The Art of Manliness - The Bicycle as Freedom and Flight

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.760 no kid forgets getting his first bike nor the surge of independence he felt the first time he

00:00:15.740 pedaled away from his parents and even as adults the bike seems to give off a feeling of romance

00:00:20.180 of freedom when you get going fast enough even of flying the special allure of the bicycle can

00:00:26.160 really be traced back to its simple yet elegant design my guest today will unpack the intriguing

00:00:30.740 history of its creation his name is jody rosen and he's the author of two wheels good the history

00:00:35.500 and mystery of the bicycle today on the show jody explains the origins of the bicycle's design

00:00:39.960 including how it was an anachronism at its birth may have been inspired by a volcanic eruption

00:00:44.380 and helped liberate mankind from dependence on draft animals for transportation and exploration

00:00:49.020 we also get to have the bicycle to associate with flight right from the start along the way we

00:00:53.360 discuss how cycling represents an uncanny fusion of man and machine and produces a set of one-of-a-kind

00:00:58.380 pleasures this episode will make you want to mount your trusty bicycle steed and take a ride

00:01:02.920 after it's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash bike

00:01:06.280 all right jody rosen welcome to the show thanks so much brett glad to be here so you've been an avid

00:01:23.180 cyclist since childhood you ride a bike for transports how you get around you've never owned a car and

00:01:28.600 you got this book out called two wheels good the history and mystery of the bicycle and this book

00:01:34.360 it's really wide ranging it's a it's a cultural history of the bike where you delve into different

00:01:39.900 ways the bike has impacted our life from you know you got politics even how our physical landscape has

00:01:46.040 been shaped and also this book it really seems like it's a it's a love letter to bikes and i kind of

00:01:51.540 want to focus on that romance today because i've always noticed there's this sort of allure around

00:01:56.820 bikes like we it's something magical about them you know kids getting their first bike you know

00:02:01.720 you got elliot flying on his bike over the moon with et um and i think a lot of this romance about

00:02:08.860 the bike goes back to its design it's really simple it's like two wheels you got handlebars and

00:02:15.800 because it's so simple i think a lot of people will think wow man some version of the bike has been

00:02:19.700 around for a long time but they're actually a relatively recent invention so what was considered

00:02:25.800 the first bicycle and when was that made yeah so the first bicycle which i guess you could kind of

00:02:30.900 call it like a proto bicycle arrived a little over 200 years ago i guess for crunching the numbers 205

00:02:37.640 years ago in 1817 in the duchy of baden in the in the german federation in the city of manheim so this

00:02:45.460 is a bicycle that was invented by a minor german nobleman named carl von dreiss and he called the

00:02:51.200 thing the lauf machina or the the running machine now he called it that because this first bicycle

00:02:57.160 had no pedals so it was a little bit like those in fact very much like those balanced bicycles that

00:03:02.780 you see little kids riding or you know kind of scooting along the ground in order to like learn to

00:03:07.620 balance their their bodies on the bike it was a machine that had two wheels in a line you know one

00:03:11.960 one in front of the other that was the crucial breakthrough the kind of crucial insight that

00:03:16.400 carl von dreiss made you could you could have a machine that worked like that with two wheels

00:03:20.820 lined up in a row as opposed to on either side of an axle and he you know kind of linked those wheels

00:03:27.000 with a saddle or a seat in between but the device was propelled by this kind of scooting or ice skating

00:03:33.100 motion where he you know you literally ran your feet along the pavement to propel the thing so in that

00:03:39.300 way it was it was definitely different than the bicycle that we know today the kind of classic

00:03:44.180 bicycle which has which has two wheels but has a has a chain drive and pedals this so this this is a

00:03:50.220 very much a first pass so what's curious i think about it you know is kind of important to take on

00:03:55.080 board is the fact that the technology to build that thing had existed since the early middle ages but

00:04:02.200 it took many many centuries of trial and error to for humanity to arrive at a bicycle so in a way i say

00:04:10.220 in the book it kind of arrived illogically late we think of the bicycle as something that could have

00:04:15.340 been should have been around you know forever since antiquity or whatever but in fact the bicycle when it

00:04:20.200 arrived in 1817 we already the steam locomotive had already been invented 15 years earlier then by the

00:04:25.500 time we got like the bicycle's design was kind of perfected in the 1870s 1880s the automotive age was

