IN THE face of famine across the western world in 1816, when German farmers were forced to shoot their horses because they couldn’t feed them, eccentric aristocrat Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbronn conceived of a mechanical horse. His “Draisine” comprised two wooden carriage wheels in line and a wooden bench which the rider straddled, scooting his feet along the ground for propulsion. It was the first bicycle.
According to Robert Penn, in his book It’s All About The Bike, another 40 years passed before cranks and pedals were added, giving birth in Paris in the 1860s to the “velocipede”. As Penn recalls, when it was demonstrated in London in 1869, people were amazed. In Ixion magazine, John Mayall reported: “I shall never forget our astonishment at the sight of Mr Turner whirling himself around the room, sitting on a bar above a pair of wheels in a line that ought, as we innocently supposed, to fall down immediately....I turned to Mr Spencer and exclaimed, ‘by Jove, Charley, there’s a balance!’ ”
And so a revolution was born. The bicycle’s popularity has waxed and waned but always endured. Its sociological impact has been immense: as a mode of mass transport, a workhorse, leisure activity and sport. It has been among the great liberators, extending horizons and – in the early days – human gene pools by allowing people to socialise beyond their home towns. It has spawned its own vocabulary (from backers to crossers) and generated millions of memories: who doesn’t remember their first bike? It has survived fads and fashions and, most of all, the advent of the car. And it is on the rise again.
Tens of thousands of new bikes have been bought under the “Bike-to-Work” scheme – how better to negotiate clogged streets? But more striking is its soaring popularity as a source of fun and fitness, reflected in a series of new leisure cycling events and – sometimes scarily – in that modern phenomenon, the Mamil (a middle-aged man in lycra). This week An Post launched its annual Cycle Series which attracted 13,500 entries last year from children to families to serious amateurs. And there are many more such events – from the Wicklow 200 to the Orwell Randonnée. Even five times Tour de France champion Bernard Hinault is due on Irish roads this summer in the Tour de Connemara.
So why this enduring fascination with the bicycle? In the search for an answer, Robert Penn turns – among others – to Albert Einstein and his observation:
“Life is like riding a bicycle.
To keep your balance, you must keep moving”.