Bike Speeding Quotes

You're a lunatic!" Travis chuckled, leaning his bike onto its kickstand before dismounting. "I went the speed limit." "Yeah, if we were on the Autobahn!

Bike lane: the section of the road that accommodates wide loads and has speed bumps to protect drunk drivers.

I wandered over to the motorbike and read the work Triumph on the side. 'How long has he had it?' I asked Jack. 'No. Over my dead body.' Jack's expression was hard. […] '[…] I told Dad I'd keep you safe and the Alex you know is not the Alex who drives that bike. He's not known to respect the speed limit.' Now I definitely wanted to go on it.

Take care of your car in the garage, and the car will take care of you on the road.

Life is like a 10-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.

I am emotional about engines, if you hurt my car, you hurt my heart.

Biking is about rhythm and flow. It's the wind in you face and the challenge of hammering up along hill. It's the reward at the top and the thrill of a high-speed descent. Biking lets you come alive in both body and spirit. After awhile the bike disappears beneath you and you feel as if you're suspended in midair.

Formal learning is like riding a bus: the driver decides where the bus is going; the passengers are along for the ride. Informal learning is like riding a bike: the rider chooses the destination, the speed, and the route.

The only reason I am inside the Palace of Illusions is that I am afraid of being declared insane. I know it is all fake. I know everyone is conspiring against me (everyone in this simulation). And I still can’t get out. It’s like a man speeding his bike towards the edge. He knows his future. Yet he can’t make a turn, for he has a stunt to perform for others to watch. This condition is subdued insanity. When you know you are not sane, yet have to act like everything is all right with the world you live in. It is insanity deferred. Insanity postponed. Only to haunt you all the time. An undercurrent. Not manifested in totality.

like a ten-speed bike,most of us have gears we don't use.

To her, existence consisted of days, and each day seemed to run like a circular ribbon—or, better yet, a bike chain, moving evenly over the cogs. Click—another change of speed, days became a little different, but they still flowed, still repeated, and that very monotony concealed the meaning of life . . .

Asking someone else to drive your sports car is like asking someone else to kiss your girlfriend.

Among all the machines, motorcar is my favorite machine.

Back at the office, Woodward went to the rear of the newsroom to call Deep Throat. Bernstein wished he had a source like that. The only source he knew who had such comprehensive knowledge in any field was Mike Schwering, who owned Georgetown Cycle Sport Shop. There was nothing about bikes - and, more important, bike thieves - that Schwering didn't know. Bernstein knew something about bike thieves: the night of the Watergate indictments, somebody had stolen his 10-speed Raleigh from a parking garage. That was the difference between him and Woodward. Woodward went into a garage to find a source who could tell him what Nixon's men were up to. Bernstein walked into a garage to find an eight-pound chain cut neatly in two and his bike gone. -- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward

I am so obsessed with the cars that sometimes I feel like my heart is not a muscle, it's an engine.

I have five flashlights and each performs its own trick. I have a raincoat with zippers and net material so I never get too hot in a downpour. I have a shelf crammed with books and a shortwave that speaks Arabic, Japanese, Dutch and Russian. They have mud huts with maybe a few chairs and faded pages of old magazines fastened to the wall. I ride my twenty-one speed Peace Corps-issue bike to Ferke not to save a dollar on transport but for the luxury of exercise. They ride in from their settlements on cranky old mopeds or bikes with a single cog because it's the only option. And they give me charity. I just stare at it - near tears. To refuse their offer would be pure insult. So I do the rounds again shaking hands with all the men in boubous saying over and over "An y che " Thank you.

Hey, did you hear about Brad Miller?” he asked, already forgetting about the Lissie conversation. “He got his car taken away for getting another speeding ticket. Of course he tried to tell his parents it was a setup.” Violet laughed. “Yeah, because the police have nothing better to do than to plan a sting operation targeting eleventh-grade idiots.” She was more than willing to go along with this diversion from conversations about Jay and his many admirers. Jay laughed too, shaking his head. “You’re so cold-hearted,” he said to Violet, shoving her a little but playing along. “How’s he supposed to go cruising for unsuspecting freshmen and sophomores without a car? What willing girl is going to ride on the handlebars of his ten-speed?” “I don’t see you driving anything but your mom’s car yet. At least he has a bike,” she said, turning on him now. He pushed her again. “Hey!” he tried to defend himself. “I’m still saving! Not all of us are born with a silver spoon in our mouths.” They were both laughing, hard now. The silver spoon joke had been used before, whenever one of them had something the other didn’t. “Right!” Violet protested. “Have you seen my car?” This time she shoved him, and a full-scale war broke out on the couch. “Poor little rich girl!” Jay accused, grabbing her arm and pulling her down. She giggled and tried to give him the dreaded “dead leg” by hitting him with her knuckle in the thigh. But he was too strong, and what used to be a fairly even matchup was now more like an annihilation of Violet’s side. “Oh, yeah. Weren’t you the one”—she gasped, still giggling and thrashing to break free from his suddenly way-too-strong grip on her, just as his hand was almost at the sensitive spot along the side of her rib cage—“who got to go to Hawaii . . .” She bucked beneath him, trying to knock him off her. “. . . for spring break . . . last . . .” And then he startled to tickle her while she was pinned beneath him, and her last word came out in a scream: “YEAR?!” That was how her aunt and uncle found them.