00:04:31.240 was dawning so so the bicycle is this kind of strange you know anachronism at birth you know

00:04:36.580 this drace guy why did he decide to design this thing was he just like is it for fun or was there

00:04:42.000 actually did he have a practical purpose in mind yeah so he was a he was a a kind of a tinkerer and

00:04:48.960 inventor that's that's that's what he did for for fun or he viewed this as his kind of calling in life

00:04:55.380 i mean he was he was technically a forester he had kind of like a bureaucratic job but because of his

00:05:01.260 his aristocratic background he's this was sort of a position where he drew a salary for not doing

00:05:06.480 much work and he really what he really spent his time doing was dreaming up new machines and he was

00:05:10.260 pretty successful in his inventions i mean he didn't just invent a bicycle he he invented like

00:05:15.240 stenography machines and various other devices so he was a very clever guy but the context for the

00:05:21.080 invention of of the lauf machine was well for one thing he'd he'd been experimenting with devices of

00:05:27.120 this sort with transportation devices for some time he'd he'd gotten in his head that we needed a

00:05:32.620 better means of moving across land than either on foot or on some kind of a horse-drawn vehicle so he

00:05:39.360 was seeking a replacement horse and in the period that he invented this in 1816 was a tumultuous and

00:05:45.780 important year now maybe largely forgotten historically but but there was a a giant

00:05:52.720 explosion of a volcano eruption of volcano on an indonesian island in 1815 which shot you know great

00:05:59.420 quantities of volcanic ash up into the atmosphere and that kind of ash cloud drifted west so by the

00:06:09.780 summer of 1816 you had a kind of a veil of volcanic ash literally dimming the sun so this was known

00:06:17.400 across the western world in western europe and the united states as the year without a summer and so

00:06:21.860 some historians have speculated that it was the fact that there were shortages of oats due to the

00:06:28.980 terrible climatic conditions which was killing off horses which turned the carl von drace's thoughts

00:06:35.800 to the idea of a replacement horse because you know there were there were not as many horses around

00:06:40.240 and the and the horses in question were in bad shape other also it's been speculated that because

00:06:45.140 of the ice that was everywhere in germany during that summer of 1816 he was seeing people ice skating

00:06:51.440 around and and that that might have you know spurred the idea for a machine a wheeled device that you

00:06:57.160 that you propel by you know using an ice skating motion but but these are this is just speculation

00:07:02.620 there's no confirmation of you know exactly what the eureka moment was or what the what the pattern

00:07:08.800 of thinking that led him to this thing was we can just say that he's a guy who who liked to invent

00:07:12.660 things and was very interested in the in the problem of transport well and so i think it's

00:07:17.480 interesting this connection between you know the bike trying to be a replacement a potential

00:07:21.480 replacement for the horse since that time the horse and the bike have been connected oftentimes

00:07:26.420 bike companies use a horse as a logo for for their bike their bicycle

00:07:31.580 yeah that's right i mean i mean that's that's really like i mean just to to take it back like

00:07:38.320 the bicycle was a solution to a to a really an age-old problem an age-old dream which is

00:07:42.760 this quest for a transport device that could help man travel help mankind humankind travel across land

00:07:51.200 swiftly under their own power that is opposed as opposed to in some sort of cart or carriage that was

00:07:57.780 pulled by a draft animal you know and prior to the time of the bicycle you had to

00:08:01.500 hitch up some sort of wheeled contraption to a horse or a donkey or a dog if you wanted to like

00:08:07.300 move swiftly across the land using any other means other than your own two feet so yeah the bicycle

00:08:14.400 instantly was recognized by drace and by others as a kind of replacement for the horse and throughout

00:08:21.160 its history in the 19th century there was this kind of conflict between the bicycle and the horse

00:08:26.140 between um people who's were involved in industries that were you know horse centric industries every

00:08:32.200 everything from you know hackney carriage drivers to owners of stables to veterinarians to you know

00:08:39.440 blacksmiths who made horseshoes people in these industries were threatened by the advent of the

00:08:44.520 bicycle because it was seen as you know potentially and not incorrectly as something that would lead to

00:08:49.800 the obsolescence or you know at least the diminishment of of those horse industries and there was a

00:08:55.080 there was a whole class component to this too because you know eventually once we got a bike

00:08:59.840 that was a a cheaper bike available to the masses suddenly you had many many many millions more people

