Beyond Bounds Blog

In the recent two months I have been experimenting with healthy living, and I found that having a bike makes healthy living a whole lot easier.  What is more surprising though is that by riding my bike daily to get places, I see many parts of life in a completely different light.  Originally I thought that buying a bike was simply buying another means of transportation, but little did I expect that I would experience a new way of living.

Below are 11 advantages of riding a bike that I have noticed in the past few weeks.

1) Get to know the city like you never did before.  When you ride a bike, you get a real feel for the size of the city that your in.  In a car or on the subway there is only a time measurement, but by bike you can feel the size not only by time but by space because you are peddling.  Of course if you walked everywhere you would get a similar feeling; however walking is too slow to be practical.  Previously, Beijing felt like an impossibly huge city.  Now, I feel it getting smaller and smaller the more I ride.  Within 2 weeks of biking, I got to know every bridge and nearly every street on the north side of the city.  I’m working on the east side now.

2) Save money. A bike might go for between $50 and $100, but you save money everyday on other things.  In Beijing, it is common to take taxis or the subway everywhere.  The subway is 2RMB each way, which makes 4 RMB per day.  You’ll earn the price of your bike back in around half a year. Any 10-15 RMB taxi (close distances) will be easy to reach by bike.  I used to take these 2-3x a week, coming in at around 100 RMB a week.  Within 2 months I will have made my money back on my purchase.  This all on top of gas savings and parking savings for if you drive often.  After that, lifetime savings are yours to keep!

3) Get exercise. Obviously any movement is exercise.  Riding a bike takes a lot more movement than pressing the gas peddle.

4) Relax. This one may seem a little counter intuitive to most people, as driving in an air-conditioned car with your choice of music seems relaxing, but it isn’t.  Riding a bike slows life down and gets you outside in nature (or closer at least) with the wind blowing and the sun shining (I assume you won’t ride on rainy days).  On top of that, exercise itself is stress relieving.  I’ve found myself a lot more relaxed in the past few weeks.

5) Slow life down. Get out of the rush of the day and slow yourself down.  Biking isn’t so slow that you can’t run errands, but it’s slow enough that you have time to think and feel rather than worry.  Small changes in life tend to have cascading effects, so by slowing down one part of your life you may find that the stress in other parts of your life just aren’t worth it.  Going from point A to point B doesn’t have to be a rush.  Take your time.

6) Freedom of Movement. Walking is too slow and a car is too cumbersome.  A bike offers you a healthy balance in the middle, where you get speed and mobility.  Going half a mile to four miles no longer becomes a hassle.  Also, in a car you are limited to places that have parking spots.  A bike has no such limit.  By foot you can’t go on the freeway - a bike can.  A car can’t go through the park - a bike can.  It feels liberating owning a bike.  And hey, if youwant to stop and walk, you can park anywhere and just start walking.   You could also ride to the subway, park, then go from there.

7) Environmentally friendly. It’s man-powered.  Save the planet a little bit of exhaust.  Hey, it might just be enough to save us all.

Expand your concept of “my neighborhood”.  Before I started biking often, down the street was a 15 minute walk, and thus quite a hassle.  Going to a restaurant 15 minutes down the street, and then walking 15 minutes back was something that I did on a rare occasion, even though the choices of food down there are good.  Why would I when there is a lot of decent food just downstairs?  With a bike, what I consider close-by and easy to get to now has expanded even beyond down the street.  It’s expanded a few miles out, as even what before would be a taxi ride now is an easy bike ride.  Suddenly there is a movie theater in my neighborhood

9) It’s Fun. Biking is really enjoyable, especially going downhill.  You can bike through the park, with your friends, or even cross country.  Biking is not just a means of transportation.

10) Become a part of your surroundings rather than just watching through a window.  Driving a car with the air-conditioning on, windows rolled up, and music blazing makes the outside world seem surreal.  You become wrapped up in your own little world, just passing through.  There is no interaction besides the occasional honk.  On a bike the surroundings are very real, and you can even interact with it.  Just the other day at a stop light I turned and talked to an old man on the bike next to me.  Try being a part of the world for a week and notice the different in your stress levels and happiness.

11) Stop the sedentary lifestyle. While a bike does have a chair, biking is not a sedentary activity.  Going from bed to dining room chair to couch to car seat to work chair and back is a recipe for disaster.  Throw in a little movement in your day.  If you work too far away to bike, then bike to the store for small purchases, or bike to restaurants, or to the cinema.  The more you move the more willing you will be to move and the further away from a sedentary dull life you will get.

This post is not about getting rid of cars, buses, or subways.  I still have to use a gas or electric powered vehicle to get across the city sometimes, as they are faster than a bike.  Rather, I’m advocating for people to not soley rely on these forms of transportation.  By riding a bike your life will change immensely, as you can see from the 11 points that I wrote above, and there are many more.

My Bike

For those of you out there studying abroad in China, especially in Beijing, then getting a bike is a no-brainer.  Chinese cities are extremely bike-friendly: I can travel from one side of the city to the other by bike in about the same time I could by car.

For those who already ride:  What are some other advantages that you see for riding a bike?  How about disadvantages?