"Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul..."
Yes, it can be dangerous, like so many things in life, but for me the fun simply out weighs the risks. Nowadays I ride more conservatively than I used to, but it doesn't diminish the enjoyment that being out on a bike brings, and if the majority of the public don't get it then it's their loss.
There's a letter in the latest Bike mag in which the writer bemoans the lack of youngsters on bikes and I have to agree. When I turned 16 (summer of 1978) very one of my mates at school had a moped. Sure, not many of them will have persisted in riding since, they'll have fallen into the "get a car, get married and have a family" rut but many of them will have yearned to get back out on a bike and probably did so in the boom of born-agains from the 90s onwards. Sadly, today's youngsters won't have had that seed planted in their youth and won't "return" to biking in their middle age. I do feel sorry for kids nowadays, to ride a bike they have to be so dedicated to negotiate the minefield of tests and licence levels that have been thrown into their path... it's a long way from the carefree days of my youth - get a provisional licence and a moped at 16, ride for a year, renew the provisional at 17 and get a 250 with L-plates, pass an easy test and that's it; a lifetime of riding whatever I wanted to was opened up to me. Nowadays it's been made so difficult in order for some obnoxious oily politician (whatever party, they're all the same) to congratulate themselves on reducing the bike-related casualty figures, not by making the roads safer nor by educating the car-driving morons about us, but by the simple expedient of making it so difficult to get licence that few bother any more.....
