

[vvill]

@acc 24823 wrote:

Two years ago this week I bought my first road bike, jumped on and put in a grand total of five miles. I came home drenched in sweat and shaking like a leaf. I didn’t have gloves and my hands kept slipping on the handlebars as I fumbled with gears I did not have the slightest idea how to use. I had one water cage but had no clue as to how to drink from it as I rode so it was full when I arrived home. I refused to buy bike shorts at the LBS because I thought they looked ridiculous. I wouldn’t be caught dead in something so silly looking. When I pulled into the driveway I hit the bumper of my car because I was busy concentrating on clipping out of my pedals. I tipped over anyway.

But I had fun. I remember thinking this is what flying must feel like as I pedaled to what was probably an amazing 12 mph.

Two weeks ago I competed in a sprint triathlon.

I wasn’t very fast. But I finished.

I picked up my first road bike exactly 365 days ago today! I had no experience with modern shifters before and had to google how to use them. Braking from the hoods was awkward and scary, but not as scary as actually putting my hands in the drops (or walking into Freshbikes). It felt seriously fast though compared even to my 700x25c hybrid bike. I also wasn’t interested in road bike shorts or bibs because I thought they looked silly… and the first modification I made to the road bike was to swap the stock saddle for my hybrid’s plush saddle.

This past weekend I competed in a Crash 5 criterium (and finished). And I sometime recently passed 4000mi of riding since buying that bike, with almost 900mi of that being another new bike I since bought (now I’m thinking of buying a CX bike ). My laundry room is full of assorted bike stuff (the previous tenants, yard tools, have been pushed aside/outside and largely ignored). I’ve met great people on this board who happen to love riding bikes too, and I keep a Google calendar just for potential cycling events.

Bonus life change: I used to wear braces on one or both my knees at least 50% of the time just for walking around due to tendonitis. Now I’ll use them maybe once a month. My knees feel so much better I might even try to start running again.

[eminva]

@vvill 24986 wrote:

This past weekend I competed in a Crash 5 criterium (and finished).

Was wondering about this! More info, please!

Liz

[Riley Casey]

I was listening to a story on NPR this morning about how a glass of wine a day may reduce osteoporosis in older women. This of course is just one of a myriad of such stories in the press about the millions of dollars of research spent on the most marginal of outcomes when simple exercise and diet changes work the greatest improvements – for virtually free. Hmmm lets see … expensive blood pressure medication with annoying side effects or biking a few miles a day … so hard to choose. :confused:

@vvill 24986 wrote:

Bonus life change: I used to wear braces on one or both my knees at least 50% of the time just for walking around due to tendonitis. Now I’ll use them maybe once a month. My knees feel so much better I might even try to start running again.

[Certifried]

About 10 years ago when I was in the Army, I used to mentor troubled teens in the Cycle Across Maryland Teen Challenge Program. I alternately mentored and co-coordinated/mentored the programs for Anne Arundel and Howard counties (only 2 schools though). Recently I reconnected with one of the “troubled teens” I had mentored. He was just promoted to sergeant in the Army. I was a sergeant in the Army when I mentored him. We chatted over Facebook a bit, and he told me that I was part of the reason he is now an Army SGT. Cycling has not only changed my life, but through cycling I was able to change other lives.

There was one girl in particular, her name was Kemi. She was in our program for all 4 of her high school years. When one of her teachers found out she was participating in the program, she was amazed. “Doesn’t she cause all kinds of trouble? Can you control her at all?”. Kemi was not only an exceptional teen in our program, but each of her consecutive years in the program she was a “mentor in training”, keeping all the OTHER trouble kids in line. She went on to not only graduate high school, but college as well and is now a teacher. Here’s an old article mentioning her. (Marty Soveroski and I took turns as coordinator). Here’s another article (with Kemi included) where I spoke about how 7 of the 9 students completed the century ride the previous year, 60 of the miles in the rain (it rained the entire tour).

The program finally ended, and so did my cycling for about 10 years. Last year, I dropped 40+ pounds, and started cycling again. Now it’s about pain for me. I have pretty nasty arthritis in my facet joints in the spine from L2 to the SI joint. When I’m cycling, I don’t feel that pain. I also am in better shape, and have noticed that when I don’t cycle for a few days, the pain is quite a bit worse. As is my mental ability to deal with the pain. So for now, cycling is a massive quality of life improvement for me. I was getting quite depressed over the constant, unrelenting back pain. I go for these procedures where a long needle is inserted in to the joints in the spine, heated by radio frequency, and the nerves are destroyed by the heat. It’s torture. It’s depressing. Cycling is a major part of my efforts to keep the arthritis from completely destroying my quality of life. I believe I have literally saved lives through cycling.

