Do you like bicycles?

I’ve Got A Bike, You Can Ride It If You Like

Bikes are sweet as. They’re entertaining, health-happy, eco-friendly, and they’ve got soul, that’s for damn sure. In the likes of Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Tokyo, bikes are scattered all over the streets like spilt confetti, and all shapes and sizes and colours are literally piled on top of each another in immaculately chaotic bike harmony. For cities such as Amsterdam, where cycling is just about the most popular form of transportation, you see a pretty wacky range of people brandishing a set of two wheels: students with books, businessmen with briefcases, bohemians with groovy love flowers in their hair, mothers carrying kids, kids carrying pets, grandmothers carrying groceries, grandfathers carrying grandmothers, Anne Frank’s ghost; indeed, rather than cyclists watching out for cars, it is pedestrians who need to be on bike-alert at all time, as they truly dominate the squashy, cobbled streets.

Undoubtedly, Melbourne is catching up on the trend. We may not have the most bike-friendly roads, with traffic congestion becoming more and more like an oversized bowl of spaghetti these days, but the City of Melbourne’s 2007-2011 bike plan has ensured an increase in cycling paths, upgraded sign posting, and accessible parking facilities for cyclists. So hopefully, by 2012, our bikes will have more rights! Politics aside, however, the biking culture in Melbourne over the last few years seems to have erupted as sporadically as Susan Boyle—it’s big, it’s bold, and its popularity is growing as voluminously as Susan’s eyebrows.

But why is it that suddenly everybody is talking about bikes?

‘Trends? Fixie fags?’ suggests Laura Choong, who prefers to go solely by “Choong”. ‘Parking is free? I can eat more chocolate?’

A bike-advocate with unaffected attitude, Choong has been into bikes, really into bikes, since having a revelation—ironically, whilst in front of the television.

‘I was watching the Tour de France and riding the exercise bike at the same time,’ she recalls. ‘I realized I was riding at least the distance of my normal commute now—about 12 km—nightly.’

Choong is a university student, but only by default—not by nature. Bikes have given her a reason to go.

‘I never went to uni because I hated how long it took me to get there by public transport, considering the distance,’ she explains in the one breath, but with a casual languor. She lights up a cigarette and looks distractedly into the distance. ‘Figured a bike would be quicker,’ she continues. ‘So I bought a bike. And then another bike. And then put most of the parts onto another frame. And then bought another frame and some cheap bits to make another bike.’ She laughs gruffly. ‘It's addictive.’

Bikes may be sidling their way into the hearts of the common man, but have we forgotten how familiar this all is? Don’t we remember that we actually discovered bikes a long time ago, in the far off Jumping Castles of our childhood? What’s changed? It appears that as adults, we appreciate bikes in a totally different way to how we saw them as kids. Back in the yesteryears, when our little brains were dazzled by undiscovered delights every day, it was simpler. Bikes were big, and shiny, and fast—that was all. Had we known what they really were, we might have given them a miss altogether and gone happily back to our Cartoons and Lego and Milk-snorting. As it was, ‘Cool’ wasn’t yet in our vocabulary; and ‘Healthy’ was a word associated with gross things like Brussels sprouts and dentists, things that should be avoided; ‘Exercise’ was some boring thing that grown-ups did; and—‘Eco-friendly’? What is that, a Pokémon?

When I got my first bike, it was pretty much the most important thing that had ever happened to me, aside from being born, I guess—and maybe learning to walk—but it’s not like either of those experiences were nearly as pink and shiny (with possible exception to the birth). I mean, who doesn’t remember receiving their first bike? It’s a wonder I’ll ever feel the same dizzy excitement of that glorious day again in my life. I had just turned six, and had always associated bikes with the cool twelve-year-olds who rode around their neighbourhoods in American movies such as E.T., The Little Rascals, Pippi Longstocking, Hocus Pocus and all those Olsen Twins films. I was all dressed up nice and snug in my school uniform. It was 7am. The morning was crisp and cold with blue cornflower sky and brilliant lemon sun high-fiving each other because, well, it was my birthday, and I was turning six, and Mum and Nanny had made me pancakes, and older sister Hayley had plaited my hair, and even Dad was up in his dressing-gown to give me a big birthday bear hug, and everything was just really good that day, I recall. Mum and Hayley and Nanny all played dumb for the sake of six-year-old me and said things over breakfast like,

‘Now, where has Charlotte’s birthday present gone?’

‘Hmm, I don’t know. It must be hiding.’

‘Where could it be?’

‘Well, a little bird told me this morning that he saw something with a big red bow hiding in the garage.’

‘Really? I wonder if that could be it? Charlotte, you better go out and see!’

So, of course, I ran eagerly, like a puppy following a tennis ball, out the back door, around the back of the car—and there it was.

It was the loveliest, prettiest, most extraordinary creature I’d ever seen. Gleams of fairy-petal-pink, mermaid-tail-purple and unicorn-hair-silver winked at me in the sunlight as I stood there in awestruck, out-of-this-world, giddy, kiddy delight.

‘Ooh, what a lucky girl!’ Nanny exclaimed in faux-surprise. ‘But are you sure you’re quite old enough for such a big girl’s present?’

