“I’ve been riding bicycles for thirty-six years. Today, I ride to get to work, sometimes for work, to keep fit, to bathe in air and sunshine, to go shopping, to escape when the world is breaking my balls, to savour the physical and emotional fellowship of riding with friends, to travel, to stay sane, to skip bathtime with my kids, for fun, for a moment of grace, occasionally to impress someone, to scare myself and to hear my boy laugh. Sometimes I ride my bicycle just to ride my bicycle. It’s a broad church of practical, physical, and emotional reasons with one unifying thing—the bicycle.”

—Robert Penn, It’s All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), 11.