Using a bicycle for running one's daily errands (not for daytime only RACING or RECREATION as most bicycle retailers cater to) is a form of continuing adult education in concepts of LIVING LIGHTLY ON THE EARTH. Auto-oriented bike shops seem to be the rule in the USA today, where it's presumed you have a car that you need to outfit to carry your bike but outfitting your bike with simple, large capacity and SAFE rigs, IS tricky, but quite do-able but is almost unheard of in the USA. Again you are in need of a car, you are told, to carry car-go. Except cars DONT go much anymore, they are increasingly caught in gridlock, sometimes due to a car that's run out of gas (seen any closed up gas stations lately?) and is parked in a crucial lane. Oddly statistics show that there are more bikes per person in the USA, than in any other country of the world. Each bicycle ride is a lesson in simplicity, modesty, flexibility, trust, patience, exercise, physical and mental health, respect for nature and the natural world, as well as respect for one's natural limits and particularly respect for the other living creatures inhabiting this planet and one's own bloodstream. Cars, SUV's, bicycling prohibited highways, and especially single occupancy vehicles (S.O.V.'s) are essentially the opposite of all these things. Yet the streets of the USA are swarming with SOB in SUV from HEL (home equity loans). SOV's are all about I, me, mine; bikes are all about us, we, them. Getting along with and anticipating pedestrians, wheelchair riders, trucks, children, cats, dogs, even bugs and frogs, are what makes a safe biker who makes it home with a smile. Whereas in a car or truck, it's mostly a matter of cleaning the blood and other dead creatures off the bumper and windshield once in a while.
P.S. "What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon." Yogi Paramhansa
P.S. "What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon." Yogi Paramhansa