Bicycling and the Bicycle

After our horseback ride a couple of weeks ago, Melony and I went for a seven mile bicycle ride on the Kal-Haven trail. What joy--frosting on the cake! From my youngest years I have been especially fond of cycles. One of my earliest childhood memories is riding a (too) big tricycle down our neighbors paved and somewhat sloped driveway. (Our driveway wasn't paved.) Bicycles have been a part of my life. (Probably I shouldn't tell it, but I own five.) Beginning around the age of 12, I delivered Kalamazoo Gazettes to many houses in Plainwell on my bicycle. Once, after throwing my last paper for the route on West Bridge Street, I ran into the side of a car and seriously injured my arm. (No, the car didn't run into me; I hit the car.) That “laid me up” for most of the summer, but when I could I got back on another bike and resumed my paper delivering.

When Doris and I lived in St. Paul, MN and I was attending Bethel College, I rode my bicycle to work nearly every day as long as weather permitted. It saved gas money for us, and it gave me a chance to ride. My first new bicycle was a Montgomery Ward five-speed that I purchased when we lived on Kenwood Street in Kalamazoo. That was probably 1970. I had purchased a three-speed bike for Doris before we moved to St. Paul--that was her first new bike. She used to ride Dan around Como Park in a kid's seat that was on the back of her bike.

One of the highlights of my life was at age sixty, twenty-two years ago now, I biked from Bloomingdale to Mackinac with the Christian Fellowship young people. One of the high points (literally) of this year was riding through the Seney Wildlife Preserve with Darin and Ron--yes it rained. It was at age sixty-five that I bought my first high wheeler bike. I rode that in the Allegan Fair Parade almost every year into my eightieth. I now ride a smaller version, 38 inch wheel as opposed to 52, in the Otsego and Plainwell Memorial Day parades as well as the South Haven Fourth of July parade. One of my favorite memories is when grandson Grant rode with me in the parades--he on the big highwheeler and I on the smaller. Half of the fun of a highwheeler is the smiles that it puts on people's faces when they see you, and the other half is just the joy of riding and pedaling.

The bicycle is one of, if not the greatest of inventions! Few other machines extend/enhance the person as the bike does. I am a better me when I bike. I can go faster and farther on the same effort expended in walking. (I love walking, too.) Bicycling brings me in tune with who I am, and I think it is a touch of how it will be in the New Heaven/Earth.

My circle of living activity has been diminishing the last few years; bicycling seems to be increasingly shoved outside its periphery. (That's not a lamentation). This is a musing on how my life has been enhanced by cycles and part of why a few miles with my daughter on the bike trail as well as a U.P. ride with my sons was/is so special to me. It was my other two son’s spending time and staying at home with their mother that made these rides possible. My cup runneth over. 

I don’t think that the apostle Paul had bicycles in mind when he wrote Philippians 4:8, but I can’t help thinking that they may be included. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” If bicycles themselves should not be included in the above, then certainly how they have enhanced me and my living should be.