Start with something you love. The laughter of your child. Sunlight on the ocean. Your beloved dog. A favorite song, music itself. Perhaps a photo, like my caribou. A favorite spot—your garden, the cliffs at the sea, the family cabin. Someone dear to you. We begin with the things we love; this is the way back, the path home. For we don’t always draw the connection—God made these specifically for you, and he gave you the heart to love them. You’ll be out for a bike ride in the very early morning, cool breeze in your face, all the sweet, fresh aromas it brings, the exhilaration of speed, and your heart spontaneously sings, I love this! The next step is to say, So does God. He made this moment; he made these things. He is the creator of everything I love. Your heart will naturally respond by opening toward him.

If one rides a bike at 10 miles an hour and then holds onto a car, the bike will travel at the speed of the car without any effort, as one who dovetails one’s consciousness with Krishna’s will similarly effortlessly speed ahead.

Suddenly, launched in one dynamic motion, we were off, cutting like a chainsaw through the stillness of the day. The noise and the speed, ever rising, seemed to take us into another dimension where all the wind and sound in the world was our own

4 The memory was like a knife cutting into him. Slicing deep into him with hate. The Secret. He had been riding his ten-speed with a friend named Terry. They had been taking a run on a bike trail and decided to come back a different way, a way that took them past the Amber Mall. Brian remembered everything in incredible detail. Remembered the time on the bank clock in the mall, flashing 3:31, then the temperature, 82, and the date. All the numbers were part of the memory, all of his life was part of the memory.

Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine -- four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit ... my insurance had already been canceled and my driver's license was hanging by a thread. So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head ... but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz ... not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

I always wondered, though, what the fathers felt as they drove up the street they used to drive down every night, and whether they really saw their former houses, whether they noticed how things got frayed and flaky around the edges now that they were gone. I wondered it again as I pulled up to the house I’d grown up in. It was, I noticed, looking even more Joad-like than usual. Neither my mother nor the dread life partner, Tanya, was much into yard work, and so the lawn was littered with drifts of dead brown leaves. The gravel on the driveway was as thin as an old man’s hair combed across an age-spotted scalp, and as I parked I could make out the faint glitter of old metal from behind the little toolshed. We used to park our bikes in there. Tanya had “cleaned” it by dragging all the old bikes, from tricycles to discarded ten-speeds, out behind the shed, and leaving them there to rust. “Think of it as found art,” my mother had urged us when Josh complained that the bike pile made us look like trailer trash. I wonder if my father ever drove by, if he knew about my mother and her new situation, if he thought about us at all, or whether he was content to have his three children out there in the world, all grown up, and strangers.

But I wouldn’t be alive. Not really. I would be wasting oxygen, space, and resources, going back to not-so-secretly wishing I’d die. The realization dawned on me like a cold shower. I didn’t want to die when I was with Grace. I wanted to live. To laugh. To love. To date her and nibble on her neck and listen to her talking about plays and nineties movies and defending fanny packs vehemently. I’d been relishing life—actively enjoying it, even—for months, and I didn’t even realize it. I didn’t want to die anymore. Somewhere along the road, the idea of veering my bike off the road when I picked up speed stopped appealing to me. I no longer imagined what it would feel like to hurl myself off a cliff. I stopped walking into the ring wanting the asshole in front of me to throw a punch that would send me into cardiac arrest. And it was all because of Grace ‘Texas’ Shaw.

The fact, too, that he was able, on a ten-speed, to evade an armed FBI agent pursuing him in a car, with a fleet of sheriff’s deputies on their way? Stan Los, the FBI agent who chased him, would later catch shit from local cops about why he didn’t shoot the guy. Los bristled at the taunt but remained resolute about his decision. All he had was a woman screaming and an ordinary white male on a bike who accelerated every time Los hollered or honked at him. He lacked the necessary context to shoot.

Jared laughed. “Come on, I brought a spare helmet for you,” he said, reaching into his locker again. As he spoke, she reached for him in her mind, and felt the pleasure he felt in his motorbike. She could taste some of the thrill, the speed and the danger. “Ahahaha!” said Kami. “No, you didn’t. You brought it for someone else, someone who doesn’t know that you have crashed that bike fifty-eight times!” “Technically speaking, only fifty-one of those times were my fault.” “Technically speaking, you drive like a rabid chicken who has hijacked a tractor.” “Like a bat out of hell,” Jared said. “Nice simile. Sounds sort of dangerous and cool. Consider it.” “Not a chance. I like my brains the way they are, not lightly scrambled and scattered across a road. And speaking of bad boy clichés, really, a motorcycle?” “Again, I say: rugged,” Jared told her. “Manly.” “I often see Holly on hers,” Kami said solemnly. “When she stops for traffic, sometimes she puts on some manly lip gloss. I’m not getting on a bike.

