The Restorative Joy of Cycling

Feel like crap? Get on a bike

Clive Thompson
Forge
Published in
7 min readMar 5, 2022

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“København” by d26b73

Today I stumbled upon this gentleman’s post on Tik Tok — where he describes how cycling has made him happier.

It’s a lovely video, so you should check out the original …

… but for the record, this is what he says:

Hey, I just want to say that if you’re an adult, and you’re kind of like, “Hey, you know, I’m doing everything right in my life, but I just don’t — I don’t feel good, like something’s missing” …

I just want to propose that the thing that’s missing is riding a bike.

I got back into riding a bike like a year ago — and it is, like, the single greatest boon to my mental health, probably in my entire life.

There are not a lot of problems in my life that I can think my way out of. But I’ve yet to find one that I can’t bike my way out of.

So it’s just — yeah, maybe get a bike. Go for a spin.

I could not more strongly agree.

I love this guy’s video, because it describes something I’ve often felt but had never quite said out loud to myself:

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Clive Thompson
Forge
Writer for

I write 2X a week on tech, science, culture — and how those collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. @clive@saturation.social clive@clivethompson.net