00:09:06.600 who could afford a form of personal transport than you had in a period when you know people had to rely

00:09:11.620 on on say a hackney carriage because those were expensive and so you know transport prior to the

00:09:16.260 arrival of the bicycle land transport was really a class stratified if you were if you were rich maybe you

00:09:21.480 could travel around on a horse or in a horse drawn carriage if you weren't yeah you were you were

00:09:25.780 stuck going on foot well okay so but before the bike became democratized and we'll get to talk about

00:09:31.820 the safety bike that was the big innovation so this thing that drace made it got imported across europe and

00:09:37.220 the first people that really took a hold of it were the elite were sort of like the aristocracy they

00:09:42.480 had the money and time to to walk around on these things and it caused like sort of this early craze

00:09:48.100 in the regency era so it's like the early 19th century they called it the velocipede tell us

00:09:53.080 about this craze what was going on who was riding these who was riding these contraptions yeah that's

00:09:57.460 right so so carl andres was kind of like a he was he was a great promoter of his machine and he tried

00:10:02.360 to sort of spread the vogue for it across europe it first reached paris and then very quickly crossed

00:10:07.900 the channel and as you say there was kind of a big fad for it in regency england particularly among

00:10:13.300 the elites among literal aristocrats and more to the point young fashion conscious aristocrats who

00:10:20.560 were kind of into the latest technology so you know new weird devices so yes what they called the

00:10:27.280 velocipede which literally means swift you know is from the latin meaning swift of foot so it was

00:10:32.080 also called the swift walker it was it had many nicknames but notably some of those nicknames were

00:10:37.260 the dandy charger the dandy horse this is because it was it was associated with these dandies with these

00:10:42.560 you know very flamboyantly dressed young rich englishmen who had the money to afford what were

00:10:48.520 fairly expensive machines and they were you know known to ride these things in kind of cnbc spots in

00:10:55.560 london particularly hyde park was a was a was a hot spot for velocipede riding and even the prince

00:11:01.480 regent george who was you know a famously dissolute character known for throwing lavish parties and stuff

00:11:07.540 he bought a bunch of these things and kept them at his at his crazy palace and there's a seashore

00:11:12.340 city of brighton so the the velocipede very quickly in england developed a reputation as a

00:11:17.900 kind of play thing of the rich and as a result there was a lot of animosity towards it you know

00:11:23.900 populist resentment towards it among the masses it was viewed as a as another sign of of the decadence

00:11:31.160 of the money classes and so there was there was a big backlash for that reason against this machine

00:11:36.840 but but there and perhaps even bigger reason for the backlash is these velocipedes you know drace's

00:11:43.320 device wasn't really particularly well engineered it particularly in particular had problems with

00:11:47.960 its brakes so they were viewed as very dangerous and this was the kind of very first iteration of

00:11:53.160 a conflict which we see to this day over the right to the roadways that is the bicycle the velocipede

00:11:59.400 in this case was viewed from the start as a kind of illicit or illegitimate machine which was claiming

00:12:06.120 space that didn't belong to it both on the roads themselves because that was thought to be the

00:12:10.820 domain of of you know horses and horse-drawn carriages and on the pavements the sidewalks which

00:12:16.380 was you know considered the place where you walked on your own on foot so bands were instituted

00:12:22.200 very quickly after a kind of craze for these things in particularly in the year 1819 by the time you get to

00:12:28.400 1820 there are bands imposed on velocipede riding in london and when this same velocipede reached

00:12:35.340 places in the united states cities there imposed bands there was even a band instituted as far away

00:12:39.900 as calcutta so so so what we see there is like you know the very beginning of a pattern that has

00:12:47.620 continued throughout the history of the bicycle which is these kind of like culture wars and conflicts

00:12:52.760 over you know whether the bicycle is his device that has a place on the road or

00:12:58.100 should be you know marginalized and and kept off the streets okay so the velocipede it still had no

00:13:03.920 pedals when did when were pedals added to the bike so basically the story the story of the the

00:13:10.040 bicycles you know development is a is a decades-long story of of kind of experimentation and there are

00:13:17.480 various inventors and engineers uh who had a role in this but there's kind of two major bike booms

00:13:26.700 or bike boomlets you might say that preceded the the big bike boom of the 1890s and in those cases

00:13:33.260 in the kind of so in the kind of 1860s you had a bicycle known as the bone shaker because it was

