#26 - I also dabble in cycling...

Today was another run/swim to North Sydney pool. 14 laps. Feeling good after this bout of exercise - I went to yoga again last night which stretched me out a bit. Prior to that I was as stiff as I've been - the yoga instructor was horrified at my inability to do the most basic of movements. Just planning a bike ride for the weekend and came across this quote which I think is good:

"The model... male spends more than 1500 hours per year on his car; driving or sitting in it, parking or searching for it; earning enough to pay for the vehicle, the tolls, the tyres, the insurance or the highway taxes. These four hours per day for gathering his resources for it do not include his transport-related dally-ing in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages, his sitting time before the TV to be sold a new model, or the time needed to earn or enjoy the travelling on his vacation. In terms of lifetime invested, the average (driver) attains four miles per hour. In countries without any transport industry, people walk at this rate wherever they want to go.

Man, unaided by any tool, is quite efficient when he moves. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometre in 10 minutes by expending 0.75 calories, which makes him thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals, such as rats or oxen. He is still less efficient than horses or sturgeon

A century ago, however, the bicycle appeared. It lifted man's self-powered mobility into a new order, beyond which there can be no further progress. On flat ground he can travel faster than on foot and do so using only one-fifth of the calories he would have expended walking. He can now carry one gram of his weight over one kilometre expending only 0.15 calories. Equipped with a bicycle, man does better not only than any machine but also than any animal." - Ivan Illich

This pic popped up in my inbox today... One of those pictures that says a thousand words that I was having trouble expressing myself [London Underground Service Information]