Each time, I could see myself sleeping on the gurney. Present me did not want to wake her up and tell her what happened. I could see myself lifting up my loosely bandaged hands, blinking and looking around. I wished to approach her and say, good morning, go back to sleep. I'd quietly roll the gurney back into the ambulance, we'd speed in reverse. I'd be asleep again in the bumpy vehicle, delivered by paramedics back onto the ground. Brock's hand would slide out of me, my underwear shimmying back up my legs, the pine needles swimming back into the ground. I'd walk backward into the party, standing alone, my sister returning to find me. Outside the Swedes would bike past to wherever they were going. The world would continue, another Saturday evening.

A tailwind, on the other hand, is one of the most beautiful experiences you can have on a bike. There’s no wind in my ears, so I hear everything around me. The chain purrs sweetly as it pulls the gears under the coaxing of my legs. The soft hiss of my tires on the smooth hard pavement, the sound of little critters scurrying in the desert around me as I pass. Smells aren’t as big a deal out here in the dry desert, but even the smells are more accessible in a tailwind, since I’m moving through air at a slower relative speed, and the smells linger around my face long enough to register and enjoy them. Relative progress, speed, sights, smells, sounds. It all goes together to create a gestalt for the ride that’s pure sweetness, and I never want it to end. Hozho.

In the 1950s, the standard bike had been the cruiser design, a gargantuan fender-covered machine built exclusively for adults. There was only one speed (slow) and you stopped the bike by reversing the pedals and pressing down hard. In 1962, however, Schwinn designer Al Fritz had an idea. He’d heard about a new youth trend centered in California: retrofitting bicycles with drag-racing motorcycle accoutrements. “Choppers” — custom motorcycles with long handlebars — were all the rage. Fritz introduced chopper elements into his new design. The Schwinn Stingray was born. It had smaller, 20-inch tires — with flat racing treads — and high handlebars and a banana seat. Sales were initially disappointing — parents didn’t want their children riding such an odd looking bike — but as the Stingray began making its way into America’s neighborhoods, every kid had to have one. And every bike manufacturer began manufacturing bikes just like it — a style we referred to as the “spider” bike.

Hey, did you hear about Brad Miller?" he asked, already forgetting about the Lissie conversation. "He got his car taken away for getting another speeding ticket. Of course he tried to tell his parents that it was a setup." Violet laughed. "Yeah, because the police have nothing better to do than to plan a sting operation targeting eleventh-grade idiots." She was more than willing to go along with this diversion from conversations about Jay and his many admirers. Jay laughed too, shaking his head. "You're so cold-hearted," he said to Violet, shoving her a little but playing along. "How's he supposed to go cruising for unsuspecting freshman and sophomores without a car? What willing girl is going to ride on the handlebars of his ten-speed?" "I don't see you driving anything but your mom's car yet. At least he has a bike," she said, turning on him now. He pushed her again. "Hey!" he tried to defend himself. "I'm still saving! Not all of us are born with a silver spoon in our mouths." They were both laughing, hard now. The silver spoon joke had been used before, whenever one of them had something the other one didn't. "Right!" Violet protested. "Have you seen my car?" This time she shoved him, and a full-scale war broke out on the couch. "Poor little rich girl!" Jay accused, grabbing her arm and pulling her down. She giggled and tried to give him the dreaded "dead leg" by hitting him with her knuckle in the thigh. But he was too strong, and what used to be a fairly even matchup was now more like an annihilation of Violet's side. "Oh, yeah. Weren't you the one"-she gasped, still giggling and thrashing to break free from his suddenly way-too-strong grip on her, just as his hand was almost at the sensitive spot along the side of her rib cage-"who got to go to Hawaii..." She bucked beneath him, trying to knock him off her. "...For spring break...last..." And then he started to tickle her while she was pinned beneath him, and her last word came out in a scream: "...YEAR?!" That was how her aunt and uncle found them. Violet never heard the key in the dead bolt, or the sound of the door opening up. And Jay was just as ignorant of their arrival as she was. So when they were caught like that, in a mass of tangled limbs, with Jay's face just inches from hers, as she giggled and squirmed against him, it should have meant they were going to get in trouble. And if it had been any other teenage boy and girl, they would have. But it wasn't another couple. It was Violet and Jay...and this was business as usual for the two of them. Even her aunt and uncle knew that there was no possibility they were doing anything they shouldn't. The only reprimand they got was her aunt shushing them to keep it down before they woke the kids. After Jay left, Violet took the thirty dollars that her uncle gave her and headed out. As she drove home, she tried to ignore the feelings of frustration she had about the way her aunt and uncle had reacted-or rather hadn't reaction-to finding her and Jay together on the couch. For some reason it made her feel worse to know that even the grown-ups around them didn't think there was a chance they could ever be a real couple.

