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:

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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.
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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