Sourced from NPR | July 18, 2022 by Bill Chappell
Bill Chappell says that he makes the most and the least sense when he's riding his bike.
Illustration | Josie Norton for NPR
Along the way, the brain disengages from stress. Life quiets down to simple rhythms. Problems seem to evaporate for a short amount of time. Throw on a podcast or some music and you will be gone for a few hours.
A long nice ride will have you discover new layers of yourself with new bursts of energy. That's what it feels like when your body is incinerating little stresses from toxins you've accumulated.
“It’s one of the rare things in life that lets you escape from the world, while also connecting you to it. I love to spin my way through forests, around lakes, and into little communities that I never knew existed.””
Riding a bike is good for people who especially have long running knee problems.
Bill has been able to do everything he wanted in life. But a clamor of "what-ifs" were often in the back of his mind, worried about a serious injury. Possibly to his detriment, he learnt to turn the volume down on that noise, to block out what could possibly go wrong.
It's a good strategy for life - to focus on what you want to happen and not what you don't. It's also something to think about, to ponder why you do the things you do.
Bill acknowledges that he’s done some crazy things on his bike. Passing a Camaro -- in the left lane, on a steep hill in the dark. Riding through 8 inches of fresh snow on a 20-mile hill trail. Racing cars around traffic circles. Sprinting downhill, then coasting across a wide creek, legs straight out hoping to catch enough speed to carry him across the water.
In some ways, it seemed right that a crazy thing would happen on a bike. Everything else we use to get around makes absolute sense. For years, scientists had no idea how or why a bicycle really works, on the most elemental levels.
Bill's love for cycling started in high school, where he used his money from a summer job to buy a Nishiki Century. The next summer with his dad, to ride a loaner Raleigh. He worked at night and his dad worked during the day, so Bill rode for hours and hours.
By the time he had returned to his hometown in South Carolina, he could easily ride out to the airport and back, going up long highway hills and looping around the far side of the city. Without realizing it, he had become a cyclist. Within a few years, he was splayed in the back of a friend's bike shop, rebuilding a planetary gear hub for a rusty Raleigh DL-1 he picked up for $5.
He learned more about bikes by spending hours reading cycling gurus Sheldon Brown, Grant Petersen, and Jan Heine.
Cycling is fun. Whether you are riding for fitness or means to get from point A to B. Just to ride around in a loop with your feet spinning in circles. Bill keeps a score of his riding stats so that he can compete with himself and stay motivated.
One of Bill's favorite roads to ride in Washington | Bill Chappell
Cycling has helped Bill to stay healthy and has given him a space to depressurize, leaning over his handlebars, where he's come to terms with setbacks and also made plans for the future. It's where he realized he should propose to his wife. Where he mourned the death of his mother and now he thinks about his own kids.
The physics of bikes may still be a mystery but a lot of things in life don't make sense. They don't always have to and you just have to keep on moving.
