Old Folks on Bicycles

Fake H.G. Wells had it right.

One of the pleasures of watching the world go by from our front porch is seeing old people ride bicycles the wrong direction down our one-way street.

I'm a bicyclist myself and, if you think a dues-paying member of the AARP qualifies, old. But I can’t bring myself to that level of devil-may-care lawlessness. When I worked there, The University of Texas in Austin had one-way lanes on campus but, being a liberal place, had signs exempting bicyclists from the law. Even then, I felt guilty.

The old folks on bikes in Galveston don’t have that problem.

In our neighborhood, old bicyclists are far more numerous than kids who ride and, despite the nearness of The University of Texas Medical Branch, more numerous than young adults. I can’t explain why more medical school students don’t bike to school, but the nearness of Arlan’s grocery store explains the old riders. 

Even apart from their charmingly blithe indifference to traffic laws, old folks on bikes are a joy to watch.

Apparently, author and bicycling enthusiast H. G. Wells didn’t actually say what might be the most-attributed quote about bicyclists: “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” But he should have.

Bicycles are amazing tools. They allow us, under our own power, to move four times as quickly as we can on foot and use less energy. In the early days of cycling, the leap in locomotive power seemed so remarkable that many connected bicycles with the dream of flight. 

That magnificent liberation from the usual, millenia-long constraints on human-powered propulsion that every child recognizes for a brief while and soon forgets is magnified for old folks. For many of them, walking is slow and, judging by their expressions, laborious. Compared to the walkers, old folks on bikes move at a good clip and appear to be enjoying themselves.

I’ve written about Galveston’s attractiveness for walkers. You can walk the length of the city in 90 minutes. You can bicycle its length in a fourth that time, with less effort. And given the city’s long, lightly traveled, east-west avenues south of Broadway, it’s a safe ride. 

Most of the old-timers’ bikes are cruisers or urban bikes built for comfort, not speed. A few ride BMX bikes, which makes no sense to me. They’re the slowest bikes around and force adults to pedal with bent knees throughout the pedals’ revolution, a waste of the bicycle’s efficiency. Unless they’re doing stunts, BMX bikers are missing the point of riding a bike. 

One perversity: The only Galvestonians with electric bikes appear to be seemingly healthy young adults. I don’t get electric bikes. The gain in speed is marginal. If you don’t like to pedal, why not get a Vespa and at least look cool?

There’s one exception to the cruiser / urban / BMX crowd. A white-haired guy in his mid- to late 70s, always shirtless, rides a Schwinn Varsity that’s at least 50 years old. He goes faster than the others, and he’s usually smiling.

Despite the bicycle’s close association with the women’s movement, all of the old folks on bikes in our neighborhood are men. The only woman I’ve consistently seen in our neighborhood seems to be in her 30s. She rides very slowly and steers with one hand because the other is holding a cigarette.

Do the old men have cars? Are any of them forced to ride a bike because they can’t afford a car, or because they’re not permitted to drive? What is the average SES of these two dozen regular riders? Not a clue. 

I would like to post some pictures from my porch, but that would be creeper territory. Instead, here’s one I pulled from the web. 

Uplifting, right?

Fake Wells was right: There really is something that feeds the soul about seeing adults pedaling, rolling almost effortlessly, faster than anyone could walk, purely under their own power. 

My wife looks at pictures of dogs when she’s blue. For me, it’s old folks on bikes.