The Freedom Machine: Why do we ride bicycles?

Why do bicycles hold such a special place in our lives?

For some, they're freedom. For others, they're transportation, exercise, adventure, or the key to childhood memories that never quite fade. In this episode, I explore why bicycles have fascinated me for as long as I can remember, from pretending to be Ponch on neighborhood rides to launching homemade BMX jumps in the woods, and eventually sharing the joy of cycling with my own children.

Along the way, we talk about what really happens in your brain when you ride a bike, why experienced cyclists always say "look where you want to go," how vision helps keep you balanced, and why riding a bicycle becomes one of those rare skills we almost never forget.

This isn't an episode about becoming a faster cyclist or buying the perfect bike. It's about the stories we collect on two wheels, the people we meet, the confidence we build, and the simple freedom that keeps calling us back.

Whether you're a lifelong rider, someone whose bike has been collecting dust in the garage, or someone who's never quite learned, I hope this conversation reminds you why bicycles have captured imaginations all over the world.

In this episode:

• Childhood memories and the bikes that shaped us
• Why bicycles feel like freedom
• Teaching children to ride and the lessons that come with it
• The surprising neuroscience of balance, vision, and procedural memory
• Why "look where you want to go" is more than just good advice
• How the meaning of cycling changes as we grow older
• My favorite bicycle movies (yes... Rad made the list!)

Because movement isn't just about getting somewhere.

Sometimes it's about remembering who you were along the way.

Until next time, thanks for listening...

