Bicycles are amazing.
It is mechanically and biologically extremely efficient. 99% of the energy transmitted by the rider is transferred to the wheels. You can travel at 15-25 kph and use only the energy it takes to walk!
"...the bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon." ~Bill Strickland, The Quotable Cyclist
Perhaps Western civilization's single most out sanding achievement is the invention of the bicycle, and if the only reason God almighty allowed it to flourish was to produce the bike, I think it was worth it! I know that maybe controversial, but to understand the connection between the bicycle and the modern world read this book:
It's all about the Bike: The persuit of happiness on two wheels
by Robert Penn.
This book is not really about that though. It's about someone who loves bikes, and wants to build one up. Not just any bike, but his ideal bike. As he does so, from the frame, to the wheels to the saddle, the group set, the tyres, headset, handlebars and all the rest, he travels the world to get the best components and visits the people and companies that produce them and on the way we learn the history of this extra-ordinary machine all in a couple of hundred readable pages.
But there is a passage in his book that perhaps sums it all up. I relate to it completely (minus the shirk!)
'The bicycle saves my life every day. If you’ve ever experienced a moment of awe or freedom on a bicycle; if you’ve ever taken flight from sadness to the rhythm of two spinning wheels, or felt the resurgence of hope pedalling to the top of a hill with the dew of effort on your forehead; if you’ve ever wondered, swooping bird-like down a long hill on a bicycle, if the world was standing still; if you have ever, just once, sat on a bicycle with a singing heart and felt like an ordinary man touching the gods, then we share something fundamental. We know it’s all about the bike."
And this is how I feel on my mountain bike. I'm out of the city, out of my box, into the wild, up the hills and through the tree's and it really doesn't matter, sun, rain wind or snow when I'm tearing down the trail, weaving the sinewy singletrack barely hanging on as roots, rocks and dirt seem to contrive to throw me down, and sometimes do, but at the top of that impossible climb and bottom of that steep and rocky hill I feel alive and connected. Most of all I feel grateful, grateful to Allah who made this all possible. There are no gods, not real ones anyway, only the One who made of all this. The air, the trees, the bike...and wheels roll on, like a cycle of life.
The Prophet Mohammed said:
"The world and everything in it is cursed, except the Scholar, the student of knowledge and the remembrance of Allah and what helps you to do that."
Mountain biking: It helps me do that. To remember Allah. To see His creation. To know both my fragility and my ability, and when I reach that slippery and rooty descent that last time threw me over my handlebars and left me and my bike in a twisted heap I know I have to conquer it. I can't let it get the better of me, and when I clean it, the smile stays with me in my heart long after it leaves my face. Hey, I'm smiling now just thinking about it. Then I know, with Allah's permission, we can do great things!