muddy ground. He pushed himself backward, his hands frantically splashing in puddles of muddied water. The darkness of the cemetery made it impossible to see anything more than a shadow, but Cody knew what stalked him. He knew the evil coming. He screamed and jumped back to his feet. He ran as fast as he could on the slippery ground. Another loud crash of thunder followed a bright flash of lightning. He was so close, so close to the entrance to the cemetery, but the rain, stronger than before, hammered down upon him. He splashed through puddles of water, flinching from the sheets of rain slapping his face. He struggled to increase his speed, his tears blending in with the rain. Four bicycles lay scattered on the ground near the entrance of the cemetery. Cody yanked his bicycle upright off the ground and checked behind him, but there wasn’t anything there. He hesitated, his heart breaking at the sight of his friends’ bikes lying next to his. “I’m so sorry,” he cried before mounting his own bike. The mud, caked onto the soles of his shoes, caused his feet to slip on the wet pedals. He peered into the dark depths of the cemetery again and found the familiar shadow creeping towards him. Whimpering again, Cody reached down to scrape the mud off with his bare hands, and then pedaled a mile to his home in the heavy rain. Rain-drenched, Cody jumped the curb in front of his house and dropped his bicycle on the lawn. He ran to his open bedroom window, stumbled through it, and fell onto the floor. His bedroom curtains flapped inward

Let's get out of here. You and me, mi amor. !Vamos!" I breathe a sigh of relief as I straddle Julio and Brittany hops on behind me. She wraps her arms around my waist, holding on tight as I speed out of the parking lot. We fly through the streets; which eventually become a blur. I don't even stop when rain starts pouring down. "Can we stop now?" she yells through the deafening storm. I park under an old abandoned bridge by the lake. Heavy rain pounds the cement surrounding us, but we have our own secluded place. Brittany hops to the ground. "You're a stupid jerk," she says. "You can't deal drugs. It's dangerous and stupid, and you promised me. You'll risk going to jail. Jail, Alex. You may not care, but I do. I won't let you ruin your life." "What do you want to hear?" "Nothing. Everything. Say something so I don't stand here feeling like a complete idiot." "The truth is . . . Brittany, look at me." "I can't," she says as she stares at the pouring rain. "I'm so tired of thinking of every scary scenario." I pull her against me. "Don't think, muneca. Everything will work itself out." "But--" "No buts. Trust me." My mouth closes over hers. The smell of rain and cookies eases my nerves. My hand braces the small of her back. Her hands grip my soaked shoulders, urging me on. My hands slide under her shirt, and my fingers trace her belly button. "Come to me," I say, then lift her until she's straddling me over my bike. I can't stop kissing her. I whisper how good she feels to me, mixing Spanish and English with every sentence. I move my lips down her neck and linger there until she leans back and lets me take her shirt off. I can make her forget about the bad stuff. When we're together like this, hell, I can't think of anything else but her.

So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head. . . but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz. . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-​night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip. Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out. . . thirty-​five, forty-​five. . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these. . . and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything. . . then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-​five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board. Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly -- zaaapppp -- going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea. The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-​slick. . . instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-​inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I.” Indeed. . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-​burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes. But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

Every Inch of the Way is a great page turning adventure which is as close as you can get, without actually saddling up and pedalling yourself into the unknown. It takes real magic to turn a great adventure, into a great book. For one thing, most people can't relate to the mindset of the long distance cyclist and I found myself laughing along to Tom's thoughts and observations, wondering if they were in - jokes, shared by those who had seen the world at the speed of a bike, for example his relationship with Serbia's stray dogs! . But his anecdotes have a great balance of the cultures and places, as opposed to just inward reflections, so I am sure would be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in travel and human experience. A lovely story, written from the heart.

TimE To riDe My BikE , WitH SpEeD LiMiT$ . . . !

There is an impressive vein of concrete that winds from the hills of Palos Verdes and ends in Malibu. It ribbons through all the beach cities in between and plays host to anyone who is drawn to the ocean. Josie and Max ambled down Hermosa's portion of that mile-long bike path after they left Faye's place. A quarter of a mile from her own house, Josie stopped. A guy on a fifteen hundred dollar bike whizzed by her, intent on breaking the land speed record to Malibu. The smell of grilling onions filled the air. Lunch was being served up at The Strand Café. Four men with gorgeous bodies played volleyball with a vengeance, yet somehow unable to get their game into a rhythm. Josie could have shown them how it was done, but even a pick up game wouldn't cure what ailed her.

Remind your students that while their body is busy churning their minds are free. They control the speed, tempo and resistance. They decide if they want to succeed; they decide when it’s time to quit. They are the masters on their bike.

With his hand on Stitch’s chest, Zak could feel every heartbeat drumming fast. It only made Zak hug Stitch tighter. Sitting at the back of the bike wasn’t all that bad when he could trust Stitch to get him home safely. The speed gave Zak an adrenaline rush, but he felt as safe as ever. At a hundred miles an hour, no one could disturb them, it was only him and Stitch

By the time most kids are speeding down the street on a bike with training wheels, the doors of sexuality were swung open in my life, revealing to me a world full of shame, manipulation and selfish desire. A world I didn’t know how to escape. Sex followed me, lurking in dark corners waiting for the perfect ambush. My longing to be loved made me easy prey.

