Why Has the Universe Decided to Ride a Bike?

It all happened very gradually, I guess.

Little by little, biking became the way I was manifesting myself in the universe. Not only me as a thinking human being, but more as an action.

Cycling became the way I expressed myself, the way I made myself known to the world, the way I stood out in some strange and quiet way.

This definitely happened after my years as a racer. Those years were bittersweet. I enjoyed the training, the companionship, the sense of exploration when riding on new roads, but I didn’t enjoy racing itself.

Time has softened my relationship with those years. I can now see not only their limitations and misunderstandings, but also the countless moments of beauty, effort, and insight that emerged from trying, as sincerely as I could, to do one thing well, regardless of winning or losing.

After I stopped racing, I went through two or three years of readjustment, with very little biking, sometimes none at all. But a small voice kept calling me back to what I truly loved about cycling.

We hear about people having all sorts of callings. For some, it is religion. For others, helping people, building a family, making music, creating art.

For me, whatever this “me” really is, it seemed to express itself by pushing on pedals.

I started very small, and little by little I went further and further. That became my act on the stage of life. That was how the universe moved through me.

It didn’t matter what I thought, what I believed, or what job I did. Cycling was becoming far more important as a pure manifestation of joy, curiosity, and exploration.

And yes, it became more and more necessary to keep exploring, to go deeper, to discover new aspects of cycling: touring, pushing boundaries, elevating the sense of joy, serenity, and connection.

I don’t feel it was something I consciously chose to do. It simply happened, as if something else had chosen it for me.

I like to think that this vast intelligent universe found its own way through my body. It simply moved on a bike — and still does, after thirty years and thousands of miles.

And even now, I don’t feel that I am doing something repetitive, even though cycling is perhaps the pinnacle of repetition.

Every ride still feels unique. New. A renovation. A newborn universe moving for no reason across its own stage.

Throughout the years and the many miles, something slowly melted on that bike. Something dissipated, perhaps disappeared into the bike frame itself, becoming one with it, and eventually with the whole universe.

I guess that, to different degrees, we all carry a strong sense of identity:
“I am this.”
“I believe that.”
“I am this kind of person.”

But perhaps this is a misunderstanding of what we actually experience.

Experiences arise. Thoughts arise. Reactions arise in the inner world of consciousness.

And many times, we take those thoughts and experiences to be what we truly are. We begin to believe our own mental narrative as if it were a solid and permanent self.

Why has the universe decided to ride a bike?

That, perhaps, is the real mystery of existence.

There is a dynamic unfolding everywhere: cause and effect, movement responding to movement, life continuously reshaping itself.

Starting from some original emptiness, some point zero, some pure nothingness — whatever that truly means — the universe slowly evolved, revolved, unfolded into increasingly complex forms.

Stars. Oceans. Cells. Bodies. Consciousness.

And at some point, quite mysteriously, the universe reached the biking stage.

Not “my” biking.
Not “your” biking.

Just this strange moment in existence where the universe began moving through roads, weather, mountains, and silence on two wheels.

In that sense, cycling does not really belong to anyone. Or perhaps it belongs to everyone, because it belongs first to life itself.

Even now, I remain uncertain about what cycling truly made of me — how much it shaped me, how much it distorted me, and who I might have become had I not given myself to it so completely.

But one thing has remained consistently true.

Riding has always brought me back to the body. Back to breath, weather, effort, gravity, movement.

Cycling tells me that I truly exist. That I am truly having some kind of direct experience.

It pulls me out of abstraction and returns me to the physical world, to the immediacy of lived life.

It is true that when I am off the bike, there is often a mixed feeling about how I am spending my time. Sometimes I feel productive or creative. Other times I feel I should be doing more. And at other times, I am simply chasing pleasure or pleasant moments.

But when I am on the bike, all of that disappears.

The doubts disappear.
The constant evaluation disappears.
The questioning of whether I am using my life correctly disappears.

Everything feels perfectly fine.

And yet, I don’t believe that freedom itself is somehow hidden inside the bicycle.

Freedom is neither on the bike nor off it.

Feelings come and go, but feelings themselves are not freedom.

For me, freedom has less to do with achieving particular states and more to do with not becoming trapped by ideas of freedom and entrapment in the first place.

It is the capacity to live the moment as it is:
without resistance,
without escape,
without rejection.

It is true that, on the bike, I often feel I am in my most natural place, as if I were simply wearing clothes made specifically for me.

But that does not make me any freer than when I am washing dishes.