00:13:39.940 it had iron shod wheels and a wooden frame and and it and it was you know it was quite uncomfortable

00:13:45.000 to ride particularly over you know flagstone pavements but this is a a bike that had a direct

00:13:50.480 drive so that the the pedals were on the front wheel itself and then in the 1870s you had the

00:13:57.640 invention of the the the iconic penny farthing or high wheeler bike this is this is the that famous

00:14:03.560 crazy looking bicycle with a giant front wheel and the and the small rear wheel again this is a direct

00:14:09.160 drive device and the reason you had that huge wheel was because that created a gearing effect because

00:14:14.080 basically you needed that big front wheel because it was a direct drive because you were pedaling

00:14:18.720 you're using pedals that were directly attached to the hub of that front wheel the bigger the wheel the

00:14:25.200 bigger the rotation you would get for each pedal stroke and you know you would travel farther and

00:14:31.660 faster because of that the issue with these earlier bicycle designs is that they're unsafe um again they

00:14:37.940 were like if you if you've seen pictures images of those maybe even in real life you've seen when

00:14:42.880 there's some around of those those penny farthings they are really tall so they're hard to mount

00:14:47.740 in fact they were sort of at the height of a horse that's kind of why they were at that height so it's

00:14:53.660 difficult to mount in the first place and once you got up there because of that direct drive huge front

00:14:58.020 wheel they were hazardous to ride people were prone to to kind of flying over the handlebars what was

00:15:04.100 called in the period taking a header so you had lots of people you know kind of riding along and then

00:15:08.880 pitching over the handlebars and smashing their head on the pavement so clearly this would those are

00:15:12.920 those are beautiful looking things but it wasn't it wasn't it was still you know we're talking now

00:15:18.260 50 years after the invention of the laugh machine and we still had an imperfect bicycle we're gonna

00:15:23.820 take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show and when did they add the

00:15:30.740 chain like when did that happen so that was it was the late 1870s where we were the first designs for

00:15:37.860 what came to be called the safety bicycle emerged and then it was around 1885 that we had the first

00:15:45.220 you know mass manufacturing of yes what was called the safety bicycle and of course it was called that

00:15:49.640 because you know in contrast to the the earlier types of bikes it was safe you had two wheels of

00:15:57.560 at first close to equal size and then very quickly thereafter you know absolutely equal size wheels

00:16:03.740 you had a diamond shaped frame the rear driven you know chain drives such that when you turn the pedals

00:16:10.400 it was it was attached to the to the rear wheel and kind of drag that that rear wheel forward and then

00:16:15.820 suddenly you could just use the front wheel simply to steer which was a which is a much easier and

00:16:21.180 and you know better thought out system than than that direct drive system and so you you had this

00:16:27.900 kind of classical bicycle silhouette arriving in 1885 18 and into the 1890s and crucially you also had

00:16:35.760 pneumatic rubber tires that is a tire which had a rubber inner tube filled with compressed air

00:16:41.100 which made a bicycle ride both much smoother and much faster and this is not just the classic design

00:16:49.000 but kind of the unvarying design you know every bicycle we've that has come around ever since has

00:16:54.020 has more or less you know the changes to that design have been basically ornamental suddenly

00:16:59.400 in the late 1870s early 1880s you had you know a kind of a something close to a perfect device you

00:17:05.320 know fine finally the bicycle itself the the true bicycle had arrived and and you know that's that's

00:17:12.060 the bike that we recognize today yeah and you have this chapter i really enjoyed reading about

00:17:15.900 you know how the bike is is such a simple it's like a simple design i mean it's just like you said

00:17:20.540 it's like diamond shape circles but it's very elegant and you kind of make this case that the

00:17:25.420 bike is one of the greatest human designed objects ever like what do you what do you what

00:17:28.820 is it about the bicycle that you think it makes it so great uh yeah i mean simplicity is is definitely

00:17:35.700 part of it you know what i mean a bicycle has very few functioning parts you don't you know what i

00:17:40.300 mean to build one you need just a few things unlike a car right which it's like you know there's so many

00:17:46.300 so many intricate parts you need for instance for an automobile well bicycle you only there's only

00:17:50.940 there's only a few a few working parts that you need and it's kind of a great example of

00:17:57.880 simplicity and design and kind of form follows function like a bicycle is a very legible device

00:18:02.940 you can look at it and you know even a child can figure out like how this contraption works