Try ~ AdJuSt ~ Try Again

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Movement Sherpa Podcast. I'm Chris, a physical educator, author, and lifelong student of movement. Every week, I explore different facets of the movement world, not to improve athletic skills, but to expand understanding of the language of movement, with the core belief that movement is for everyone. So I've been looking over my first five episodes, trying to think about what I've done right, what I've done wrong, you know, the growing pains that every new task seems to go through. And I'm not just talking about like the growing pains of learning all this new technology, but I I've realized that the vocal structure and the storytelling have not been the way I wanted. It's been more like me lecturing instead of us really having a good conversation. So from here on out, I want to do my best to make this more of us having a conversation like we're going on a walk on a trail, and definitely far less than any kind of lecture like I've been doing. And so today's story, I want to talk about why bicycles have fascinated me my entire life. You might, I don't know, you might think this is strange. I don't, I know I'm a little bit strange, but I get the exact same joy out of going to a bookstore or the library as I do going to a bike shop. I feel like they each have these distinct smells. The the librarian and the bike mechanic, you know, they they both have such fascinating skills that they offer us. We come in with this idea of what we want. And whether it be the librarian or the bike mechanic, they help guide us through our choices, and they make the experiences so positive that I think that these are almost like two of the most crucial people that we need in our lives, you know, a good librarian and a good bike mechanic. I mean, I really hope I'm not the only person that believes that these two polar different people are actually so important to, you know, the functioning of our lives. And uh I hope you have these in your lives. I'm very fortunate. We've got a really great library system here in Roanoke, and I have a phenomenal bike mechanic, including his whole team are awesome who work on any of the bikes I have brought to him. But I wanted to ask a question to get this conversation going today. And I wanted to know, you know, at what age do you remember getting your first bicycle? I I've been, you know, like what do you remember about it? Because I've been like going back through old photos looking for what was my first bicycles, and I found some photos, and I can find that giant banana seat. And for anybody younger, just a very long, large seat, and these incredibly long and wide handlebars with tassels on them. And uh I don't have a lot of memories of the my first rides, but my early memories in Southern California, I had a friend named Mike, and he and I rode around pretending to be John and Ponch from the television show Chips. We were motorcycle cops on our bicycles riding around. And then uh my memories then next jumped to life in Texas, where I have a I call it my BMX years, and I don't know if any of you jumped on those fads and rode your bikes off-road and on half pipes and jumps, and and and you know, we had this half pipe in the woods that the older kids had built, and we would try to do tricks on them. Some of us, myself, crashed off of it many times. But I have really core good memories with my friends like Mike and Sean and Jay and Daniel. Um, you know, did we pay attention to safety? Uh, I I really I wish we would have. Um, but man, we would try to jump over anything. We would go for bike rides at night, crash into things, and uh try try to do all kinds of tricks. But for me, the bicycle was was an escape because when I when I didn't have those friends around, I had a lot of periods in my life when I was spent my time alone. And my bicycle always was like there for me. It would it allowed my imagination to take me places or just allowed me to enjoy my environment uh when I went riding. But that's enough about like my feelings about this. What about you? Do do you still ride now? Well, um, do you or or has it gone away? Or let me ask you this like are there people that never learned how to ride a bike? Like, I know that we always talk about like people that say I never learned how to swim because I just didn't have time, but here I am just blabbering on about riding bicycles, and I wonder, do I have people out there that just that just never learn how to ride a bike? Now, I don't know if you any of you are fans of uh the television show Ted Lasso, but there is a fantastic, funny scene of two of the main characters. One of them doesn't know how to ride a bicycle, and I'm certainly hoping that I'm not spoiling a show that ended three years ago, but one of the main characters learns it goes through the struggles of learning how to ride a bike, and yeah, it definitely makes for uh some pretty darn good funny television. But if you are an adult and you don't ride bikes anymore, I mean what is it that made you stop? And because look, I I know there are there are adults that treat their their riding group like it's some kind of esoteric Illuminati club, like if you don't wear all the right gear, you know, if you don't have this certain type of bike, you know, you don't just show up in your casual volleyball shorts, so everything has to be serious gear. And I know and I know there's there's riders who are just happy to be on any kind of bicycle at all. And you know, I'm I think I'm a good rider, but I'm definitely not some kind of great rider. But I truly feel like I finally fit in that second group. Like I'm just happy to be on any kind of bicycle. Currently, I'm riding a gravel bike because I feel like it gives me this amalgamation of my childhood fun and like the things I need to do as a responsible adult. But what's funny is when I moved here to Roanoke about eight years ago now. Oh boy, I was uh a little too cocky. I said, hey, I mean they're they're mountains, but they're not like big mountains. And I went out and got myself a fantastic mountain bike. And um, if you haven't ridden out here, there's a reason they call Roanoke the East Coast Mountain Bike Capital because it's not easy. And let me just confirm for you that I no longer own that bicycle. What I want to explore with us today is the joy of riding a bicycle, and I I mean I wonder, is it is it for a sense of freedom? Is there some connection to the mechanical side of it? Or is there some other reason we ride the bicycles? Like for me, it's a sense of freedom. I enjoy just going out to enjoy the experience. I lack the mechanical skills to truly appreciate the mechanical side of the bicycles, and