Before I know it, I’m already outside, riding my bike down the hill, the autumn wind biting at my face, peddling as fast as I can, foolishly hoping that if I could just break the speed of light, then … maybe I could be the first boy ever to travel back in time and maybe then … I could go back. Back to when I had a real family.

I want to show you something,” he said, his voice dropping a little lower than usual and causing a shiver to run down my spine. “What?” I asked. “I said show, not tell. You have to come with me.” Curiosity nagged at me and the champagne urged me into recklessness. He’d promised to be nice after all, so why not? And even though I’d said I wanted to go back to the snooze fest party, I didn’t really. Given the choice, I’d just head back to the Academy. “You’d better not be about to whip your junk out again,” I warned. “Because I’ve seen way too much of you for my liking.” “Oh I think you liked it just fine,” he countered and the heat that flooded my cheeks at his tone stopped me from raising any further argument on the subject. He stepped a little closer to me and I fought against the impulse to lean in. “Come on then, don’t keep me in suspense,” I demanded though a little voice in the back of my head wondered if I meant something else by that statement. Darius’s mouth hooked up at one side and he inclined his head to yet another door on the other side of the room. I followed him as he led the way through the manor to a grand atrium before opening the door onto a dark stairwell which led down to what must have been an underground chamber. I eyed him warily but at this point I was pretty sure he’d have attacked me already if he was going to. Darius Acrux may have been a lot of things but it seemed he was a man of his word; he’d promised to be nice to me tonight and that was what he was delivering. I’d have to keep an eye on the time though, at midnight his Cinderella spell might come undone and he’d turn back into an asshole shaped pumpkin. Lights came on automaticaly as we descended and at the foot of the stairs, he opened another door and led me out into into an underground parking lot. I eyed the row of flashy sports cars in every make and model imaginable but he didn’t pause by them, instead leading me to the far end of the lot. A smile tugged at my lips as I spotted the lineup of super bikes. They were all top of the range, ultra-sleek, ultra-beautiful speed machines. My fingers tingled with the desire to touch them as the tempting allure of adrenaline called to me. “You said you could ride,” Darius said, offering me a genuine smile. “So I thought maybe you’d like to see my collection.” Damn, the way he said ‘my collection’ made me want to punch the entitlement right out of him but I didn’t miss the fire burning in his eyes as he looked at the bikes. That was a passion I knew well. He was a sucker for my kind of temptation too. “Have you done any modifications on them?” I asked, reaching out to brush my fingers along the saddle of the closest red beauty. “They’re top of the line,” he said dismissively like I didn’t know what I was looking at. “They don’t need any mods.” I snorted derisively. So he liked to ride the pretty speed machines but he didn’t know how to work on them. “Figures pretty boy wouldn’t know how to get his hands dirty,” I teased. “Maybe the kinds of bikes you’re used to riding need work to make them perform better but this kind of quality doesn’t require any extras. Besides, I could just pay someone to do it for me even if they did.” “Of course you could. That’s not really the point though.” And he was wrong about the kinds of bikes I was used to riding. I spotted four models amongst his collection which I’d ridden within the last six months. The others could easily be mine with a little bit of time and a tool or two. Not that I felt the need to tell him that. “You wanna take one for a ride?” he offered. “You can test your supposed skill against mine; there’s a circuit to the west of the estate.” My eyes widened at that offer. I’d missed riding since coming to the Academy and I hadn’t really thought I’d be able to get out again any time soon. ...

As I wound my way up the mountain, the road began to perform multiple switchbacks like a snake in motion. I had to carefully maneuver through the 180-degree switchbacks at walking speed with one leg dangling off the side of the bike for balance or support, as needed. The road became steeper as it clung to the mountainside like a creeper vine. It was no more that twelve feet wide… Higher and higher the road went, but I didn’t look over the edge until I came to a switchback where I had to stop the bike to walk it through the curve. When I stood with the bike between my legs, I saw that I was less than five feet from what had to be an eight hundred-foot drop-off. There were no guardrails.

I had a perfectly serviceable bike, but I rarely got to use it because it was a regular motorcycle and therefore too slow. My travel speed was too limited by things like traffic, weather, and the laws of physics. The rest of Nemesis and Co. didn’t share my limitations. Apparently,

Then, I leapt onto the bike like I was a flying trapeze artist and held on for dear life. The bike accelerated in speed and bounced and bumped over the dirt and stones, and then launched onto the Michigan Lake Front Bike Path. “Tatum is like a freakin’ jack hammer, isn’t he?” My voice vibrated. “Don’t…” Angelisa squealed from ahead of me. “Don’t make me laugh, or we’re going to crash. Oh my God!

there wasn't enough room on the narrow trail to go around them: to his left was the sheer rock wall of the escarpment; to his right the abyss of the ravine. If he plowed into the senior citizens at that speed, he'd kill them for sure. But if he veered off the trail, he'd fly down the ravine and kill himself. The women saw him—he tried to wave them off the trail—but they stood frozen in place, like deer caught in headlights, terrified at the bike and rider hurtling at them at high speed. One screamed. She looked like his mother. Andy said, "Aw, shit," cut the handlebars hard to the right just a split second before impact, and rode straight off the trail—and the Earth. He caught big air. He was now flying through the blue sky and enjoying an incredible panoramic view

Cars, with their air conditioning, windows, sound systems, and great speed, keep us isolated from our environment... "Self-propulsion," such as biking, walking, canoeing, puts us in touch with the land below and the world around us.

