Freedom

 In America (and probably throughout most of the world), the car represents and symbolizes freedom.  

You’ve read On the Road and you know how Dean and Sal roar all over the country in their big bad V-8 powered automobiles.  To be “on the road means” to be free and that means being behind the wheel (or inside as passenger) of a car, presumably the bigger and faster the better.

But oddly enough, everything associated with automobiles that makes a person less free.

Owning a car means you’ve got a lot of “haftas.”  You hafta have a license and registration; you hafta have insurance; you hafta obey the speed limit and traffic lights; you hafta find a place to park; you hafta be sober; and on and on and on.  If that’s freedom, I’m gonna hafta pass.

With a bike, by contrast, you can do whatever you wanna.  You wanna run a red light?  No problem, just don’t get run over.  Wanna pull up right outside your destination?  Sure, just lock to a parking meter or whatever.  Wanna get drunk and ride?  Sure!  You’re free to do so, just don’t get killed.

The bicycle doesn’t just mean freedom; it is freedom.  It’s freedom from car payments, from sitting in traffic, from getting fat and lazy, from being told what to do by electric signs and signals and cops pulling up behind you with their light flashing.

The bicycle makes possible freedom from your parents, your teachers, your crummy (and even good) job; it allows you to be free to ride the wrong way down one way streets, to pedal over closed trails in shuttered parks; on a bike, you're freed from your many responsibilities as a parent, a spouse, even a friend.  

Above all, the bicycle gives you the full freedom to be yourself.

So you can keep the “freedom” the automobile gives you; if that’s freedom, I’ll keep my chains—that is, of course, my bicycle chains!