00:18:07.420 with just a little bit of like observation and maybe experimentation so there's definitely a kind

00:18:13.140 austere beauty in its design but i think that the crucial thing about the bicycle is the fact that

00:18:20.080 it is a vehicle whose rider is both the passenger and the engine so you know it's one way of putting

00:18:31.240 it is it's it's almost less a vehicle than it is a prosthesis when you ride a bike you sort of merge

00:18:36.320 your body with the bike you become if you will a component of of the bike so there's that really

00:18:42.280 that feeling you get on a particularly great ride where you it's almost uncanny feeling of being

00:18:47.640 like you know one with the mechanism of the bike and i think you know it's that uncanny quality of

00:18:54.120 the bicycle the fact that it's a that it's that it's a kind of machine man hybrid if you will that

00:19:00.520 that makes it such a such a neat a neat device and and um and such a beautiful one yeah i think that's

00:19:06.900 interesting because bike riding you know you might fall down a little bit when you first learn how to

00:19:11.600 ride a bike but once you do it just seems like the most natural thing it's like well humans were

00:19:15.780 made to do this but you think about it like what goes on to ride a bike you have to keep your balance

00:19:20.120 you have to pedal you have to manage speed it seems like well humans weren't designed for this but

00:19:25.120 we somehow make it work yeah no that's right i mean it's it's i mean i guess you you know there's

00:19:32.980 there's the expression it's just like riding a bike you know which by which we mean you know

00:19:38.640 you know once you learn to ride a bike famously you never forget right i mean if you had some

00:19:43.400 horrible you know brain trauma that might be that memory might be shaken out of out of your

00:19:50.060 out of your brain but the fact is the bicycle is uh you know learning to ride a bike is one of these

00:19:54.640 examples of a kind of memory that are a kind of skill that you don't you don't need recourse to

00:20:00.280 conscious thought once you've learned to ride a bike your body knows how to do it and you know i think

00:20:04.600 this lies in in the fact that like really the only thing you really need to learn how to do

00:20:09.360 when you ride a bike is how to how to balance you know how to keep how to how to like straddle the

00:20:15.740 bike and and keep the thing from tipping over in fact what you're doing when you ride a bike is all

00:20:20.920 the time you're totally unconsciously making tiny little minor adjustments in order to in order to

00:20:26.700 keep the thing keep the thing up but you once you've you've mastered to go back to that you know

00:20:32.360 the lauf machina and the kind of the balance bike that those little kids learn to ride on

00:20:36.700 you know what what we've realized is that when you're trying to teach a little kid to ride a bike

00:20:40.780 it's it's best to start them on one of those balance bikes that have no pedals as opposed to

00:20:46.540 a regular you know pedal bike with with training wheels because what you need to learn in order to

00:20:53.440 ride a bike is simply to balance the thing it's not pedaling per se so yeah it's a skill that would

00:20:59.380 seem to be something like a stunt in a way it is a stunt but it's a simple stunt to master and

00:21:05.000 that's why you know so many people around the world you know ride bikes i mean like you know

00:21:10.720 one thing i say right in the beginning of my book is the fact that you know the bicycle is kind of

00:21:14.520 hidden in plain sight it's one of those things that we we take for granted and there are about

00:21:19.480 one billion motor vehicles in the world there are about two billion bicycles and i think that speaks

00:21:25.180 to the fact that like it's it's an easy thing to master also it's cheap so that helps so besides

00:21:31.520 being associated with the horse the bicycle right away like especially in the 1890s got associated

00:21:36.920 with mythology and flight what was going on there yeah i mean to go back to i spoke a little bit about

00:21:44.600 pneumatic rubber tire you know there's this kind of people often say when they're on their bike they

00:21:50.080 feel like they're flying they feel like a bird or something like that and that was definitely you know

00:21:54.600 rhetoric that was heard right from the get-go the laugh machine the velocity was was compared to

00:22:01.060 pegasus um you know the flying stallion of greek mythology and then throughout the 19th century

00:22:07.360 people were always making analogies to between flying and bicycling and with the arrival of pneumatic

00:22:13.740 rubber tire this kind of metaphor became almost literal because when you ride a bike you are kind of

00:22:20.620 riding on air that is you know the air that's in the tires is literally holding you aloft so you're

00:22:26.740 the feeling of kind of skimming along like a bird is something that's in a way actually happening when

