What is a Cycling Lifestyle?

Do you ride occasionally or is riding bikes an integral part of your life?

The cycling lifestyle as opposed to recreation cycling are two very different mindsets. As reported over the past two years, recreation cycling has hit an all time high during the pandemic, but I'm not sure it has increased cycling lifestyle participants. CLR Effect's recent blog post Hobby of a Lifetime touched on how others might perceive a mountain biker with scratched and bloody legs, which got me thinking about my cycling lifestyle traits and what sets many of us apart from a recreation cyclist.

Below are personal qualities that friends and family members fail to understand about me:

• Preferring to ride instead of driving
• Riding for errands because it's one more opportunity to ride and provides motivation
• Choose vacation destination that are great for cycling
• Often have more than one bike, primarily because if one requires maintenance than a bike is still available for riding
• Are always thinking about improvements to their bikes
• Frequently check weather forecasts
• Riding more during the pandemic because it's therapy
• When injured, one still tries to ride if at all possible
• If you can't ride for more than two days, it's torture
• Will ride in the darkness if that's the only available time to ride
• Continually challenge myself with cycling: riding through the winter, have coffee outside, try different mountain bike trails

Do you recognize any of these cycling lifestyle characteristics? Do you have any more items to add to the list?

As a side note, I'm seeing our 19 year old son developing many of the above qualities since the start of the pandemic, so perhaps there will be one more person adopting the cycling lifestyle. I'm biased of course, but it seems like the perfect way to cope with loneliness brought on by the current health crisis.