On Yer Bike!
Do your bit for the Planet, but more so for yourself
I bought my first bike aged eleven years old. It cost me £11.00, which I had to save up for from the pittance that was my pocket money. What a liberation was there! From that moment on I was free to roam the county, no longer dependent upon adults and their cars. Not that I could get into too much trouble, rusticated as I was to the wilds of North Dorset. My mother had recently become the trophy wife of a businessman, who was the stage of trying his luck as a gentleman farmer, and he was neither. The result being my removal, much against my will, from the joys of London SW3 for a large house, 30 acres of parkland in front, plus 2,000 acres of shooting rights and a lake. Oh, and boarding school. That bit wasn’t so bad, once you got used to it, but after London I hated the isolation of the country during the holidays, my only brother being a virtual stranger four years older than myself and whom I only came to know at all decades on. The compensation was I became very horsy. I guess among other things it was the only form of transportation open to me.
But North Dorset, good hunting country though it may be, is not good hacking country. Too much farmland and shooting rights don’t do squat for a young lad wanting to steeplechase across the landscape and you can’t hitch a horse in the local town the way they do in the western movies. So during school holidays from the age of eleven to fifteen I ranged far and wide in a solitary quest for adventure with barely half-a-crown in my pocket. Sherborne, the nearest town was seven miles away. Yeovil another six with little to recommend it but a movie house showing “X-rated” films I tried but usually failed to get in. Dorchester, 13 miles away was historic like Sherborne only bigger. And on occasion I made the 40 miles to that Sin City of the South which was Bournemouth, where I would yearningly eye the French exchange students, who gathered in the downtown coffee bars and whose level of interest in a young English boy on a pushbike two years their junior can be imagined. I would end up taking in a movie and then back on my bike for the long ride home. The thing being I couldn’t take off for overnight trips further afield in my search for adventure as I didn’t have the money, even for a B&B.
On the Road for under Rp2.0m
And now, over 50 years on I have just bought my second bike. It cost me well under Rp2.0m to get me on the road with what they call a good ‘entry level’ bike with what seemed an impossible number of gears. All I remember from the past were 3-gears and my first bike didn’t even have that. The price includes lights back and front, a water flask & attachment and, those ugly helmets that look like nothing so much as technicoloured aero-dynamic cockroaches, I opted for a dark mono-coloured job that makes me look like a superannuated if somewhat overweight para. The asll-up cost was all unbelievably reasonable, though it would probably have been another two years before I got around to doing it ast all were it not for the inspired mentorship of writer and general bike-freak Jeremy Allan, who answered all my silly questions and shepherded me through the anxiety of purchase.
My reasons for getting back on my bike after all these years were varied and several, but some remain just as they were when I was eleven. Most of all I enjoy bicycling, just tooling along under my own steam taking in my surroundings. Without the eco-odium of having to get a second car, I can just hop on my bike and head off to the shops and cafés in Sanur whenever the spirit moves me without having to account for my presence or, more to the point, where the car is and did I remember that it had to be at so and so’s at such and such a time… good questions all. I like bicycling to work, most of the time that is, a distance of some 3 miles from the beach in Sanur to Sidakarya across the by-pass which I cover in about 25 minutes without pushing it, on the grounds that it’s a lot more interesting than being on a treadmill at the gym and I should lose some weight. I enjoy the thought of bicycling further, even heading off into the boonies at some as yet unspecified date. I like the idea that more and more people will take up bicycling as a corrective to the ugliness, cost and pollution of car culture, while recognizing that my getting on my bike is only going to cut my carbon footprint marginally.
The Power of Pedal
According to the book “Human Scale” by Kirkpatrick Sale, the most efficient form of transportation on earth is the bicycle. In terms of converting energy to motion, the book says, the bicycle is more efficient than a horse, fish, bird, mouse, car, helicopter, plane, jet, or any other animal or machine. Is it any wonder then that Malaya fell to Japanese bicycle troops who outfought superior numbers of mechanized British and Commonwealth forces in 1942, that the Viet Minh defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu a decade later and the Viet Cong sent the Americans packing in South Vietnam by 1975, essentially through superior logistics using bicycles carrying up to 400 lbs of matériel over almost any terrain.
Given the increasing cost of gasoline, diesel, LPG, and other fossil fuels, we have all the more reason to shift to bicycles for ordinary, day-to-day transport. We should all ask our local officials to set aside road lanes specifically for bicycles, to encourage everyone to use this super-efficient transport mode for daily commuting or just for leisure. In fact this is already starting to happen in Sanur, at least that part of Sanur being the cape bounded by the by-pass and the sea, where a “Better Sanur” movement is considering ways of protecting the local environment and considering ways to make this seaside town still more pleasant, one of which is to become more bicycle friendly.
Bicycles do not only save the rider money and the country dollars. They also reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, bicycle assembly, manufacture and repair can become a backyard industry. Best of all, a bicycle keeps the rider fit and healthy.
Let’s Get Biker-friendly…
In both urban, sub-urban and rural areas the bicycle is a no-brainer. Bicycling for those fit enough to do so (almost everyone from 8 to 80) over relatively short distances makes all the sense in the world. The only valid consideration I can see is safety and that is only because our highways have been so completely given over to the car over the last 60 years. In any confrontation with a car the bicyclist is bound to come off the loser. The solution however is simple and cheap. National and local authorities must adopt the necessary measures to protect the bicyclist from the car via bike lanes and separate paths. Cities all over the world from Paris to Chicago are adopting or looking at communal systems for bicycling in their cities to defeat congestion.
The only places where the bicycles and car should not co-exist is on automotive freeways. While safety is a definite factor, it should not stop anyone getting on their bike. You can’t multi-task on a bike, as you can dangerously in a car, but you can at least think of other things and still pay attention to what’s going on around you. You are also unlikely to be moving at lethal speeds if you come off. Due care and attention will keep you safe 99% of the time but remember, wearing a helmet does not prevent accidents. Best advice is to bike within your level of competence before taking on the by-pass and then be sure to wear a helmet. Me, on my way to work every day I bike up to the by-pass, get off, wait for a gap in the traffic and scuttle across to the divider and repeat the process to the other side. I still reckon they should have bike lanes on the by-pass, but even if they do, I reckon I’ll still dismount on my way to work and cross as a pedestrian. I wouldn’t want to be run over by a bicyclist, now would I?
