Inherited a Salvation Army 3-speed (functioned as one-speed) in college from a friend, discovered that it got me around campus and to my volunteer job across Providence a lot faster than waiting for buses. Moved to Oakland, borrowed a bike from the person I was staying with because it got me to my job much faster than the buses there, too.
Moved to France with a not-overtly-religious-but-mildly-cult-like non profit, bought an old road bike from a yard sale because otherwise I'd have to depend on the organization's shuttle bus between our two towns, and I preferred the freedom of my own schedule and ability to explore the area. Got lost at night in my first week, in the middle of farmland, no streetlights, a pedal-powered light that died whenever I stopped to try to figure out the French signs (which I later gathered meant "no trespassing"), chain fell off, lewd guys catcalled me from their car as I fixed the chain, considered spending the night hiding in a cornfield, had to stop three times to ask directions in pathetic French -- but realized that riding a bike at midnight, lost in a foreign country, was in fact exhilaratingly great.
Moved to NYC, and as of this year I've found that biking gets me around town about as fast as the subway, and is much better for my mood and health. Don't know if I'm a "proper cyclist" as the first post asked because I don't go on road trips and my bike's not super-advanced (good bike, 80's Panasonic road bike, but nothing fancy about it) but it's my main form of transport and I ride about 100 miles/week, so in my mind anyway I'm a cyclist.
Cars have never been of interest to me, I guess because in my 20s I moved often and to places where public transport/biking made the most sense, and worked for very low-paying non-profits, so I couldn't afford one. I did buy a friend's '77 mustard-yellow Volvo station wagon with the bottom rusted out for $600, loved it, drove it about 3 months and about 1,500 miles before it died, but since then I've never thought about buying a car.