[creadinger]

Bicycles have allowed me to indulge my sense of adventure and desire to see new places and things.

Since I got back into riding in 2005 after a lull during college and grad school I have seen the coast, cities, and mountains of Scotland. I have ridden around the coast of Nova Scotia and I saw the beautiful city of Santiago Chile. More locally I’ve ridden from Boston to DC, DC to central PA and ridden the C&O canal. In addition I’ve explored hundreds of miles of local roads and seen towns and villages I never would have cared to visit if I wasn’t on a bike.

During a time in my life when money suddenly became a problem, my bike allowed me to sell my car and save $$$ commuting. Through commuting I realized that by taking control of your commute you can actually love commuting. Amazing right?

Bikes have also been a vehicle (a pun?) for helping me raise lots of money for a few different charities over the years. I’ve done an MS ride, a couple of Diabetes rides and now the Pan Mass Challenge ride.

[DaveK]

@Certifried 25020 wrote:

About 10 years ago when I was in the Army, I used to mentor troubled teens in the Cycle Across Maryland Teen Challenge Program. I alternately mentored and co-coordinated/mentored the programs for Anne Arundel and Howard counties (only 2 schools though). Recently I reconnected with one of the “troubled teens” I had mentored. He was just promoted to sergeant in the Army. I was a sergeant in the Army when I mentored him. We chatted over Facebook a bit, and he told me that I was part of the reason he is now an Army SGT. Cycling has not only changed my life, but through cycling I was able to change other lives.

There was one girl in particular, her name was Kemi. She was in our program for all 4 of her high school years. When one of her teachers found out she was participating in the program, she was amazed. “Doesn’t she cause all kinds of trouble? Can you control her at all?”. Kemi was not only an exceptional teen in our program, but each of her consecutive years in the program she was a “mentor in training”, keeping all the OTHER trouble kids in line. She went on to not only graduate high school, but college as well and is now a teacher. Here’s an old article mentioning her. (Marty Soveroski and I took turns as coordinator). Here’s another article (with Kemi included) where I spoke about how 7 of the 9 students completed the century ride the previous year, 60 of the miles in the rain (it rained the entire tour).

The program finally ended, and so did my cycling for about 10 years. Last year, I dropped 40+ pounds, and started cycling again. Now it’s about pain for me. I have pretty nasty arthritis in my facet joints in the spine from L2 to the SI joint. When I’m cycling, I don’t feel that pain. I also am in better shape, and have noticed that when I don’t cycle for a few days, the pain is quite a bit worse. As is my mental ability to deal with the pain. So for now, cycling is a massive quality of life improvement for me. I was getting quite depressed over the constant, unrelenting back pain. I go for these procedures where a long needle is inserted in to the joints in the spine, heated by radio frequency, and the nerves are destroyed by the heat. It’s torture. It’s depressing. Cycling is a major part of my efforts to keep the arthritis from completely destroying my quality of life. I believe I have literally saved lives through cycling.

I hit “like” but that really isn’t enough for how great this post is. Congratulations on so many things.

[Riley Casey]

@Certifried 25020 wrote:

…. So for now, cycling is a massive quality of life improvement for me…

Where is the ‘majorly awesome post of the week’ button when you need it?

[KLizotte]

Where’s a reporter when you need one? Some great stories here, esp when combined with the thread of people giving up their cars.

[KelOnWheels]

Once upon a time I was a runner. I ran marathons (slowly). I helped other people train to run marathons. I followed them around on my bike for miles and miles. It was good healthy fun.

Then I went to work in an office, and another office, and another office. I sat in awful traffic for hours. Then I sat at a desk staring at a computer all day. Then I sat in more traffic and went home and sat in front of a computer. I was sick a lot, and not sure why. I gained a lot of weight. I was pretty unhappy.

Then I got to go to work in Old Town Alexandria, a mere three miles from my apartment, at a couple of jobs I truly loved.

I got to be creative and work on my feet. I figured out why I’d been sick. I lost a lot of weight and got healthier and stronger.

I sometimes thought about riding my bike to work, but I always talked myself out of it, thinking it was too far or too trafficy or too hard.

