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August 31, 2020

The 30 | Bicycles

by way of... Dinosaurs, Horses, and Great Bears


A small-town newspaper in Illinois published this advertisement in 1891.

Despite rigorously testing my rental car's odometer on the way to visit family, I found myself preoccupied with bikes. While driving the 3,500+ miles, a song I hadn't heard in a decade or more popped into my head.

The tune starts light – "I can ride my bike with no handlebars..." – and grows menacing, esp. given the state of the world. There's always Queen if you want to stay on theme and peppy.

But this mental-worm (velocipede?) started from August's outset when DC officials announced my worst nightmare. No public pools this summer.

Running is great, but without swimming to cross-train, I've basically lived on two wheels in Rock Creek Park and biked to every ward in the city for a photo essay early in the coronavirus lockdown.

The history of this machine also includes a Year Without A Summer, but the bicycle fascinated me most when I learned of its dual purpose sometime in high school. What I then considered a simple, fun transportation option had influenced a cultural shake-up.

A "new woman, mounted on her steed of steel" in the late 19th century could travel on her own (and ditch heavy, restrictive skirts). Bikes contributed a small piece to the push for rights that included voting. Although blatantly incomplete when passed 100 years ago, we celebrated the momentous anniversary this month.

Today, it might be easier to buy a hoop skirt than a bicycle. Shops are barren across the U.S. and in places from England to Australia to Nepal.

Trek, a company founded during America's last bike boom in the 1970s, "can’t put them together fast enough to sell."

These mechanical contraptions endure in a digital age for several reasons. The most salient is an element that appealed to women in the 1800s: breezy departure, now at a time when much of the global population spends their days staring at the same four walls.

Dinosaurs are to birds as bicycles are to planes. You have to squint and imagine a resemblance, but each were precursors to flight.

I wish you your own "ride / off with the Great Bear and the full moon."
 
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