Pardon, Nanny? If scoffing was commonplace for a six-year-old, I would have scoffed the greatest scoff anyone ever scoffed. Was I quite old enough? If she was old enough, I was old enough. Nothing in the world was as beautiful as that bike: rainbow tassels dangling from the handlebars, radical hot-pink seat, white and unblemished wheels that would never look as clean as they did in that moment —this was the whole package —and it was mine.

Yep, bike-riding back then seemed a sure-fire step towards being awesome and twelve, and that was mighty exciting. What could possibly be better?

The answer was Super Nintendo. Videogames basked in the glory of my easily diverted attention for years to come, and thoroughly annihilated any desire to be outside. Thus, my bike frenzy was short-lived. Why did I need to go outside if Mario and Donkey Kong and Sid the Hedgehog and Zelda were inside? I was controlling them, after all, so when they fought ghosts and travelled to distant lands and breathed fresh air, so did I. Yeah, bikes were old news. Between that era and about a year ago—a solid decade and a half—I really hadn’t given bikes much more thought than casual observation warranted.

But now, now, bikes represent a whole new way of thinking, of living. It’s freedom at its most natural. With a bike it’s just you and the wind and the bare minimum of material objects. You can glide through traffic jams, encounter the thrill of zipping down hills, never have to step into a gym again, and know that you’re helping out the environment, even a little bit. Maybe bike-riding won’t get you a Nobel Peace Prize, but it will get you moving, and that’s a start.

While the culture of bikes has become somewhat of a global phenomenon, there are also sub-cultures emerging within the bike world. Fixies, for instance, or Fixie Fags, are the latest bikes to gain you street cred. They have all but launched onto the hipster scene, and anyone who’s anyone will elect to ride one.

A “Fixie” is a fixed gear bike, that is, a bike with one gear, no freewheel and no brakes—in short—a lighter, faster, and more aesthetically-pleasing bike to manoeuvre.

Cam McKenzie, a seventeen-year-old high school kid who made his own Fixie out of a ten-dollar chrome frame he found at a garage sale, gives me his opinion of the trend.

‘They’re sweet-looking for one,’ he says, his rusty blonde hair falling in sharp tufts over his eyes. ‘You take total control of the bike: jarring the pedals back to stop, skidding around corners in the rain—and they are really easy to ride, with no noise and shit.

‘Only bad thing is skidding is a slow way to stop, so you have to be watching way ahead to anticipate danger and shit, like car doors on St. Kilda road.’

‘At the moment I want a Fixie with an Old-Road-Bike-style steel frame and drop bars,’ gushes Justina Lui, a jittery twinkle in her eye. ‘That, or a Schwinn Madison.’

Justina is a twenty-year-old university student who also really loves bikes. She takes Law/Engineering but spends the majority of her time riding absolutely everywhere or else embroidering, ‘HOME IS WHERE THE BIKE IS’ on cushions, rather than devoting time to study. She speaks with the same zeal that would have inhabited my six-year-old self when looking upon my birthday present in the garage—but this is everyday bike excitement for her, and is unlikely to be replaced by a Super Nintendo.

Justina has been a solid friend of mine ever since our first day of primary school. I stepped into the classroom, awkward and shy and wide-eyed, and, well, the two of us fit together like the perfect Fixie. It’s been fifteen years since then, and while she’s still somewhat of a mystery to me, I sure as hell know she loves bikes, and would be hard-pressed to ever see her further than 100 meters away from one. Her garage has become a bike junk-yard so to speak—a cluttered, convivial adoption agency for bikes where she and her Dad collect unwanted parts and second-hand rides and broken lights and rusty racks and wobbly wicker baskets and just about any gadget and gizmo and whoozit and whatzit that relates to our two-wheeled friends.

Ah, it’s true, though. Bikes are friends who carry us round on their backs. Do bikes have souls?

‘Nah they don’t,’ Cam grumbles, flicking his head irritably until the hair gets out of his eyes. ‘Unless you're a pretentious prick. Bikes are useful pieces of junk that do their job fine.’

I ask Justina whether she’s named her bike.

‘Hmm, they do add up to the sum of their parts?’ She grins widely then adds, with a squeaky laugh, ‘Justin called my bike, “3rd Wheel”, but that was just a terrible pun.’

Justin is her ex-boyfriend. I suggest that terrible bike puns must have been the only thing they had in common, aside from the first six letters of their name. Justina agrees.

Choong doesn’t think bikes have souls, but she does think that they should have names.

‘Felix, Leonie, Burton and Clarence are some of the bikes I have or have had,’ she recalls, flicking away her cigarette.

Whether one elects to name their bike or not, they nonetheless remain a healthy, peaceful alternative to the claustrophobic stench of the daily grind. Bikes have always been around—they’re nothing new—but it seems in this day and age, what with the explosions of technology keeping us locked away inside with our computers, sometimes it’s nice to be able to take a few steps back in order to move forward. It’s a better time than ever to take a fresh look at the bicycle and join the cultural phenomenon that’s taking Melbourne by storm. It beats videogames, that’s for sure.