Then I had to change jobs and go to work in an office in DC. I had to take the bus and the Metro. I didn’t get to do fun creative work anymore. Sitting at a desk all day hurt. I became really, really sad. I was afraid I was going to gain all the weight back. I felt trapped.

Some weeks later I saw a poster for Bike to Work Day. It got me thinking.

I wondered if I could actually do it – ride all the way to work. Ten whole miles! I hadn’t touched my bike in years. But for some reason I kept thinking about it. It was a scary concept, but exciting. I decided to try it.

And I did it (with lots of advice from y’all). And it was amazing. Fun. Liberating. I remembered what really living in my body felt like. What meeting a challenge and being strong felt like.

I’ve become rather obsessed with bikes. I think about bikes a lot. I talk about bikes a lot. I’m saving up for a new bike. I’m talking my friends into getting bikes.

And you know, I think I’m going to start running again too.

[vvill]

Some great stories in this thread. I don’t want to derail it too much…

@eminva 24999 wrote:

Was wondering about this! More info, please!

A friend who is almost as new to road riding as I am (but does a lot of fast group rides and is more into the competitive aspect) wanted to try racing, but ideally not alone. So he convinced me to sign up for a Cat 5 crit. It was fine, although I did notice quite a few dangerous passes/moves and near crashes in the first half of the race. About 1.5 laps before the end I moved out around the outside to get in near the front of the pack and shortly after there was a crash behind me. Someone hit my rear wheel during it and it freaked me out, firstly because the sound of a crash at that speed is horrible, secondly because I knew my friend was behind me, and lastly because I was afraid I’d somehow caused the crash. Most of the bunch flew by me and a couple riders shouted “don’t slow down/keep going” as they passed but I was off the back by then – I finished 27th of 49 starters, riding the last lap and a half alone. It turned out no one was really hurt (I did see one person with a bandaged knee), my friend wasn’t in the crash, and no one blamed anyone for the apparently run-of-the-mill second-to-last/last lap crash. I’d never planned on racing and my experience hasn’t changed that, but I did learn a lot from that one race. Mostly how much of a yo-yo effect there is once you’re back in the pack a bit e.g. you have to brake/coast going downhill because the front of the group is approaching a climb/turn, and then by the time you hit that part you’ve lost your momentum while the front is accelerating off. I think Dirt talked about this in another thread about watching Le Tour.

@Riley Casey 25017 wrote:

I was listening to a story on NPR this morning about how a glass of wine a day may reduce osteoporosis in older women. This of course is just one of a myriad of such stories in the press about the millions of dollars of research spent on the most marginal of outcomes when simple exercise and diet changes work the greatest improvements – for virtually free. Hmmm lets see … expensive blood pressure medication with annoying side effects or biking a few miles a day … so hard to choose. :confused:

Yeah I think part of the mentality of a consumerist society is the expectation that you can always just buy+take something to fix something.

[bikenurse]

@Greenbelt 24975 wrote:

My wife and I have enjoyed hanging out at our local bike shop so much that she ended up buying (most of) the place!

Biking has changed my life and career! If you’d told me a year ago that I’d have quit a full time university faculty position and bought a bike shop, I would have said you were crazy…. But it was commuting to my job that fueled my obsession. I started commuting 1 day/week fall of 2010 on my road bike. I was already a pretty active weekend rider – maybe 25-50 miles/week tops. I gradually increased my commuting days (driving became more and more obnoxious and I’m a control freak so I can’t stand to be stuck in traffic). The road bike/back pack combo didn’t work for me, so I got a nice Bianchi Zurigo cross bike and put on a rack and panniers. As the commuting days increased (last winter-spring I rode about 500 miles/month), the panniers got lighter even though I packed more things in them. I love cycling and pretty much everything about it. Even spandex . What’s really cool is that since we’ve been leading weekend rides, we’ve developed a new “family”. Really cool people who love to ride and are just fun to be with – all ages and backgrounds. Like the folks on the forum. And the people who come in the shop and tell me their stories, like the woman who went from a size 16 to a 10 since she started riding 4 months ago. One of my favorite customers is a young woman who is visually impaired and rides a tandem. She just glows when she talks about riding and how it makes her feel. Oh – and she’s lost over 100 lbs. Cycling can transform and empower.
Ann – I’m so glad to hear you got through your triathlon. I’m “competing” in my first sprint tri on 7/29, so you’re an inspiration! This is a great thread! — Laurie

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