Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Lose Weight the Easy Way

Most people want to lose weight and get in shape. People may be content with their fitness level, but they would prefer to be in better shape. The problem isn’t a lack of desire. The problem isn’t that people don’t know what they need to do. Eat less. Exercise more. This isn’t rocket science. So, why don’t people do it?

I spent several years knowing what I needed to do but not doing it. Concerns about my health convinced me to rearrange some priorities. There are things I don’t do anymore because riding a bicycle is high on my priority list. But the reality is that we can’t always do that. Work, church, family, life. These things constantly pull us away from our fitness goals.

There is an article in Bicycling titled America’s Most Bike-Crazy Mayor and it highlights Betsy Price’s efforts here in Fort Worth to get people riding bicycles. They quote Betsy Price as saying, “I realized if I was going to maintain an active lifestyle as mayor, it would be vital to find ways to incorporate it into my city activities.” I love that quote because that is the thing that people either don’t get or they do it poorly. For Betsy Price, the concept translates into doing rolling and walking town hall meetings. She gives city residents the opportunity to communicate with her, which is a job requirement, but rather than this taking away from her ability to exercise, it enhances it.

We may find ourselves saying, “I don’t have time to exercise.” We may feel guilty about it, but the reality is that it is true. But what if we incorporate exercise into our high priority things? What does that look like?

Bicycle commuting is one of the first things that comes to mind. If I were to bicycle commute rather than drive and then ride afterward, I would get more exercise, but it would take me less time to do it. I don’t do that because my day would have to start even earlier and some of the streets I would have to travel make me a little nervous, especially in the dark. But if I lived within three miles of work, it would take me less time to ride my bicycle than to drive, and I would get exercise “for free.”

There must be other ways we can incorporate activity into the things we’re doing anyway. I’ve heard of people gaining weight because the office copy machine was moved closer to their desk. I’ve also heard of managers turning their staff meetings into walking meetings, in which they walked the halls instead of meeting in a conference room.

Church stuff bothers me. Have you ever noticed how much church stuff involves sitting or eating and sometimes sitting and eating? At our church, we have tons of pillows that people leave at church because people sit so much that they feel uncomfortable. Instead of sitting on those pillows, we would be better off if we would have a pillow fight once in a while.

With as many things as we have going on in our lives, there will always be things that take higher priority than exercise. And sometimes that may even be something like sitting around watching television or reading a book. There are times that we need the down time. These days, it is rare that it takes less time to exercise than what it does not to exercise, but if we find ways to combine that exercise with things we are already doing it will reduce the time required. And if we set things up so that doing the high priority things forces us to exercise, we won’t even consider the excuses we have for not exercising.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Why Don't You Ride a Bicycle

Why don’t you ride a bicycle? Because I ride a bicycle, I have many people telling me why they don’t. I kind of think that these people feel guilty about riding. While I would like to see more people riding bicycles, if you don’t ride a bicycle, that’s your loss. You don’t have to explain it to me. But here are a few reasons why people don’t ride bicycles.

My balance isn’t very good.

I suppose this is a ligament reason. I don’t give balance much thought. A bicycle that’s going above 4 mph or so will balance on its own. The faster you go the easier it is to balance. I realize some people have health problems that mess with their balance, but I wonder if the real problem is that people are just afraid to go fast enough to keep the bicycle upright. Besides which, research shows that riding a bicycle can help people develop balance skills.

I don’t know how.

While I’ve never had someone tell me this, CBS News reports that 8% of American adults never learned to ride a bicycle. That means that for every 100 people you know, about 8 of them never learned to ride a bicycle. You don’t hear much about these people because it is embarrassing. Who wants to tell their friends that they’ve never learned to ride a bike? Even kids reach an age where the embarrassment of admitting they don’t know how to ride may prevent them from learning. As an adult, you not only don’t know how to ride but you may not know who can help you learn.

I’m uncomfortable riding in city traffic.

