I have to admit, I never understood doing any activity, let alone cycling, with earbuds in. Is it that people feel so uninterested in the activity that they are doing that they need additional sensory impute? Or is it that the sounds they might hear or the thoughts they might have are not intrinsically satisfying? It seems to me the essence of enjoying an activity is total participation in it. But in contemporary society doing more than one thing at a time seems to be the new norm. So I guess I'm completely old fashioned and out of date. I'm very fortunate.