This bike is old, plain and slow. So why do I love it so much? | Why humans get so attached to bikes

hey everybody what's up so have you ever loved an object like a thing so much that it goes beyond rational thought well i'm riding one of those things right now hey everyone i'm tom and this is shifter a channel about urban cycling and bike commuting welcome to all you new subscribers out there and if you like this video please consider subscribing yourself so the single most common question i'm asked on this channel and this is like a legit thing i'm actually asked this question it's not like one of those times a youtuber says that just because they want to make a video but i actually get asked this question a lot is hey what's that bike you're riding and i've done a couple of videos about the bike i ride in the winter time because riding through snow and ice is can be tough and it's a difficult question in the winter but this is the bike i ride almost every day in the summertime and i've never really done a video on this bike and there's a simple reason i've never done a video on this bike and that's because i've been kind of embarrassed about it because it's so simple there's not a lot to talk about it's not that exciting okay here's the specs on it the brand is se it's an se triple it's about 10 years old it's got flakes of rust all over it it's got a three speed internal coaster hub at the back it's got uh coaster brakes so you pedal backwards to brake um and that's about it it's got some dents and scratches from uh when i've crashed a few times but that's it that's about all there is to say about it well there is one other thing to say about it and that's in the 10 years i've had this bike i've never had a tune-up and that makes me a super bad bike owner i know but i'm actually going to get it tuned up for the first time ever and in doing that it kind of got me thinking about why do i love this bike so much and because it's me and i tend to overanalyze these things before i take this bike for a tune-up i gave my old friend carly a call my name's carly coleman former traffic reporter researcher i'm doing my phd research i've known carly for about 10 years and she recently completed a master's thesis on how people form and maintain attachment to their bicycles carly and i had a great conversation and i think i could listen to her talk about this subject all day unfortunately i'll probably have to cut most of what she said for brevity's sake but she did break down these emotional connections into five things and i want to talk about these five things right now number one is childhood carly found that the bike is it's one of the few things that we have from our childhood that we still use in the same way and because of that we have really strong emotional ties we have really strong memories and i'd say even a sense of nostalgia about the bike it makes sense right so there's memory there's a motion there's our body it's all slammed together to create this really strong connection number two is that the bike is a transmitter of information whether you like it or not when you're riding a bike people who see you get information about you from that and you transmission transmit information about yourself to the world so people look at you and they think there's tom tom must be whatever people believe about bikes people might believe that you're quite radical lefty a tree hugger an environmentalist for all the reasons that you're riding your bike right the bicycle is this object that that creates and maintains aspects of your identity i see this because in my office for example i'm known as the guy who rides his bike to work but other people who ride a bike in a different kind of way have the same sort of thing there are road cyclists who identify as roadies and there are mountain bikers who are seen as part of a tribe if you're riding a tandem with your beloved you're clearly projecting a different image than if you're bombing downhill with a full face helmet on bikes can really become a part of our identity in an important part of how other people view us and how we and how we project ourselves in the world number three is bikes give you a real connection to place when you ride your bike through an environment you more vividly experience that environment especially more so than in a car where you're really cut off and isolated from the world around you as you ride this object that you have created this deep love for or attraction to you uh reinforce all your community relations all your sense of self all of that stuff in your community so you develop really strong bonds to wherever you are riding through a place on your bike engages almost all of your senses you know you hear it you can smell it you see it all of us all of those things give you real connection to place which ties into the way we feel about the bike you get on your bike it's physically part of you now you become this bike person not necessarily tom and his bike independent of each other you know you can feel the road feel the wind if you hit a pothole you know it these are these are moments that are actually tangible that you don't get when you're sitting in a car number four is age the participants in carly's study also found that bikes were seen by society at large sometimes as child's toys and the fact that they rode them into adulthood was some kind of contravention of societal norms which helped build a connection to the bicycle bikes helped you as a child they helped you figure out autonomy competence and relatedness maybe you're out with your friends maybe you're out with by yourself you're navigating the world on your own terms physically learning about the world you're learning this street will get you home faster than that street or this street has a really big hill and it's a whiz to go down but man alive coming back up is a bit of a job and the fifth one is that the bike was seen as a sign of social change the participants that carly interviewed in her study saw that the bike is really helping fuel a change in the way cities develop a change in transportation a change in climate uh climate action i should say even the image of the bike itself was changing from the idea of a children's toy into an adult mode of transportation and with these changing societal norms their sense of identity and what it meant to ride a bike was also changing as well i think there's a lot to this too it does kind of play into the stereotype of the urban cyclist as you know the self-righteous lefty i don't think there's a lot of like truth to this but there is a stereotype of you know that uh cyclists clip-clopping into a public meeting to voice their outrage about bike lanes but i do think that the way that this fuels identity and the way people look at bicycles is absolutely changing it does it does seem to have become a bit of a vehicle for that change so those are the five reasons that carly found that people love their bikes so much and it makes a lot of sense to me and i hope i haven't butchered her five reasons you should definitely go read her study yourself carly also challenged me to think about why i love this bike so much and as i had to get it tuned up i have been thinking about that too and i think part of why i love it is the my negligent care of it in the first place have you ever owned a dog and maybe after a while you get a little bit slack in your care for that dog and maybe you're not giving as much time as you should but every day when you come home the dog is happy to see you that's this bike to me it's just always been there for me i can always count on it other bikes i've owned are way more needy they need tune-ups the derailleurs go out of whack they just cut demand constant attention this bike is not like that i can always count on it this bike definitely treats me better than i treat it so i just want to say thanks to carly for helping me understand why i have this irrational love for this bike and maybe after all that it's not so irrational at all it makes a ton of sense and now that i've articulated my emotional connection to this piece of steel and rubber i'm going to get it tuned up and i vow to treat it much better in the future thanks for watching hope you got something out of that i sure did see you next time

Channel: Shifter

Views: 54,236

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Id: YheqxnsbZk4

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 06 2021