Life Lessons from Riding a Bicycle

Riding a bicycle is for me one of life's great pleasures. There's something about the physical activity that brings me back to the happy and carefree memories of my childhood. It's no surprise one of my favorite things to do on vacation or a rare day off is to putter around by bike, whether my own community or some new destination.

I do also bike for exercise, less often than I used to but maybe once a month or so. Those outings are also fun, but there is also a purposefulness to it, to get a good weat in or to try to do a regular route just a little bit faster.

However much I push myself, bicycling is easier than running or swimming for me, so it affords me some time to let my mind wander. Sometimes I think through a current challenge I am facing, many other times I find myself daydreaming about some future leisure trip.

Recently, I thought of how riding a bike is a bit of a metaphor for life. After all, like my bike routs, life is full of its ups and its downs, times when my metaphorical lungs and quads are burning and other times when I am coasting with little resistance.

To continue the analogy, let me offer a few additional life lessons that I think I can mine out of my identity as a bicyclist:

1. Building up speed on the descents gives you momentum to power up the ascents. Philly is surprisingly hilly, and I find myself pushing on the downhills to give myself a little upfront boost for the uphills. I think we can similarly prepare to gut out hard times by building up speed in advance.

2. My bike is supposed to have 3 gears (low, medium, high), but it's approximately a million years old so is stuck in high gear. Which means climbing a hill can be quite arduous minus the aid of shifting into a lower gear. I will let you to determine what is your equivalent of being stuck in high gear; I certainly have my share of personal failings that prevent me from making a hard time easier.

3. Some hills are so steep or long that, especially given that I can only ride in high gear, I'm forced to just get off and walk it. Which I resisted at first - I've known since I was a kid that you can make it up any hill if, like the little engine, you just will yourself to "think I can" - but now welcome with relief. Some hills are just too much, as our some life trials, and you just have to admit it and make it through any way you can.

What other life lessons can we glean from riding a bicycle?