I love the wheels, I mean steering wheel.

Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.

The Daring Bicyclist Jim was always trying different things.  On this particular day he decided he wanted to see how fast a person could ride a bicycle before it became too hard to ride. So he asked a friend if he could tie his bike to the bumper of his car as he drove faster and faster.  His friend agreed. Before they got going they agreed on a way to communicate.  Jim would ring the bell on his bicycle once if he wanted to go faster, twice if the speed was good and repeatedly if he wanted to go slower. So the two adventurers took off and things were going pretty well.  The driver got up to over 50 miles per hour and Jim was able to handle that speed, following along on his bike. All of a sudden a shiny red sports car came up from behind.  The driver pulled alongside and revved up his engine as if he wanted to race.  Jim’s friend accepted the challenge and started to speed up.  He went faster and faster and soon forgot all about poor Jim tied to his bumper. A little way down the road, as the cars raced side by side, a policeman with a radar gun sat and watched as they sped past.  The policeman clocked them at 99 miles per hour. Before the policeman started to pursue the speeding cars, he reported in to headquarters on his radio.  “You are not going to believe this,” the policeman said.  “I am about to go after two cars racing down the road doing almost 100 miles per hour and there is this guy on a bicycle riding behind them waving his arms and ringing a bell trying to pass them!

At last, she makes her choice. She turns around, drops her head, and walks toward a horizon she cannot see. After that, she does not look back anymore. She knows that if she does, she will weaken. She will lose what resolve she has because she will see an old bicycle speeding down a hill, bouncing on rocks and gravel, the metal pounding both their rears, clouds of dust kicked up with each sudden skid. She sits on the frame, and Masooma is the one on the saddle, she is the one who takes the hairpin turns at full speed, dropping the bike into a deep lean. But Parwana is not afraid. She knows that her sister will not send her flying over the handlebars, that she will not hurt her. The world melts into a whirligig blur of excitement, and the wind whooshes in their ears, and Parwana looks over her shoulder at her sister and her sister looks back, and they laugh together as stray dogs give chase.

Like a Ten-Speed bike, most of us have gears we do not use.” Charles Schultz

We don’t want to get off the main road,” I said. “There’s way too many tack weeds out there.” “Those stickers are worse than real tacks,” said Henny. “Maybe we should leave our bikes and walk. I don’t want to take any chances.” That’s the trouble with having such a nice bike, with so many terrific gadgets. Henny doesn’t like to ride unless conditions are ideal, like maybe around a newly paved parking lot. “Henny,” I said. “It’s definitely time for us to move on. Your inner tubes will be safe if you just stay on the highway. Besides, it will be cooler with a breeze blowing in your face.” Henny got back on his bike and slowly pedaled it up to a speed past wobbly but short of smooth and comfortable. “This is not a breeze,” he called up to me. “This is hot air being forced up my nostrils. This is hot air drying out my already parched throat. Water. I need water.

To me, writing is like learning to ride a bike. At first you have your training wheels on but before you know it, you have graduated to a ten speed!!

Speed is when 'now' becomes the past. While you and I speak, we become 'a moment ago'. On a bike, 'a moment ago' gets carried away by the wind.

And then along came Henry Ford and the Wright brothers. These geniuses evolved the basic mechanics of the bicycle into new ways to speed travel. Ford’s quadricycle was really two bicycles joined by a platform that held a gasoline engine, itself newly developed for other purposes, and had room for a driver. The engine was connected to the vehicle’s wheels with bike chains. The Wrights, whose original business was building bicycles, invented the first airplane by mounting a gas engine on a winged airframe, connecting it to propellers with bike chains. The colossal influence of the bicycle cannot be understated. Today, successive inventions derived from bike technology account for at least one-fifth of the world’s economic activity. Steve Jobs said that the bike operated as a metaphor for discovery;

Ronan Byrne, an electrical engineering student in Dublin, Ireland, enjoyed watching Netflix, but he also knew that he should exercise more often than he did. Putting his engineering skills to use, Byrne hacked his stationary bike and connected it to his laptop and television.20 Then he wrote a computer program that would allow Netflix to run only if he was cycling at a certain speed. If he slowed down for too long, whatever show he was watching would pause until he started pedaling again. He was, in the words of one fan, “eliminating obesity one Netflix binge at a time.

Sasha thought of life as a collection of identical days. To her, existence consisted of days, and each day seemed to run like a circular ribbon—or, better yet, a bike chain, moving evenly over the cogs. Click—another change of speed, days became a little different, but they still flowed, still repeated,and that very monotony concealed the meaning of life...