00:22:33.460 you ride a bike but there are other interesting connections between flight aviation and cycling

00:22:40.580 the most kind of dramatic of which is the fact that the wright brothers or orville and wilbur wright

00:22:46.420 the inventors of the airplane were of course bicycle mechanics and manufacturers and in order when

00:22:52.740 they were doing their their experiments to in their effort to invent a flying machine an airplane

00:22:58.260 they use components straight out of their bicycle shop they experimented some crucial breakthroughs

00:23:04.380 that they made kind of understanding the mechanics of flight were made because of experiments

00:23:09.420 they performed with bicycle wheels and literally by riding around dayton ohio on their bike on their

00:23:16.320 bikes and the kind of most important insight that they gained in their attempt to to figure out how

00:23:22.420 to work an airplane goes back to this question of balance they realized that that an airplane like

00:23:27.300 a bicycle could be an inherently unstable mechanism that relied on the ability of the pilot to to balance the

00:23:35.400 thing so you know the aviation age is is a kind of direct outcome of the age of cycling so that those

00:23:43.500 those kind of metaphors are sort of dreamy metaphors about bicycles as flying machines advertisements in

00:23:50.680 the in the late 1890s which famous advertisements that depicted bicycles kind of soaring through outer space

00:23:56.180 these metaphors were literalized by the by the wright brothers yeah i think that's interesting i mean with the

00:24:03.000 wright brothers they weren't using theory to figure out flight like there really wasn't aerodynamic theory

00:24:07.440 yet really and so they were just kind of using like they were like figuring out flight the same way you

00:24:12.960 ride a bicycle it's just you figure out the balance and then you kind of intuitively make adjustments on

00:24:18.920 the fly yeah exactly exactly i mean and if you think about the wright brothers early plane i mean it's not

00:24:24.880 you know that it's not a jumbo jet right it's like a it's like a it's like a one man one man thing so it's

00:24:31.720 really it's not it's not even that that different in the way it looks than a bicycle and then you kind

00:24:37.560 of have like a guy sitting on a saddle you know what i mean uh flying that thing and also in this

00:24:42.700 period there were there were you know in particularly in the period of the 1890s when suddenly bicycles

00:24:47.480 were everywhere and there are millions of bikes everywhere in the and kind of you know in the especially

00:24:51.780 in the west in western europe and in the united states there was this just mass obsession with the

00:24:56.420 bicycle there were all kinds of ideas visions for bicycle like flying devices people were

00:25:03.660 constantly patenting various types of you know bicycle airship hybrids none of which

00:25:09.980 got off the ground nowadays we have machines that are like that kind of you know you know pedal powered

00:25:15.900 flying machines of various sorts uh but but the you know the the link that the wright brothers made

00:25:22.040 was one that would seem that was sort of intuitive to to people in this period okay so in the 1890s the

00:25:28.380 safety bicycles invented there's this huge boom in bicycles in europe in the united states it represents

00:25:35.360 this new form of democratic man-powered mobility you know people thought of it as a less expensive horse

00:25:42.040 that never needs to be fed and you know it brought not only a new way to travel the roads

00:25:47.880 but also a new way to explore the wilds the wilderness so who was the the first guy that thought

00:25:54.780 you know what what i really need is is a bicycle i want to take my bicycle and i want to ride it down

00:26:01.180 this rocky mountain so how did the mountain bike come about well you know the impulse to to ride bikes

00:26:08.860 up mountains existed right from the get-go or at least as soon as we got had pedal driven bikes you know

00:26:15.420 they're famous they're famous travel logs in the 19th century written by people who like uh there's

00:26:20.320 one written by a guy named thomas stevens who rode his penny farthing like literally around the world

00:26:24.740 i mean of course he he didn't ride it over the oceans he took ships but you know he used his penny

00:26:29.540 farthing to to ride up mountain ranges all over all over asia and europe and the united states people

00:26:36.280 pedaled over the alps in the 19th century on these on these bikes so so there were people using

00:26:41.640 bicycles on mountains for for some time but it was really in the late 60s and early 70s that

00:26:47.620 various cultures of mountain cycling developed particularly in the san francisco bay area where

00:26:54.300 a group of people who called themselves a kind of collective who called themselves repack

00:26:58.880 kind of souped up these old schwinn bikes put much bigger tires on them messed around with the

