Cycling towards greater awareness
I’ve been getting out on the bike a bit more recently, one of the things I’m enjoying is the greater level of awareness it brings to the process of travelling.
I have a better understanding now of what Robert M Pirsig was talking about in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when he wrote:
“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 you see is just more TV. You’re just 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.”
I agree, I also know that I am also more present in the moment when I’m on the bike, there are fewer distractions. Now leaving aside the practise of cyclists who wear mp3 players, which to my mind is just plain dangerous, there are just fewer things to distract you on a bike as opposed to driving a car. I speak as a driver with more than 15 years experience, no stereo, no conversations or arguments, no mobile phone while driving. Know what? It’s great….
The sheer extra sense of presence is well worth it, and I’m rediscovering a whole side to my home town I’d forgotten about and areas that I’d never seen but can now explore more easily. It occurs to me that you really do miss an awful lot in a car.
I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 19 years old because of my love for cycling. These days I’m no longer physically able to bike and I sure miss it!
Do you remember that old poem about the woman seen from the train: “Oh fat white woman whom nobody loves/Why to you walk through the field in gloves/Missing so much and so much.” I always thought it kind of rude and arrogant. It’s the guy on the train, I thought as a child, who’s missing much more than the woman in the fields. And does nobody love her just because she’s fat? Give me a break! Good for you, by the way, to be cycling. If I didn’t live in the hills… but that’s a poor excuse.