World Bicycle Day

  "I sat in my supervisor’s office, red-faced and anxious, words tumbling out faster than I could control. ⁠ ⁠ "For half an hour, I vented everything I had been holding in for months: the stress, the doubt, the sense that I didn’t belong. I was in the third year of my Ph.D., and a creeping fear had taken root that I wasn’t cut out for academia. ⁠ ⁠ "I expected some kind of judgment or disappointment. Instead, my supervisor listened patiently, then calmly offered a line I’ll never forget: 'You are here to learn to ride a bicycle, not to invent a bicycle.' ⁠ ⁠ "That one sentence landed softly, but it cracked something open."⁠ ⁠ In a recent Working Life essay, Ehsan Hamzehpoor writes about how a Ph.D. is like riding a bike. Click the link in the bio to read more.⁠ ⁠

In the late 1870s bicycle designers were exploring new designs that would allow the rider to be closer to the ground, and that would therefore be safer.   John Starley changed the bicycle in 1885 with the Rover safety bicycle .  The bike looked similar to the bicycles of today.  Most safety bicycles moved on two wheels of about the same size. A low seat between the wheels made the bike safer and easier to ride.  The first safety bicycles had solid rubber tires. Later, air-filled rubber tubes were added to the design. They made for a much less bumpy ride!    The safety bicycle used a gear and chain system. A chain connected gears on the back wheel to another gear attached to the pedals. Riders pushed the pedals to turn the back wheel and move the bike . Different-sized gears made it easier to pedal uphill, downhill, or on flat roads.