Do You Like Bicycles?
16. Do you like bicycles, even if you don’t ride them any more?
-from Edward Hallowell’s ADD Self-Assessment quiz, in Delivered From Distraction
I love bicycles. Ever since pretending to be Evel Knievel jumping Snake River Canyon, (riding a bike wholly unsuited for the job, with an ending that was, while less spectacular, just as final for the bike), I’ve had a passion for them. I’ve commuted all over Toronto by bicycle since I was a teenager, I’ve raced road and mountain bikes, I’ve done some bike camping. Weather permitting, I travel everywhere by bike, and now, I take my kids with me. In my garage, ten bicycles vie for maintenance and attention (4 are my wife’s - I married well - and two are my sons’, but still). That doesn’t include the well-used Burley trailer, the tandem Trail-A-Bike, two very small kids’ bikes, a couple of frames, and a unicycle I got for my 40th birthday. Lots of wheels and boxes of parts. Then there’s the tools. It’s all a bit much.
I realized that bikes and cycling were part of my ‘otherness’ when I first saw Breaking Away, the 1979 coming-of-age movie about a teenager who doesn’t fit into midwestern America. Dave longs to escape from the confines of his drab Indiana life. He wants to be an Italian bike racer. Breaking Away struck a chord with me not because it’s a great movie (it won an Oscar, and was nominated for several), but because I immediately understood the film’s use of the bike as a symbol of freedom, challenge, and escape. And though my life was hardly at all like that of the main character, I shared his experience of being unusual, not exactly a perfect fit with my surroundings. Like Dave, getting strong and fast on a bike was a way for me to embrace myself as a misfit (as far as North American sports of the 80s went). Cycling informed my identity. And on the road, with traffic to contend with and the world whizzing past my ears, my mind was calm and my thinking was clear. I remember the moment clearly: as I watched the scene where Dave drafts a truck at 50 m.p.h. to the strains of Mendolsohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony, a passion was born.
My wife, fortunately, understands my love of bikes, and even shares it a bit — most of the first two years we were dating were spent mountain-bike racing. And I’ve been able to spend a lot of personal and professional time around others who love bikes. Many of them share a quirky kind of differentness (if ‘differentness’ can be shared) that I really enjoy. I will talk bikes with just about anyone.
But when I read Question 16 of Ned Hallowell’s ADD-Self Assessment Quiz in Delivered From Distraction, I was moved to consider: what is it about bikes and ADHD? I invite your thoughts.
My kind of ADHD includes bicycles.
Comments
2 Comments on Do You Like Bicycles?
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Mike on
Wed, 15th Apr 2009 1:30 pm
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ihavenolimbs on
Sun, 14th Feb 2010 7:28 pm
I just read number 16 on that quiz last night and i couldn’t believe it. i also have adhd and love bicycles and now i am searching with google to find a link between the two. i have no idea what the answer could be, but i makes me calm when i ride and there is always the possibility for an adventure. last summer i bought a bike on a whim while backpacking through europe. i’m surprised more people don’t try it, i was one of the best experiences of my life. the bicycling moment i’ll always remember is when i was in farm country Belgium. I was lost, the houses were few and far between, it was midnight and there was no street lights. I looked up in the sky and thought, “how the fuck does this always happen to me?”
OMG, serious? That is an actual question? (”16. Do you like bicycles, even if you don’t ride them any more?”)
And I freakin’ love bikes, obsessed probably. Just ordered some HED Stinger 4 wheels.
And I’m in the process of getting diagnosed for ADHD.
I just ordered his book too. Maybe he knows what he is on about. 
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