I Love My Bike: A Guide to Choosing and Maintaining Your Bicycle

It's one of the rare things in life that lets you escape from the world, while also connecting you to it. I love to spin my way through forests, around lakes, and into little communities I never knew existed.

That meant I learned to walk in a full leg cast. One leg grew a little shorter than the other, making me self-conscious about the special shoes I wore. But on a bike, I was just like anyone else. And my doctor told me from an early age that riding a bike would build up muscles to help hold my knee together.

I Love My Bike…

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In a way, it seems right that crazy things would happen on a bike, the most impossible of human conveyances. Everything else we use to get around makes absolute sense. But for years, scientists actually had no idea how or why a bicycle really works, on the most elemental levels.

My love for cycling started in high school, when I used money from a summer job to buy a Nishiki Century. Then I spent the next summer with my dad, riding a loaner Raleigh. I mainly worked at night. My dad worked in the day, so I rode for hours and hours.

By the time I returned to my hometown in South Carolina, I could easily ride out to the airport and back, buzzing up long highway hills and looping around the far side of the city to add miles. Without realizing it, I had become a cyclist. Within a few years, I was splayed in the back of a friend's bike shop, rebuilding a planetary gear hub for a rusty Raleigh DL-1 I picked up for $5.

To learn more about bikes, I spent hours reading cycling guru Sheldon Brown, then Grant Petersen and Jan Heine. I watched the Tour de France, that spectacle of suffering. Like many others, I'm a fan of Jens Voigt, the German racer who famously told his own legs during a long, excruciating ride, "Shut up, legs!"

Later, I started pulling my daughters in a bike trailer, and the combined weight of about 100 pounds made me ponder torque and anaerobic exercise as I crept up hills. The trailer lets us be a one-car family, and it's great for bringing a picnic wherever we want to go.

I'm glad cycling has helped me stay healthy. But I love that it's given me a place to depressurize. Leaning over my handlebars, I've come to terms with setbacks and made plans for the future. It's where I realized I should propose to my wife. It's where I mourned my mother, after she died of ALS. And now it's where I think about my own kids.

Since their invention in 1817, bicycles have affected the progress of society in terms of both culture and modern industry. As a result of this broad impact, bikes have influenced artists over the past two centuries, with luminaries such as Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso featuring bicycle parts in ground-breaking sculptures. Today, bicycles inspire a spectrum of international artists. I Love to Ride My Bicycle presents work by contemporary practitioners from Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, the United States, and Vietnam who incorporate bikes as muse and material. Ranging from drawing, painting, and photography to sculpture, performance, and video installation, their artworks manifest the ongoing significance of two-wheeled human-powered vehicles. At the same time, the works convey the widespread enthusiasm for bicycles expressed by the title of the exhibition.

.css-7dgi4uheight:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#BB3B80;The unique feeling I have on a bike is the freedom I feel wherever I am or wherever I am going. I never feel obliged to take the same route when I am on a cycle path. I can choose to go where my will takes me.

.css-7dgi4uheight:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#BB3B80;I've lived with chronic incurable illness for five years now, and learning how to get back on my (electric) bike has been life-changing. Before I relied on others to go anywhere, now I cycle everywhere, everyday. My bike is better than a car, it's given me freedom to travel while giving me the opportunity to exercise while doing so. I feel better for two years of daily cycling than I ever did with any medicine.

.css-7dgi4uheight:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#BB3B80;Certainly cycling can be made to be an expensive hobby/form of exercise. But it can also be done on a budget and there is very little marginal cost once the bike has been purchased.

.css-7dgi4uheight:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#BB3B80;The feel of setting off on a bike seems like more of an adventure. Totally different to going by car or plane.

.css-7dgi4uheight:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#BB3B80;Commuting by bike, even in winter has given me a constantly changing perspective even on a regular commute, one that is often breathtaking and would be completely missed by motorised transport. With a bike you can always stop, point, and shoot.

