Be One With the Bike

Humans are distinguished amongst the natural world not by any advantagious physical trait, but by augmenting our natural traits with new ones that we invent ourselves. We'll loose in a running race versus a cheetah. A bear will always dominate us in a fist fight. We can't match the endurance of a horse. We could not hope to swim as fast as a dolphin. We can't breathe the CO2 air near a vulcano like some plants. Nor can we endure the extreme cold of the antarctic like the penguins (or the extreme heat of the sahara like the scorpions). We're really not well adapted to any environment better than other native life if we were left out in the world completely naked and with no knowledge.

But we have big fat brains and opposable thumbs, and with those, we've been able to augment our limitations with tools that have enabled us to not only survive, but dominate the natural world of Earth. In this sense, what defines a human qua human, is not just her water-sack body, but also, necessarily, her tools. Without our tools, we're not whole. We define them, and they define us.

With fire we can keep warm in the coldest climates and can eat un-fresh food without getting sick. With sharp blade edges made of rock and metal we can hunt game and slice it for cooking. With motors we can move across the landscape many many times faster than any muscle-bound animal. And whenever a new challenge confronts us, threatening our existence, we never cease our quest to find new ways to dominate nature. It is our tools, or machines, combined with our bodies that define what it is to be "human".

But there are different combinations of body + machine. Some tools are more body than machine, like a hammer, or a brick. They demand a larger proportion of resources to come from our bodies for them to reach their potential. Other tools are more machine than body, like our planes, trains, and automobiles which allow us to use little to no effort from out bodies to exert extreme forces upon the world. And then there are others which find a good balance between both body and machine, like the bicycle.

I find bicycles to be the most the interesting, existentially, of all our tools. A bicycle is a massively efficient machine which translates energy from our human bodies in motion and enables us to explore our world at beyond-natural speeds. They instil our minds with freedom, but are fueled by our force of will. Only continents, gravity, and the resistance of the wind limit our possibilities on a bicycle. But a bicycle is not useful without a corresponding human body; and a human body without a bicycle is only a slow moving, local, creature. It is an almost perfect balance of body + machine. Riding a bike is the most quintessentially human phenomenon one can experience.