We are doing 55 on Indiana 65. Jasper County. Flooded fields. Iroquois River spread way out, wide and brown as a Hershey bar. Distances in this glacier-flattened planed-down ground-level ground aren't blue, but whitish, and the sky is whitish-blue. It's in the eighties at 9:30 in the morning, the air is soft and humid, and the wind darkens the flooded fields between rows of oaks. Watch Your Speed - We Are. Severely clean white farmhouses inside square white fences painted by Tom Sawyer yesterday produce a smell of dung. A rich and heavy smell of dung on the southwest wind. Can shit be heady? La merde majestueuse. This is the "Old Northwest." Not very old, not very north, not very west. And in Indiana there are no Indians. Wabash River right up to the road and the oaks are standing ten feet out in the brown shadowmottled flood, but the man at the diesel station just says: You should of seen her yesterday. The essence is motion being in motion moving on not resting at a point: and so by catching at points and letting them go again without recurrence or rhyme or rhythm I attempt to suggest or imitate that essence the essence of which is that you cannot catch it. Of course there are other continuities: the other aspect of the essence of moving on. The county courthouses. Kids on bikes. White frame houses with high sashed windows. Dipping telephone wires, telephone poles. The names of the dispossessed. The redwing blackbird singing to you from fencepost to fencepost. Dave and Shelley singing "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma" on the radio. The yellow weedy clover by the road. The flowering grasses. And the crow, not the Indian, the bird, you seen one crow you seen 'em all, kronk kronk. CHEW MAIL POUCH TOBACCO TREAT YOURSELF TO THE BEST on an old plank barn, the letters half worn off, and that's a continuity, not only in space but time: my California in the thirties, & I at six years old would read the sign and imagine a Pony Express rider at full gallop eating a candy cigarette. Lafayette Greencastle And the roadsign points: Left to Indianapolis Right to Brazil. Now there's some choice.

Denmark’s capital contains 237 miles of wide, dedicated bike lanes. To keep riders safe, most of them are elevated and buffered by curbs from car traffic. By 2019, more than 60 percent of the city’s commuters and students made their daily round trips by bike, up from 36 percent in 2012.

The late Jay Cross, a leader in this space, said that informal learning is the “unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way people learn to do their jobs. … [it] is like riding a bike: the rider chooses the destination, the speed, and the route.” (Malamed, n.d., para. 3–4). Cross further wrote that “[f]ormal learning—classes and workshops—is the source of only 10 to 20 percent of what people learn at work” (Cross, 2007, p. iii).

IT WAS ALMOST December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice. He had seen it both times. Squinting toward the sky, he had seen the sleek jet, almost a blur at its high speed, go past, and a second later heard the blast of sound that followed. Then one more time, a moment later, from the opposite direction, the same plane. At first, he had been only fascinated. He had never seen aircraft so close, for it was against the rules for Pilots to fly over the community. Occasionally, when supplies were delivered by cargo planes to the landing field across the river, the children rode their bicycles to the riverbank and watched, intrigued, the unloading and then the takeoff directed to the west, always away from the community. But the aircraft a year ago had been different. It was not a squat, fat-bellied cargo plane but a needle-nosed single-pilot jet. Jonas, looking around anxiously, had seen others—adults as well as children—stop what they were doing and wait, confused, for an explanation of the frightening event. Then all of the citizens had been ordered to go into the nearest building and stay there. IMMEDIATELY, the rasping voice through the speakers had said. LEAVE YOUR BICYCLES WHERE THEY ARE. Instantly, obediently, Jonas had dropped his bike on its side on the path behind his family’s dwelling. He had run indoors and stayed there, alone. His parents were both at work, and his little sister, Lily, was at the Childcare Center where she spent her after-school hours. Looking through the front window, he had seen no people: none of the busy afternoon crew of Street Cleaners, Landscape Workers, and Food Delivery people who usually populated the community at that time of day. He saw only the abandoned bikes here and there on their sides; an upturned wheel on one was still revolving slowly. He had been frightened then. The sense of his own community silent, waiting, had made his stomach churn. He had trembled. But it had been nothing. Within minutes the speakers had crackled again, and the voice, reassuring now and less urgent, had explained that a Pilot-in-Training had misread his navigational instructions and made a wrong turn. Desperately the Pilot had been trying to make his way back before his error was noticed. NEEDLESS TO SAY, HE WILL BE RELEASED, the voice had said, followed by silence. There was an ironic tone to that final message, as if the Speaker found it amusing; and Jonas had smiled a little, though he knew what a grim statement it had been. For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.

Thus begins my only sustained conversation in the Grand Canyon, as the man and I walk the second half of South Kaibab Trail together. I learn he’s on his way to a water treatment plant at the Colorado River. “I treat sewage water and recycle it to use at Phantom Ranch,” he explains. A self-described “Steward of the Grand Canyon,” he’s been doing this work all his life – a job he took over from his uncle and grandfather before him. “No matter the weather I hike to the plant every other week,” he says. “I stay for about a week at a time.” This week he’s on a special mission to train some new “young bucks” in the art of water treatment. “They never last,” he shakes his head. “They think they know what they’re getting into, and then reality hits when it gets cold.” He pauses, staring down the emerald Colorado River snaking below us. Then he swings around, looking me straight in the eyes, “I have given up everything I love for this canyon.” He resumes his speed walk as I trail clumsily behind him, trying to keep up. My bike bounces on my back.

