Originally Posted by Digital Gee

It can take me all the way back to my early youth, when being on a bike was just about the greatest feeling of all. I felt free and powerful and fast and unlimited. I could go places that until the bike were completely unavailable to me on my own.

It can take me to a place without time, when it's just me and the bike out there, and I can really hear the sounds of the birds and the bugs, the wind through the rushes in the wetlands and the sound my tires make riding down the pavement. When it's like this, I don't know - and I don't care - what time it is. Feels like I could go on forever in that space between the past and the future.

It can take me back a scant ten years, when I first returned do to cycling after a thirty or more year absence. With my new bike, I can relive all the feelings of being new to cycling. I can marvel at how I can make the gears shift and make the hill a little easier. I can ride in awe of the absolute noiselessness of the bike - no squeaks, no unwanted clicks.

It gives me time - time to think, to puzzle something out, to ponder about the meaning of things.

It can even take me into the future, where I can see myself riding ten, fifteen, or maybe even twenty years down the line. I'm 64 (and a half, as the kids would say). Maybe (okay, probably) on different bikes, but each of them giving me pleasure and fitness, smiles and pleasure.