Life Cycles

A personal essay by KJ Satchel

‘I’d better not print this out. Do my bit for the environment, seeing you’re doing yours.’ My colleague gave my bike helmet a pointed look. I sighed. This wasn’t the first time I’d been on the receiving end of this passive-aggressive judgement on my choice of transport. But how do you explain that sometimes ‘doing your bit for the environment’ is the just most enjoyable way of doing something?

This was not my first bicycle. I’ve owned twice as many bikes as cars over my life. My first one arrived at Christmas, as childhood bikes tend to do, and was green and exciting. I have no memory of the first time I rode it, with a parent running alongside until I sped up and they were left behind shouting encouragement I as rode off down the road, but it must have happened something like that. Or did I slip into riding on my own, without any fanfare? It feels like I’ve always just known how to ride, the bike an extension of me.

This was in the 70s, and all the neighbourhood children had bikes. We would gather at the top of Pink Hill, an unused council road that swept down the hilly park, curving around a corner for the steepest bit, until it flattened out alongside the tamed, canalised river. There were stories of kids taking the corner too fast and skidding out into the murky water. I suspect they were just myths, stories made up or exaggerated to increase the adrenaline buzz we were after as we lived our safe, middle-class lives. The only injuries I ever saw were legs and arms grazed on the gravel.

One morning, as I sat back on my bike watching my best friend climb a fence to get to a tree branch bursting with oranges, I brushed at something tickling my hand. I looked down to see a bee roll off onto the ground, leaving its sting embedded in my thumb. Neil was dispatched to call an adult for help, while I straddled my bike in the middle of the road and cried. It wasn’t very long before I felt a bit silly at my feigned helplessness and set off for home, squashing the bee corpse with my front wheel as I rode off, a pathetic take that. There was no welcoming party of sympathy; Neil had just buggered off home to play Scalextric rather than inform any adults, and I don’t think I even told my parents.

I don’t remember what happened to my green bike when I outgrew it. I like to think it was passed on to another child, to instil a love of riding in someone else, rather than sit rusting in the backyard.

A few years later, my father emerged from the garage with a rickety old bike he had used to ride to the train station, as the first part of a commute to his boring office job in the city when he was a young adult. This giant, wobbly bike became my new transport to get to tennis lessons a couple of suburbs away, making a 25 minute walk a quick 10 minute cycle. This bike was my introduction to how riding a bicycle keeps all the advantages of walking – no car, no reliance on someone else for a lift – but adds speed and adventure. It was far too big for 10 year old me, but I learnt how to leap off without hitting my pubic bone on the bar, and how to stop with brakes that only partly worked. It was also the bike that taught me you need to bond with your bike if you want it to stick with you. I only used it for solo transport, never riding in a group with friends, and when I started high school I abandoned it within the first week, preferring to walk with friends rather than arrive looking distinctly uncool on an old chunk of metal which I looked ridiculous dismounting. The bike went back into the garage, and I’m pretty sure it’s still there now.

And so, my teenage years were bike-less, but I did pick up a tobacco habit quite early on. At the ripe old age of 20, I decided it was time to give up and needed something to help. ‘Buy a bike and do the Argus Cycle Tour’ suggested a friend. I didn’t hesitate, and used the money I’d been saving for a trip overseas to buy a slinky racing bike. I sent in my entry, and was smoking a cigarette outside when the postman dropped off my number for the race. As an afterthought, I bought a bike helmet and went on one cycle with my friend along some windy, hilly roads. First ride complete, I announced it was a lot more work than I’d thought it would be, but I’d give it a go. I drank beer alongside my pasta for night-before-carb-loading, and nearly gave up on the very first hill. But I finished the 104km route, riding through breathtaking scenery and discarded water bottles. I never rode that bike again. Later, when I was working in London, Neil somehow tracked down my office number and phoned long distance to ask if he could borrow my bike. Sure I said, knowing that lending Neil anything meant you never saw it again. I didn’t mind, because by this stage, I had a new bike.

London is a city that you can live in for years and not really know how it is laid out if you rely on the underground for transport. After a year of living there, I bought a sturdy second-hand bike at a flea-market and I breathed in car fumes as I saw the city from a new perspective. My bike’s brakes weren’t very effective, and no amount of tinkering with a small screwdriver, inching the brake pads as close to the wheel as possible (but not touching) helped. I bonded with this bike and all its quirks, learning just how far I could push it. I learnt to hop pavements, to dodge traffic, and I whizzed about London on my new wheels, feeling a rush I hadn’t felt since zooming around that river tossing corner on the pink hill. My work colleagues sensibly did a whip around and bought me a bike helmet.

One morning on the way to work, it hit me what I love so much about riding. I was waiting on Tower Bridge for a ship to pass along the Thames, so that the bridge could be lowered again, and I could zoom off ahead of the traffic, over the bridge and pick which zig-zag route I would choose today. Using a bicycle as transport makes every day an adventure – even commuting to an office.

I took my bike, dodgy brakes and all, on a 1,500km trip around Spain, cycling late into the summer evenings, and free camping on the side of the road. I bumped into a group of more serious cyclists, wearing lycra as they travelled a predetermined route with a set number of kilometres to ride each day. They invited me to join them, but I felt they were missing the point: freedom.

A few years later, I moved to Sydney as a permanent resident and in this new and unfamiliar home, I anchored myself by buying a bike. I was dubious about settling down, and I hoped a bike would help me transition into this new, grown up phase of life. Sydney’s traffic had other ideas. After riding the hilly eastern suburbs for a few weeks, and nearly getting wiped out by cars on numerous occasions, I gave up, sold the bike and bought a car.

But I wasn’t ready to give up on the adventures of cycling forever. The next bike I bought was in Melbourne and had a child-seat on the back. I had a toddler and was newly pregnant. What better way to spend the late summer mornings than riding along the bike tracks of Diamond Creek, stopping at all the play parks on the way to the library and back? More staid than hurtling through the streets of London, but I still had wind brushing my face and that feeling of weightlessness that wheels give.

This bike would last me, in various incarnations, until the toddler and baby were adults and we lived in Queensland. For a while I had a trailer I could pull, so I could carry groceries or a case of beer. But riding in a hilly town in the sticky Queensland summer is hard work. The trailer gathered cobwebs in the garage and the bike came out less and less. I used a car around town for chores like shopping. And yet.

I missed arriving at places all pumped up from the journey.

I missed the intimate knowledge of my neighbourhood you get from the vantage of a bike.

I missed the independence, not being reliant on cars, public transport, other people.

Most of all, I missed the sheer fun of riding.

It was time for a new bike. I got rid of my car and bought myself an electric bike, with panniers and a front basket. Now I breeze up hills, enjoying the wind in my face, as I chat to all the magpies on my regular routes.

So no, I don’t use an electric bike as my main form of transport because I’m a leftie greenie wanting to save the environment^*. I ride a bike now for the same reason I always have: it’s the most fun way to get around.

^* Okay, it’s also because I’m a solarpunk anarchist wanting to save the environment. Trying to save the planet doesn’t preclude fun. To quote anarchist Emma Goldman, ‘If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution’