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Palo Alto City Engineer, Tom Kabat, on Biking
When he signed up as a rider for our 4tth Annual Mayors' Ride (here is
what we did last year http://www.BikeRoute.com/NationalMayorsRide2004), here is how the locally famous and popular Tom Kabat, of woodenbikes.com, answered one of the questions. I make it public with his permission: ======================================== I've been a dedicated cyclist since being dumped by my high school sweet heart a couple decades back. Then it was just good simple therapy for the anguished romantic. It was a great break to get out and ride all out for a couple of hours, processing lots of oxygen, seeing the back roads and exploring my thoughts. It was very empowering to find something I could accomplish, with adventures and challenges embedded. I'm now a happily married father of a 10 year old daughter. I still need to keep biking every day to clear my thoughts and explore my feelings. I find that cycling hard helps me open up to myself and confront issues and feelings more readily than when I sit around pondering. Riding helps me find solutions to quandaries that I can implement when I return. I feel a great sense of independence and freedom while cycling. I have been a long distance bike tourer for a number of years and have warm feelings of good memories of many cycling adventures with friendly strangers, old friends, mates, groups and solo. Some observations of ways to look at cycling: A bike is a lever. Its a lever that multiplies the result of leg motion into locomotion. A bike is the right tool for the task of adventure travel, enjoyment travel, commuting and small load transport. Biking and being somewhere When I bike along a scenic road, I am at each point along the road. If I drive it I am only in a car that passes through. I am not really "there" at each point along the road. In a vehicle, I only see it though the enclosing wind shields and smell it through the ventilation system and hear it over the engine sounds and feel it through the gas pedal. In a car, I am isolated from the place my car travels through. On a bike I am in a place I travel through. A self centered view of simple journeys My feet push the pedals. The pedals turn the cranks to rotate the chainwheel to pull the chain that turns the cog that spins the tire that rolls the globe under it, ever so gently under it until another part of the earth arrives under me. I step off of the bike and I am in a new place. It is wonderful that all of us can gently roll the earth with our bikes in different directions without interfering with one another. I also love the elegant, transparent simplicity of bikes. So I started making new funny bike designs. You can see them at: http://woodenbikes.com Cycling means different things to various folks. Happy cycling to you. ======================================== BTW: Tom is not just a "long distance bike tourer", he is a TransAmerica cycling veteran. So caught up in all the new bike designs he has swimming around in his head, he forgets to tell people that that is a part of his life experience.. -- 54% of New York City households do not own cars M A R T I N K R I E G : "Awake Again" Author http://www.bikeroute.com/AwakeAgain Bent Since '83, Car Free Since '89, '79 & '86 TransAms******** Coma, Paralysis, Clinical Death Survivor* Can You Change it with Love?* N A T I O N A L B I C Y C L E G R E E N W A Y |
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