Guess I've been biking for most of my life. In my early teen I was doing 15-20 mile rides on a single speed Schwinn. The independence and the thrill of getting to the quiet roads alone sucked me in. I'd ride past the farms and the woods and see the wildlife and experience the landscape. This was Missouri, north of St. Louis, and you'd ride the big hills until you came down that last hill and found yourself in the flat bottomland of the Missouri River. Then it was all farmland in the bottoms - now there is development there subject to flooding. Anybody who's ridden a bike through there knows where the floodplain starts and how the land should be treated. Well, at 16 I got a summer job in a bike shop. It was 1973 and there was a bike boom on. Sometimes we worked 60 hour/week and took home wheels to build in the evenings. I became the new bike expert, setting up and adjusting and test riding every new bike we sold. The shop owner was a racer who made it to the Olympic Trials in 1976. I hung out with racers and other bike freaks. Still did most of my riding alone. Then went away to college in Massachusetts. Explored the surrounding area by bike. Did bike repairs for all my friends. Made some good friends that way too. I've been doing science for 22 years now, but I still miss the bike shop and the reward of using that skill on a daily basis. My riding has ranged from weekend tours to commuting to fast recreational rides. So, guess it's not so much a question of why did I start riding, but why can't I stop.