X-Factor – 28
Bikes are amazing. That much is obvious. If you are reading this magazine it is likely that you share this view. Bikes are often our first taste of freedom as children, giving us the wings and wheels to travel beyond our backyards into new frontiers.
There is something liberating about climbing aboard a bike as an adult and rediscovering that youthful freedom of powering your own motion, the freedom of flying through the air, or between the trees, with the wind in your hair. The mere trip to the milkbar solidifies our sense of autonomy and reinforces the idea that we can go anywhere: if we can dream it, we can achieve it (even if it’s just down the road for a few 5 cent red frogs… or am I showing my age?).
So many of us stop cycling in the tumult of adolescence and—I am guessing if you’re here reading this—there is a high likelihood that you have rediscovered bikes as an adult.
As we grow, our expectations of adventures grow, too, and as adults, perhaps we are less enamoured to merely head to the local shop on a solo adventure with our bike, and more likely to seek out more grand escapes. I know I have!
As a member of the lifelong mountain biker club I have used the bike as an excuse to holiday in France, Italy, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and all around Australia. The bike has taken me places I would otherwise never have visited, from obscure country towns within Australia to obscure country towns in Europe. And lots of obscurity in between.
Despite being in another country, the love of bikes creates a connection with cyclists that one would otherwise not have. Through broken French, lapsing into German while trying to order coffee in Italy, and other cross-cultural experiences in places that are English speaking (but worlds away from home in Australia), I have met people and had exchanges I would otherwise never have experienced if I wasn’t travelling with a bike.
Rather than taking Contiki tours to experience some of the great parts of the world, instead I have been fortunate to have climbed up Alps, through forests and along farm roads that the average tourist wouldn’t even consider.
But we aren’t all that fortunate! I acknowledge that I have at times lived the mountain biker’s dream. For most of us, work, bills and kids mean that exotic overseas bike trips can be a little more difficult to get away with. We are left to find adventure and awe in the everyday.
But the very essence and wonder, the feeling of freedom can be summoned on local rides if you let it. Taking the path less travelled, pedalling the less conventional route or even taking a wholeday epic (with picnic included) can generate that same sense of awe and adventure we have as small children gaining our wings on our 24” Apollo equipped with Shimano SIS (oh god, I really am that old…).
A recent spate of epic rides led me through lush rainforest trails not far from home that I never knew existed. There were long climbs through bushy ‘straya scrub; and dense, cool tropical rainforest with stunning megaflora at the canopy, and all a stone’s throw from home. And it was all there, marked on the the forestry maps, the path less travelled just waiting to be explored.
It’s true, travelling far yonder across the seas with a bike gives a whole new perspective to travelling, and I wouldn’t change that for the world, but sometimes making the effort to uncover hidden gems within reach from home can stoke the adventure and wonder we first felt on our fledgling outings on two wheels, many moons ago.