I know that there are others that use their bike rides as sort of like a um uh you know, their own mindfulness, like their own personal meditation, just to go for a ride, turn their mind off, and only concentrate on where they're going. And and that's great. I mean, it it doesn't matter how we do it, and I know that there's also there are these people that only look at their bicycle as it's my exercise. I don't use it for enjoyment, it's how I exercise, whether it be because, like me, they can't go running very far because they've got bad knees, or they just have decided that the bicycle is their exercise. And I mean, we could spend an entire episode about something known as the cyclist high, but I think we we've talked about this through different conversations in motion that you know we find these these endorphins, these dopamine and and different um neurochemicals that help us feel better, and it's all this just happens through any kind of movement. And um, but it leads me to wonder, you know, we have all these different people that own bicycles, but do you find that maybe are you the kind of person that maybe has a bicycle, but you couldn't tell me the first thing about them or even you know where they are, as it's either in the back of your garage or buried in your basement? It makes me think about my parents. I remember they were trying to be you know healthier adults, and they decided they they were gonna do this by riding bicycles. So they went to the local bike shop, got themselves some really nice bike cruisers, and I believe they took them out two, maybe three times. And then they decided because of the high humidity and heat of Houston, they got themselves a great stationary bicycle, and what a great clothing rack that turned out to be. Um, but I know they're not alone in that reality. I think we all have these intentions that we're going to do something, and sometimes life just gets in the way, or maybe it's not the same joy for you as it is for somebody else. And at the same time, I also understand that the cost of things, I mean, when you think of a bicycle, if you haven't gone to a bike shop to buy a bicycle in a long time, be prepared for sticker shock because they're it's not something like going to the local Schwinn bike shop anymore and finding a great bike for $200. That's just not gonna happen, unfortunately. And whether it be because of what happened with COVID, uh the market has definitely changed in the world of bicycles. You can find one, but then you're gonna get what you paid for. Over the last two weeks, one of my favorite aspects of summer have really started to transpire. And I don't know where they've been for the first six or eight weeks of summer, but during these last couple weeks, whether we've been to the park or here in the neighborhood, the amount of children riding bicycles has exponentially grown. And it's such a fun time watching the children enjoy the experience of riding a bicycle. Which which leads me to my next question. Like, do you do you remember your adults or your trusted adults teaching you how to ride a bicycle? I I've struggled to to pull back that memory, and I for some people I know it's a core memory. I've I've talked to people about the joy of that time their parent let go and they pedaled off and had a great ride. And for some reason, I've just I can't reach that far back in my memories. For me, I do have a great core memory of my father going on a ride. It was a charity ride called the MS-150, and it goes between Houston to Austin. It's like a 160-something mile bike ride. Uh fantastic charity work. But I was so proud that my dad did this with me, and I'm pretty positive he did it again with my little brother. Because during high school time, after I had screwed up my track and field career, I started toying with this idea of trying to create a cycling team. But talk about getting ostracized, that didn't help the situation at all. But um now though, I'm teaching my kids how to ride bicycles, and I have two kids that can now ride bicycles, and the experience has been polar opposite between my two kids. Um, I don't know if uh you've been there like this, but you see, my daughter Santa brought her a much larger bike than she should have, but thankfully, I think I feel that because she rides horses, that the oversized bike wasn't as much of a hurdle as had I had done that to my son. And so I'm very thankful that because of her equestrian skills, I think she got onto her bike and grew into it quite quickly. But teaching my son has been a really different process where my daughter was barely on training wheels for a time and got into her other bikes and started riding. With my son, there was a lot of hesitation, even though he saw his other friends riding, and he kept going back to a scooter, but finally he made this leap. I mean, we had gone to the park and done the whole pushing the bike, took the training wheels off, took the pedals off and made his own bicycle into a balance bike. But sometimes we can't force things, we just have to let him choose it on his own, and that's exactly what he did. He started discovering his balance, and I put the pedals back on this little bike, and he took off, just started riding all over the place. It was definitely proud parent time, and so I'm recording this podcast so late today because we got him a new bike and got here today and put it together. Okay, stop. I did not put the bike together, the bicycle came almost completely assembled. I put a couple things on. Had the bike needed to be assembled, I would have gone to see Cody and let him build the bike because I have a good bike mechanic. But uh uh, I got him that bike, got him out there, and he was riding. And as big as the smile on his face was, it was even larger for me. And um, it is funny though, the teacher and me wants to give you some advice here. Children, uh don't don't use the word don't with kids because if you look at your kid and say, hey, don't hit the mailbox, you know what they're gonna hit, right? They're gonna hit the mailbox. And it seems like we humans we naturally steer towards what we're looking at, and you'll hear experienced writers tell you to look at the gap instead of don't hit me, or you know, don't hit the tree. And so our hands follow our eyes. Have you ever taken a moment though to think about how we ride a bicycle? I mean, the science about this is fantastic. It's exciting, actually, but I don't want to go too deep into it. I want to keep it sort of really simple. You know, part of this whole relaxed and more enjoyable side of this podcast. But here's what your brain is secretly doing every time you're riding a bike. Okay, believe it or not, you're actually