Knowledge work is quite different to other kinds of work (not that I'm trying to privelige it mind!) Although the skills of any worker never stop improving, an artisan or even an artist can look at a particular piece of work and know that it is finished. It seems to be a feature of knowledge work, however, that anyone worth their salt is aware of the partial nature of their knowledge, and so any bit of thinking is never complete...
I guess I like bicycles because you get transport, entertainment and exercise in one. No cheating, trying to get benefits without responsibility through draining the earth of the fossil fuels it has taken millenia to accumulate.
When riding a bicycle, you enter into the environment, rather than isolate yourself from it. It is amazing the difference in mindset this produces. People in cars relate to the other cars, not the people in them. Frustration and anger are produced from people who are normally quite sane and reasonable.
Cars also produce the mentality that you have to get to your destination as quickly as possible-the journey becomes unimportant. Cyclists, even though they go more slowly and so might be expected to have to hurry more, always seem to have the time to stop and smell the flowers...
Not much! Of course I shouldn't over-romanticise cycling. There's plenty of macho body-fascism and techno-consumer fetishism going on in the cycling community, for which I have little time.
I believe that we need to work towards systems of social organisation which are joyous and sustainable. Politics involves us all. I guess that implies that I believe that many of the current structures are oppressive, or unsustainable. In concrete terms this is best illustrated by my committment to cycling as an alternative to smelly dangerous fossil fuel transport. It's heaps of fun, too!