To her, existence consisted of days, and each day seemed to run like a circular ribbon—or, better yet, a bike chain, moving evenly over the cogs. Click—another change of speed, days became a little different, but they still flowed, still repeated, and that very monotony concealed the meaning of life …

Some people will tell you that slow is good – and it may be, on some days – but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble it’s caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba...’ ​Years before HST, years before Huxley even, another literary genius was getting into the joys of speed.

I’m still waiting for that Hollywood movie which shows two guys on a bike slowly moving towards an old lady, then when they’re near enough they grab her handbag, leave her fallen on the road, and they speed away. I’ve never seen that before and I think I know why: Only Malaysian thieves resort to shit like this.

Actually, typefaces and racing bikes are very much alike. Both are ideas as well as machines, and neither should be burdened with excess drag or baggage. Pictures of pumping feet will not make the type go faster, any more than smoke trails, pictures of rocket ships or imitation lightning bolts tied to the frame will improve the speed of the bike.

What Death Is Whenever the weather is half-decent, my dad and his motorcycle are one—cruising up the back roads into the Virginia hills in search of a lunch spot with the best fried chicken. And, on certain warm weekends, for twenty minutes or so around town, my dad and his motorcycle and Benny are one. Freddy has no interest in the bike—he has hated the noise since he was a baby—but Benny has the bug, the need for speed as he and my dad like to say, giving each other five. My broken skeleton and I stay home these days. It’s not like me to allow something so reckless as my kid on a motorcycle. Of course they wear helmets and my Dad is a paragon of safety, but this is objectively not a prudent idea—or possibly even a legal one. It’s something else completely: perilous and fantastic. I think of the five-point harness booster seat in my car and wonder at the incredible contortions that logic can do. I love watching Benny’s arms wrapped firm at my dad’s waist. Benny tells me his favorite part about it is that he likes to holler really loudly when they are going fast. “I scream whooooo-eeeeeeee up into the air and it makes me feel good!” My dad tells me that one time, on one of their more ambitious outings—about fifteen minutes in to a smooth ride just outside town—he could feel Benny’s arms start to slacken their grip. And he could feel the helmet resting on his back. Benny was falling asleep. “Come on, Benny—stay with me!” he said, jostling his torso gently to try to wake him up without startling him. Benny woke up. “You can’t do that again,” my dad said as they waited at a red light. “It’s not safe. You have to stay awake so you can hold on.” “But it sure felt good,” said Benny, who was able to hold it together the rest of the way home. I think of this feeling sometimes—and I can imagine that sort of letting go: warm, dangerous, seductive. What if this is what death is: The engine beneath you steady; those that hold you strong; the sun warm? I think maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to fall into that, to loosen the grip at the waist, let gravity and fate take over—like a thought so good you can’t stop having it.

will the machine to move faster, as though he were pedaling a bike and could control the speed. He jumped off at the rehab wing and headed toward Haley’s room. He saw Rich Rodgers standing in the hallway, wearing a pullover sweater with the collar of an oxford shirt peeking out. His hands were in his pockets as he waited. He looked like a tower of bottled energy. He glanced up as Bill approached, and he offered a faint smile. “I guess we got some good news,” he said. “Yes,” Bill said. Rich’s words brought Bill up short. He needed the reminder that Haley being awake was good for more than his own selfish reasons. She had parents who cared. She was a young person who needed to recover. Bill felt some

He also took another swing at cyclists with his five handy hints for those setting out on a bike for the first time in the Sun. They were: “Do not cruise through red lights. Because if I’m coming the other way, I will run you down, for fun. Do not pull up at junctions in front of a line of traffic. Because if I’m behind you, I will set off at normal speed and you will be crushed under my wheels. Do not wear Lycra shorts unless you are Kate Moss. I do not wish to cruise down the road looking at your meat and two veg. Do not, ever, swear at or curse people in cars or trucks. You are a guest on roads that are paid for by motorists so if we cut you up, shut up. Do not wear a helmet. It makes you look ridiculous.

Ronan Byrne, an electrical engineering student in Dublin, Ireland, enjoyed watching Netflix, but he also knew that he should exercise more often than he did. Putting his engineering skills to use, Byrne hacked his stationary bike and connected it to his laptop and television. Then he wrote a computer program that would allow Netflix to run only if he was cycling at a certain speed. If he slowed down for too long, whatever show he was watching would pause until he started pedaling again. He was, in the words of one fan, “eliminating obesity one Netflix binge at a time.” He was also employing temptation bundling to make his exercise habit more attractive. Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do. In Byrne’s case, he bundled watching Netflix (the thing he wanted to do) with riding his stationary bike (the thing he needed to do).