Whenever I see an adult on a
bicycle, I have hope for the human race. H.G. Wells.
Since we arrived in Cairns we have been
riding bicycles every where we need to go. Cairns, it turns out, is
incredibly well set up for bicycle commuting – there are marked
bike lanes on most roads, an enormous number of dedicated paved
bicycling tracks, and, right now, ripe mangos are plentiful for the
picking at multiple points along any route. All in all, it's pretty
hard to have a bad time.
The beauty of riding a bicycle is the
connection you get with the landscape that you just don't get while
driving in a car. Sweating up a hill under a humid tropical sky,
coasting along under big mango trees, riding through the smells and
scents of flowering trees and freshly mulched cane fields and scaring
up birds as you pass. Everything is so immediate and you feel so
present in the environment. For sheer enjoyment of travel, not much
can beat the bicycle.
So, “when the spirits are low,
when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope
hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin
down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are
taking.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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