.css-7dgi4uheight:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#BB3B80;I take my two children to school and nursery every day on a tandem plus child seat. My children sing every day on their way to school. I get to arrive on time everywhere I go. I smile at people on the bike - no chance in a car. People smile at us. I am getting healthier and fitter. I am not contributing to London's pollution when I travel. Other people see us and say "I might try that". I am a less mean-spirited commuter.

The unity of text and illustration in this book perfectly captures the ups and downs of learning to ride a bike for the first time. Sam Usher's ink and watercolour illustrations show the physicality of the young girl as she pedals, wobbles, swerves, and leans forward with determination. There is a poetry to Simon Mole's language, moving effortlessly from pacey to reflective, its rhythms, rhymes, alliteration and vowel sounds fitting together like links in a bicycle chain:

With the addition of the bike rack side hack, I whole-heartedly love my XL Hagen. With no other bike, could I have my scooter loving daughter, her scooter, my BMX and next year, our little boy all cruising together, exploring the best spots in town. The real steel Hagen is also a real glue in our family, tying us together into one fun loving punch.Much love,Kaspar

A few years ago we were on a trip in our motorhome in Wales. I obviously complained too much about the hills whilst we were out on our bikes. When we returned home, Peter disappeared into the garage for a few evenings and when he finally emerged, my old bike had acquired a new addition: a battery. It had been transformed to an e-Bike!

This is another question we are often asked as electric bikes are still quite expensive. It is possible to pick one up for a few hundred pounds, but a good one will cost closer to a thousand pounds. Similarly, it is possible to spend several thousand pounds! Even the e-bike conversion kits that we used are over 300 (including the battery) and of course, you need a bike to convert! Despite this, e-bikes are a great investment in your fitness. Research has shown that more people are more likely to actually go out on a bike if they have an electric bike. Investing in an e-bike is a way of investing in your own health and there are many other advantages too (see below). As with anything though, it is best to try before you buy. Hiring an e-bike for a day would be advisable. Some outlets allow you to hire a bike and then if you go ahead and make a purchase, the hire cost is deducted from the purchase price.

This is another frequently asked question about electric bikes. The answer is: it depends. There are a few variables involved: how big is the battery? how heavy is the rider? what is the terrain like? How much power do you use? (eg. there are five power settings on my current bike. I would only use level 5 briefly for a very steep hill; most of the time I cruise in level 2, sometimes level 3. If you cruised at level 3 all the time, you would use more power.)

On my first electric bike I had a huge battery. The downside to this was that it was really heavy. On one occasion I rode about 60 miles on fairly flat terrain; I weigh around eight and a half stones. When we arrived home, my battery was still three quarters full!

On my latest bike, the battery is much smaller and lighter. So far I have ridden about 40 miles on mixed terrain (some hills, some flat, some road and some track) and still had about half left. Peter has the same battery but he is heavier. He still had plenty left after this ride.

Peter bought e-bike conversion kits online and fitted them to our old bikes. He has now converted five, the two original versions, the two updated ones and a spare one for visitors! How difficult is it to convert an ordinary bike to an electric bike? He says that it is relatively straightforward if you are at all practical and have a knowledge of bikes. I should point out, however, that he is an engineer! Some customisation of the kit always seems to be required to make it fit an existing bike, but certainly the last one that he did took a couple of hours. He sourced the kits for our bikes from Yosepower, although I believe there are several conversion kits available on the market.

The technology has come on a lot since Peter first put our electric bikes together. Before he converted the last two, we considered buying ready made bikes, but good ones are very expensive and as we already had bikes, it seemed sensible to convert these. The new kits are a great improvement on the original ones. Hopefully the cost of off-the-peg electric bikes will come down as they become more popular, but even now, I think they are a great investment. The benefits of electric bikes are clear and more and more people are enjoying the freedom they bring.

I had never even heard of e-bikes until a few months ago when my neighbour mentioned them and loved them when they rented some in Japan.Your review makes me even more curious!Will try it some day for sure!

Thanks for explaining how electric bikes can be operated by people who have limited mobility. Ever since my uncle got into a car accident, he has been having trouble bending his knees but wants to find a way to lose weight this summer. Maybe he should get an electronic bike to help him stay active. 2ff7e9595c