The Bicycle as a transport mode and a lifestyle
Maybe it took me too long to write about a topic that I’m really passionate about: bikes. Since when I was a kid I enjoyed my time over two wheels, didn’t matter how old and crappy those bikes were. The truth is that I always felt a happiness and freedom when riding the dirt roads near my parent’s place.
When I started my engineering course at the university I stopped using bikes, probably because I was too busy with the studies and was working at the same time. Furthermore, the city where I lived (Belo Horizonte/Brazil) was not bike-friendly… And unfortunately still isn’t, although some bike lanes appeared in the last 10 years there.
Then I started again doing mountain biking in 2006, then I did my first bike trip in 2007 (500km) from Belo Horizonte to the coast in Rio de Janeiro… Good times… And in the last 5 years I’ve been practicing regularly, more like a sport than as a means of transportation… Until 2015 when I moved to Brisbane/Australia. There the bike was my sport and my transport, and this made the whole difference in my lifestyle, changing my perception about the world of bicycles. I realized that in most commuting and for daily activities, using the bike was my best option (cheaper, faster and environmentally friendly). What else could I ask for?
Then last year (2016), when I started my master degree in Groningen/Netherlands, my understanding of this fantastic world changed again, when I saw the majority of the population using bikes to do everything… and I’m not joking…really everything, even to move furniture with specially adapted bikes… That was amazing! I observed that this culture starts early with the little kids having cycling classes with their parents, then later they go to school with their own bikes, then when adult they go to work, parties, university, shopping, and much more. Besides saving money with transport or petrol in the case of driving a car, they also exercise on daily basis, which means multiple benefits…
The truth is that the bike culture has to be incorporated in public policies, schools, families, and the young generation encouraged and stimulated to adopt this lifestyle, after some time it happens naturally, like the case of Groningen where they changed the policy and created infrastructure for promoting the use of bikes during the 70s and nowadays everybody who goes there incorporates this culture and finds it natural.
I’m really grateful to have had those experiences, but I had already this passion since my childhood… Now I’m encouraging as many people as I can to embrace this culture and make a change in their life. I even wrote a book about my favorite sport, which is the mountain biking. If you want to find more about it, this is the link where it’s published at Amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E5AUC9Y
But you don’t need to do sports to use a bike, take a chance to use it during the weekends as recreational, or take it to go to work or school if your city has an available infrastructure. Make a change to the cycling lifestyle and see your life improving in many aspects. You will even feel younger, like that inner child inside you who liked to cycle in your early days.
