0292 – Crazy Bicycle Face

She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life.

I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.

That which caused the many failures I had in learning the bicycle has caused me failures in life; namely, a certain fearful looking for of judgement; a too vivid realization of the uncertainty of everything about me; an underlying doubt –– at once, however, matched and overcome by the determination not to give in to it.

I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all earn to ride, or fall into the sluice-ways of oblivion and despair. That which made me succeed with the bicycle was precisely what had gained me a measure of success in life — it was the hardihood of spirit that led me to begin, the persistence of will that held me to my task, and the patience that was willing to begin again when the last stroke had failed. And so I found high moral uses in the bicycle and can commend it as a teacher without pulpit or creed.

– Frances E. Willard