While admiring those cyclists whose intent for their labors is to raise money for good causes, like clean drinking water or cancer cures, I confess that I am driven by no such nobility.

Instead, I am more like the traveler about to cross from one land to the next, who feeling some change in his pocket, decides he is going to spend it here and now rather than take it to a land of different coin.

And I choose cycling because oddly, I feel most at home on a bicycle. The characteristics of cycling; the fresh air and motion, the simplifying of life’s focus, the physical exertion, the economy of the ecology, the exploration and risk;  all these compel me to forgo the comforts of householding.