For people who know how to ride and are physically able, this seems like it is the most common reason. It fascinates people when I tell them that I hop on my bicycle at home and ride across town to places like the Fort Worth Stockyards, which is 15 miles from my house by car. There are aspects of it that make me nervous as well, but after a few times of loading my bicycle in my truck to drive 10 miles to get to a trail I began to question whether I could get there without the extra time spend driving and loading. I turned to Google Maps for help. They have a feature that will help you select a bicycle route. Rather than choosing the shortest distance, it chooses streets with less traffic. It doesn’t always get it right, but I’ve used it to find routes with very little traffic. Were it not for being forced to ride on either Hemphill Street or Sycamore School Road, I could find a route to most places I want to go without encountering much traffic. But even that’s not bad, if I choose the right time to ride.

I don’t have a bicycle.

Obviously, if you don’t have a bicycle you can’t ride one, but this is like saying that you don’t eat cake because you don’t have cake. If you want cake, you can either make one or buy one. If you want to ride a bicycle, you can buy one or borrow one. With bike share programs becoming more popular, there are a lot of people riding bicycles who don’t own a bicycle.

I don’t have a place to ride.

This is related to the concern over riding in city traffic, but it’s more common among people in a rural area. Unlike in the city, in the country, you have just a few narrow roads that cut through the area. Traffic isn’t heavy, but the traffic that is there is moving very quickly. The drivers aren’t expecting to come over a hill or around a bend and see a bicycle. The only solution I know of is to ride with a group. Drivers will spot a group of cyclists more quickly and are more likely to be looking for bicycles if they’ve already seen one.

I don’t like getting sweaty.

There’s not much I can do about that. Get over it.

It hurts when I ride.

Serious cyclists tend to be masochists, but there’s no reason why pain must be associated with riding a bicycle. Some pain will make you stronger, but some pain is an indication of problems, so it depends on the nature of the pain to determine whether it is a good reason not to ride. If it comes from sore legs or a feeling of being saddle sore, the solution is to ride more and more often. For many years, I was riding only in warm weather. After weeks being off the bike, I found that it was difficult for me to ride fifteen miles. I would have to work up to more every year. Some pain is an indication that your bicycle doesn’t fit. A bicycle that is too small or too large can cause back pain. The wrong saddle can cause pain there. Lack of lubrication can cause pain. You may be pushing on the pedals very hard to overcome friction or a heavy bike.

I don’t want to.

When you get down to it, this is the real reason people don’t ride bicycles. I’ve been there. I remember driving home from work and looking for flags to tell me how windy it was. If the flags were standing straight out, I would decide that it was too windy to ride. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that. There’s a point at which the more you ride the more you want to ride. I think it is at that point where you ride forty miles and you know you could ride a lot more. Or maybe it is when you climb a couple of steep hills that happen to be on the route you are taking rather than looking for a way around. When you want to ride, all the excuses go away.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Sheltered From Anger

The light was red as I rolled to the well-worn stop line on my two wheeled conveyance. It was the last major street I would have to cross before reaching home, the endpoint for a fifty mile ride. A small white car that had been sitting at the drive-thru window of a convenience store pulled across the street and came up behind me. It hadn’t been there for more than a couple of seconds when I heard a man’s voice, “Go!”

I looked up at the red light and then yelled over my shoulder, “It’s red.”

“Get out of the way! I’m going to bump your mother f_____g a__!”

“The light’s red,” I yelled again. I thought about what would happen if he carried out his threat. His front bumper would hit my rear wheel first. Aside from the damage it would do to my bicycle, it would knock me off my feet.

A few seconds passed. The light turned green and I crossed the road, hoping that he wouldn’t follow. He didn’t. He made his right turn and the situation was over.

Though situations like this one are rare, they do happen. I can only guess why this particular guy was impatient and why he wanted me to break the law so that he could make a right turn on red. It seems like some people get impatient around bicycles even when the bicycle isn’t really causing them an inconvenience. But another thought occurred to me.

If I had been driving my truck, he still would’ve been in just as much of a hurry. I would’ve still been blocking him from making a right turn on red. He might have even yelled at me. The difference is that I wouldn’t have heard him yelling. With layers of metal and glass between us and the air conditioner running, I would’ve be oblivious to anything he said and it is unlikely I would’ve seen him do anything.