like micro falling as you ride your bike. And your vision is doing its best to guide you where you're going. At the same time, you're doing this, you're also sort of a counter steering. So before you turn left, you actually lean a little bit right and then you go into the turn. I mean, think about this the bike itself isn't stable. And if you jump on the bicycle, just because you're sitting on it, if you put your feet on the pedals, it doesn't automatically become stable. That stability only comes and it only exists when you and the bicycle sort of together go in a direction. So it's that through movement you find stability. And I I I know I was talking to someone about this, that you could say that well, really, I mean, vision is the yeah, of course, vision is a deal, but you there's no difference between walking and riding a bicycle. And oddly enough though, uh, our vision for riding a bicycle is different than our vision when we're walking, because your vision when you walk isn't about your stability, your stability is already taken care of when you walk. I mean, if you just stop, I'm pretty positive you shouldn't fall over. I mean, the only person that really would happen to is me because I'm very clumsy. But our eyes, when we're riding a bicycle, they're sort of more like choosing where to go and obstacles to avoid. You know, our um as we ride the bicycle, our balance system is is dynamically unstable. As we are, you know, the road is tilting, the bike is tilting with that, we watch out for cracks in the pavement. Um so it is a constant focus on maintaining that stability. I want you to think of it more like this, okay? You we talked about walking three miles an hour, and if you get on your bicycle, you're definitely gonna go a lot faster than three miles an hour. And the faster you go, you shorten your brain's reaction time. So instead of responding to what's happening to you, you're more preparing yourself for what's about to happen. And I feel like the best way to say it is like walking mostly uses vision to navigate, and cycling uses you know, riding your bicycle, cycling uses vision to um sort of like navigate and stabilize at the same time. So I heard a great phrase, someone who said, When you're riding your bike, you look where you want to go. I think that's a fantastic advice. So as I was putting together the episode, uh a phrase kept jumping back into my mind. The whole, it's as easy as riding a bike. And I was really you know, I I've just gone through the science of this and I said, it's not as easy. Easy as what? But um so I I went researching and looking up why we say something is as easy as riding a bike. And what it is is that phrase is actually tied to something called procedural memory. You know, when you learn a procedure like typing, swimming, skating, or even tying your shoes. And believe it or not, the phrase it's as easy as riding a bike. Actually, uh before 1855, the phrase was actually it's as easy as swimming, but and then you know, 18 by 1855, the modern bicycle started really coming about, and uh so these these thoughts, these procedural memories are things that like they exist outside of our conscious, but they're things we can just do. And so even when you don't do them for a long time, the brain hasn't really ever let go of that information. And so when we come back to it, that's why it's as easy as riding a bike. Okay, let's move past the science, let's move past the memories, and let's let's go to the core question. Why why do we ride bicycles? If you live in Europe, you have like nine out of ten of the most popular bike riding countries in the world. Japan's in that top ten somewhere, I think they're like number six or number seven. Or you could look at China, they have the most bicycles, period. There's like 400, 450 million bicycles in China. But really, these are just numbers, populations. They have quality infrastructure, but it doesn't tell us why we ride. And and I think it's because it's not just one reason. I just like there's not one type of bicycle, there can't be one reason why we ride bikes. For some of us, it's transportation, for others, it's a means to work out. For others, it's how they enjoy their free time. There are those who make bicycles their entire world, and I don't know, maybe after listening to this episode, maybe one of you find yourself wanting to find something from your past that you used to love. I think what's beautiful about bicycles is that it doesn't matter where you are in the world, this type of movement brings joy to all cultures, to all people, young and old. It doesn't matter how cool our cars get, I have never felt the same freedom in a car that I have on a bicycle. I love bicycles because I've been fortunate to meet so many amazing people through them. I've gone on incredible rides, and now that my children ride, I get to share this passion with them as we go on rides and create memories together through this motion. You know, last year at school, I decided to bring in six or seven of my own bicycles to share with my students, and it was incredible because some of them had never seen bicycles like a time trial bicycle and their questions and the tactile feeling the bikes and lifting the bikes. It was such a rewarding experience to share this side of my world with my students to promote this there's always another way to move. I've had a lot of fun on this episode just talking about bicycles, and I wanted to finish off with a sort of question to get some feedback from you guys. And I'm dying to know do you have a favorite bicycle movie? And I have three, they're kind of intertwined in my memory, and let's be honest, they are not Academy Award-winning films, but each one brings me back to a younger time in my life when I really just enjoyed the bike riding aspects of the movies, and my three are in no particular order. Uh, Rad for the BMX, Quicksilver, because I had a dream of becoming a bike messenger, and American Flyers. Uh so tell me guys, do you have your favorite bicycle movie? Send it in the comments. I'd love to I'd love to check that out in your movies, see if I've never seen it before. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I had a lot of fun being a lot more relaxed and enjoying the conversation with you today. Do me a favor, subscribe, send me a message, let me know what you thought about the show. Leave a review if you've got the time. Don't don't forget to check out the Sherpa Shop. Any of your uh movement Sherpa gear. I've got some great shirts for PE teachers this year. That's gonna do it for our journey today. Do me a huge favor. Go on, sunlight. Lift your face to the sun. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be you.