When I began riding bikes, I did so because they were fun. That was reason enough. No one needed to pay me to ride and I had no designs on larger glory. I can’t say how many years I’d been riding when I began to notice that cycling had conferred on me a set of skills that I’d transferred into nearly every sphere of my life.
One of the first ways I came to realized I possessed skills that I’d never have picked up playing gin rummy was while driving. I could (can) drive with one knee, reach in the back seat for a bag of food while taking a sip of my drink. Okay, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that extreme, but it’s true that I’ve double-fisted a sandwich and driven with my knee, and I’ve done it while staying easily within my lane lines.
I got that skill from doing things like drinking a bottle while in a tuck doing 50 mph, or reaching in my back pocket for a bite of food while bumping around a gravel rode, and as anyone who has ridden in groups knows, you figure that out in a hurry or you either bonk or wind up on the ground.
The event that drove the lesson home—the lesson being my gratitude for the skills cycling had given me—came one night while driving the freeway in LA. I was southbound on the 110, in a very rough part of town when I heard a sound to my right, saw something coming toward my car and what appeared to be the starter unit from a car crashed into my windshield, bounced on my hood once and finished its transit across my Subaru.
Through the entire event, my car never wavered in direction. Large concrete walls bounded the freeway on either side. I held the wheel straight like I was some computer-assisted autopilot. The resulting impact from a hunk of metal the size of an ice cream tub sent a haze of glass through the car and me in a daze. A couple of Mississippis passed before I registered that I was still driving straight. Given the number of other circumstances where something like that would have caused me to jump, I am, some 20 years later, certain that handling skills I honed in bike racing saved my life.
Interesting reflection on skill transfer. I played soccer for a long time in my youth and into young adult-hood. I’ve coached my kids in basketball (and softball). And i’ve been riding my bike since i was 4. I’ve long thought that soccer and basketball translated well to driving (spacial awareness, understanding of momentum and speed, and tracking multiple moving objects and predicting their future location) but haven’t thought about cycling in this same context. But, I agree with the ability to hold your line in the middle of chaos. My oldest is learning to drive now and she totally doesn’t understand the “steer with your knees” thing I seem to do without a second thought. Maybe that is a bike skill that I didn’t realize I had!
I don’t know that I’d be able to conceive of steering with my knee had it not been for the fact that with a bike, your entire body contributes to the direction your going. There are going to be more of these because cycling has seeped into the entirety of my life.
Balance, spatial awareness, proprioception, maintaining calm in chaos, line choice while driving, looking far enough ahead, knee driving…and so much more. Yes, probably came from bikes. Also mechanical understanding, being able to talk to people, appreciation of aesthetics and ergonomics, having incredible taste in music….
Amen.