When I tell people why I think they should ride a bicycle, one of the things I mention is that when you ride a bicycle you interact more with people in your community. The metal and glass shells on our cars insolate us from human interaction. But while on a bicycle, I’ve have spoken to neighbors I know only by sight. I’ve have strangers stop me to ask directions. I’ve had people stop to talk while I was locking up my bicycle at a restaurant. The angry guy in the white car is just another of my neighbors choosing to communicate with me.

We can chalk this situation up to an attitude of entitlement. The guy in the little white car felt that he was entitled to make a right turn on red, even though there was another vehicle in front of him. Perhaps he saw it as just a bicycle and since he was driving a car, he deserved to pull forward. In any case, he felt entitled and that is just another word for pride. Pride is sinful.

I don’t like getting into these situations, but when we remove the shell that prevents us from communicating with the world around us, not all communication will be the kind we like. We are going to encounter sinful people who become angry, call us names, and curse at us, even when we are doing nothing wrong. These are the people Jesus died for.

When you think about it, we ought to encounter people like this more frequently than we do. When you remove the mask of politeness that so many people put on, this is what the world is like. The question is, why don’t we see it? To that I say it is because we are a bunch of monks. We hide out in our homes until we choose to go somewhere, but the places we choose are those places where we expect to encounter people who will respect us. We go to church, where people are like minded. We go to stores and restaurants where people are paid to be nice to us. In between these places we ride around in privacy boxes, so that people who are just feet from us are prevented from communicating beyond a blow of the horn or a middle finger raised in anger. Whether it is out on the roadways or in other places, if we are so sheltered that we don’t encounter people who express anger toward us, we are too sheltered to have an impact on the world.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Why Would You Spend That Much for a Bicycle?

Walmart will sell you a bicycle for $80. But maybe you don’t like the cheap model. If so, they have bicycles priced as high as $300. Since so many people shop at Walmart, that’s about would people expect to pay for a bicycle, but some bicycles are priced in excess of $10,000. Your average cycling enthusiast doesn’t pay nearly that much. Most of the bikes you’ll find in a bicycle shop are priced between $300 and $2,000. Even that is enough to shock people who are accustomed to Walmart prices.

Most bicycles look alike, so some people struggle with understanding why it costs more to buy a bicycle from a bike shop. It all comes down to components. Just like when you buy a computer you can buy one for a low price if you don’t need the latest and greatest components, you can buy a bicycle with lesser components for cheap, but the better components will cost you. The better components are lighter weight, less resistant, easier to use, and less likely to fail.

When considering how much you should spend, consider what you intend to use the bicycle for. Some people think they need only consider price and appearance, but this is a mistake. There is an implied use that they are considering without realizing it. Some people want a bicycle because they want to go for an evening ride around the neighborhood with the family. Maybe they load them up and carry them to a trail once in a while. For these people, a Walmart bike is probably adequate. If they can afford more, they would be better off with a bicycle store bike, but there’s no reason to spend a lot of money on a bike that is going to see little use.

Walmart bikes are good for about 2,000 miles. That’s about the time the bottom bracket fails. If you’re willing to do the work yourself, you can fix them, but they’re really designed to last about 2,000 miles and then you throw them away and buy a new one. If you take them to a bike shop for service, you can easily spend as much as you paid for the bike getting everything repaired.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re big into racing bicycles, you’re going to be looking for the lightest weight bikes that can handle a lot of stress. On a road bike, you don’t want to try to shift gears and not be able to because you are pushing so hard on the pedals. On a mountain bike, you don’t want to come over a jump and the handlebars break loose under the strain. On any bike, you don’t want the brakes to give out on you. You want the best bike you can afford.

But in between you have people who are out for their exercise. These people ride frequently and put in a significant number of miles. They are looking for comfort. They are looking for reliability. They are looking for maintainability. They are looking for ease of use.

There are also people who want to commute using a bicycle. Any bicycle can be used as a commuter bike, but when you’re on a bicycle every day, you become more selective. There are certain features that you want. You want it to be easy to ride.

It seems to me that the more time people spend on a bicycle the more they are willing to spend on a bicycle. And when people spend more on a bicycle they are more likely to spend more time on a bicycle.