Why We Ride/Resolve to Ride—A Blogspedition

New Year’s resolutions come at the wrong time of year. Who can start something new when snow blankets the ground, we start and end our days in darkness, and all we can think of is hot cocoa, snuggly blankets, and a crackling fire?

September, on the other hand, is the back-to-school season. To me this means fresh pencils, blank sheets of paper, new thoughts, new ideas, the chance to learn new things, shopping for new clothes, and perfect weather for doing anything. Like, say, starting to ride a bike!

If you’ve been thinking about riding you may already have some reasons in mind. Coincidentally I’ve seen a rash of recent posts by women bloggers talking about why they ride that may just inspire you to hop on the saddle. Here they are, along with a few older posts I rounded up about various motivations for riding.

• BikeShopGirl: Motivational Monday: Why Do YOU Ride? (and go back and read the profiles she’s been writing each Monday)
• She Rides a Bike: Remembering Why I Bike
• Let’s Go Ride a Bike: Why I Ride a Bike
• Riding Pretty: I Ride My Bike (music video)
• Let’s Go Ride a Bike: Is Bicycling Political?
• Bike Thoughts from a Broad: I Like to Ride My Bicycle…I Like to Ride My Bike
• Bike Style Spokane (whoops, that’s me!): Independence and Freedom, Courtesy of the Bicycle
• City Girl Rides: The Bicycle as Symbol of Freedom
• Naturally Cycling: Manchester: Appreciating the Seasons
• Bike Style Spokane (there I go again): How Bikes Can Save the World

In my “On a Roll with” interviews I’ve been collecting words from women that describe how they feel when they ride. Words like:

• Peaceful
• Free
• Strong
• Happy

Then there’s this video that keeps making the rounds of the bike folk on Twitter and elsewhere because it is So. Freaking. Adorable.

Related Reading

This post is part of our 30 Days of Biking series. Read the others in the series and share with friends who are thinking about starting to commute by bike.

1. 30 Days of Bike Commuting: You Can Do It!
2. Why We Ride/Resolve to Ride–A Blogspedition
3. Preparing to Commute by Bike: Get the Worry out of the Way
4. Buying a Bike for Commuting: Some Questions and a Blogspedition
5. How to Bike Commute: Getting the Gear Together
6. Bike Commuting 101: Carrying Stuff
7. On a Roll with Wilma Flanagan
8. 30 Days of Biking: Week One Report
9. Ride with your Community: SpokeFest Rocks!
10. There and Back Again: How to Pick your Bike Commute Route
11. Intro to Bike Commuting: Route Selection Part 2
12. More Bike Commuting Route Selection Tips: Part 3
13. Thinking Like a Driver vs. Thinking Like a Bicyclist
14. Biking as Downtime and other Musings on Overproductivity
15. 30 Days of Biking: Week Two Report
16. On a Roll with Katherine Widing
17. I Shouldn’t Assume
18. Falling Down on Your Bike. It Happens. To Grown-Ups.
19. Pretty Handy, Gloves. The Blogspedition Assumes You’ll Get ‘Em.
20. What to Wear for Your Bike Commute? Clothes.
21. How to Get a Dropped Bike Chain Back On, Grease-Free
22. 30 Days of Biking: Week Three!
23. It’s All in the Attitude
24. Things I Now Do on My Bike Without Having to Think About It
25. Mental Essentials for Bike Commuting: Risk and Trust
26. More Mental Essentials for Bike Commuting: Friendliness and Openness
27. Even More Mental Essentials for Bike Commuting: Tolerance, Humor, and Persistence
28. Bicycling Rites of Passage, Spokane Style
29. Dear Reader, I Chicked Him
30. 30 Days of Biking: Final Report!

Your Turn

• What word(s) would you use to describe why you ride or how riding makes you feel?
• What’s your motivation for riding?
• What would you say to encourage someone who’s thinking about starting to ride and hasn’t quite gotten rolling yet?
• Do you have a biking resolution?
• If you’re thinking about biking and haven’t started, what’s holding you back or what would help you get going?

Tags: attitude, biking