Alonso - I don't ride a bike, mainly because my country cousins used derive unusual amounts of mirth by guiding me along the main street where I invariably fell off into the side ditches, which in those days (in country Austria) were filled with nattering geese and ducks and their ceaseless, smelly and semi-liquid detritus. I had a horror of getting dirty and they laughed at my vivid demonstrations of disgust - in the end I refused to get on a bike. I think the lesson lasted one full hour - and that was it.
Very sad about it, but won't learn now (maybe tricycle) as don't want to break stuff in my senior years - cars have superseded bikes, anyway.
Further on the bicycle though; it extended the range which simple folk - mostly in the country - could travel and we nowadays do not understand that the range of most people living in villages in Europe was most likely not more than 30km radius - if that - 1 day's walk for a fit person - and if one owned a horse and buggy a little further - so thoughts, habits etc. were pretty insular. In Australia the horse would have been a common mode of transportation from the very beginning - I should think - although money would have come into it at some stage, like in purchasing a buggy to go along with the horse, so one could travel further with a family.
Taurisk
