Do you want a bike?

A friend of mine asked me a couple months back " hey, do you want a bike?" Usually whenever anyone asks this, they are referring to some rusty POS that is in their garage that hasn't been ridden in 15 years. My instinct therefore, is to immediately say no simply because I don't need anymore garbage to deal with. Not to mention the fact that most bikes are way too small for me. You know, the circus with the guys riding those tiny little bikes. Yeah, something like that.

He assured me that it was none of the above and that I might actually like it. Which seemed kind of fishy because if it was decent, why would someone be giving it away? It turns out this bike is gigantic like me. It is an XL frame size and I have a hard time getting my leg over the frame (first time ever). If you're not 6'4" or bigger, this is definitely not your bike, which is why he was giving it away ( to me specifically) because not just anyone could ride it. In one of the few instances I can ever recall, I actually was able to use some secondhand gift because it was the right size for me.

So I picked up the bike, and it was sweet! Hands down the best bike I've ever owned. I can still hardly believe it. It really does fit me and I don't have any of the common issues that I used to have with bikes such as back pain. I've been inspired lately to ride places that I never would have considered riding before. I've also been googlin bike stuff and I found this one guy who contends that travel by bike is just as fast as car. He says the problem is the overall average speed for a car is quite low due to the frequent stops and starts. When you ride a bike, the speed is considerably more constant because you can take routes that aren't as busy with traffic and stops, which gives a relatively high average speed.

I decided to give this a test drive just for fun, and it is quite true. It might not be as fast or faster, but I would say no less than 50%. And it might even be closer to 100%. I am amazed at how quick you can get somewhere on a good bike. And you get the benefit of no traffic ( or little traffic), a great little workout, and no money for gas. Riding a bike is like driving a convertible with the top down. You can see everything. It's quite enjoyable actually. And if you ever got some road rage while riding, you could just take it out by pedaling harder. I think I will try to make short trips (less than 2 miles) on the bike just because it seems like it's working for me.

I also ran across this page as well. I don't know who this guy is but, he appears to be some sort of bike aficionado. He has this page of Detroit graffiti that he has discovered, presumably by biking. Which is an interesting point of this whole thing. I've seen a fair amount of the stuff that he has photographed just by driving around the city, but there is some other stuff that is stated to be at locations that I know well, yet I've never seen.

Which would indicate that maybe there is something to be said for biking. I know that with cars, it is sometimes a pain to find a place to park or pull off. With a bike you can go almost anywhere and get inbetween stuff that cars just can't. You can take vastly different routes which obviously yields a different experience. I'm hoping to see things from a different perspective riding two wheels intead of four.