00:27:04.860 gearing systems and created bikes which as you say you could use to like bomb up and crucially down

00:27:10.020 mountains and kind of go off-roading and eventually these things were mass manufactured and marketed

00:27:15.960 to far and wide such that they're you know not only is you know mountain biking become a huge

00:27:21.400 recreational pastime for millions of people but also people just simply use mountain bikes to get around

00:27:26.660 town because they have these great suspensions they're nicely engineered machines but yeah it's funny

00:27:31.780 that you know mountain you know the the impulse to kind of use a bicycle not just to kind of like

00:27:37.180 you know cruise around cruise around town you know just to to get around but really to like

00:27:42.360 to challenge your push your your body to its physical limit to to climb high peaks and then to

00:27:50.020 you know brave steep descents is something that's uh that's been with us for a long time and and it is a

00:27:56.640 big big feature of cycling culture so i'll admit that well i you know i had a bike when i was a kid

00:28:02.680 i i have a bike now but i don't really use it as much yeah for me like it feels uncomfortable

00:28:07.920 unnatural hurts my butt how might you make the case for a grown-up to rediscover the pleasures of biking

00:28:14.880 oh man i mean like all i can say is it is you know it's to to me the only thing then better than

00:28:22.860 riding a bicycle is sex i'm gonna be awesome i'm gonna i'm gonna be blunt about it all right you know

00:28:27.460 what i mean and riding riding a bicycle with your with your wife on her bicycle next to you is really

00:28:32.380 fun is really fun too no it's it's like uh it's it's it's an intensely physically pleasurable thing

00:28:40.780 to ride a bike it's a great way to go about your business and get around you know you you kind of

00:28:46.740 interact with the world in a different way when you're on your bicycle you know you move at a pace

00:28:50.620 that's neither too fast nor too slow so you you can kind of soak in the panorama you know in a way

00:28:58.340 that you you you can't when you're walking or in a car and interact with your environment in a way so

00:29:04.440 it's so it's an intensely pleasurable bike for me like sensual emotional and even intellectual

00:29:11.100 experience like i think better when i'm on my bike i'm a writer so like you know like i'm a journalist

00:29:16.100 so sometimes when i get stuck on something you know i have writer's block or whatever and i need to

00:29:20.120 kind of clear the cobwebs out i'll just jump on my bike and ride around town for a little bit

00:29:23.520 and it and it has that it has that effect for me but but yeah i mean i guess the other thing i'd say

00:29:28.520 is simply convenience it's just like we all spend our time particularly for you know our commuters

00:29:35.660 car commuters or on public transportation kind of moving slowly stuck in stuck in traffic whatever

00:29:41.420 and once you start riding a bike you realize what a pleasure it is to get around town and how

00:29:46.540 relatively quicker you can get where you're going so that's that's just the start of my case let's

00:29:51.380 put it that way well jody this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more

00:29:55.380 about the book in your work well you can go to google and if you enter my name j-o-d-y-r-o-s-e-n

00:30:00.960 you'll find some you know some articles i've written over the years for for the new york times

00:30:05.260 that's my main gig but you could also go to my website jody-rosen.com then certainly you can find

00:30:11.900 my book two wheels good at any bookstore or any online purveyor of books fantastic well jody rosen

00:30:17.140 thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thanks so much i've had a great time brett my guest there

00:30:21.620 is jody rosen he's the author of the book two wheels good it's available on amazon.com also check

00:30:26.580 out his website jody-rosen.com where you find more information about his work also check out our

00:30:31.320 show notes at aom.is bike where you find links to resources and we go deeper into this topic

00:30:35.780 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:30:47.360 artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles written

00:30:51.420 over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of and if you'd like to enjoy ad free

00:30:55.240 episodes of the aom podcast you can do so on stitcher premium head over to stitcherpremium.com

00:30:59.420 sign up use code manliness at checkout for free month trial once you're signed up download the

00:31:04.020 stitcher app on android ios and you can start enjoying ad free episodes of the aom podcast

00:31:07.760 and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us review and have

00:31:10.900 a podcast or spotify helps that a lot if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing

00:31:15.640 the show with a friend or family member who you think we get something out of it as always thank

00:31:19.680 you for the continued support until next time it's brett mckay remind you i'm listening

00:31:22.900 a podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:31:34.020 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The Bicycle as Freedom and Flight

Episode Stats

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript