Hello again, everyone! Now that Spring has officially begun (as of Thursday) it’s seems like it should be time to put away the skis and snowshoes, the wool hats and mittens, and get ourselves outside to actually enjoy it.

And what better way is there to enjoy a nice spring day than on your BICYCLE? So welcome to this week’s Theme of the Week: BICYCLES! #bobbledybicycles

As a kid, I was actually never allowed to have a bicycle. It was in the days before helmets were readily available, and my dad thought they were too dangerous. So I learned to ride on my best friend Gunther’s bike, on a cul-de-sac on a hill with train tracks and weeds at the bottom to stop me. It was my favorite thing to do, and I’m afraid I often visited Gunther just to ride his bike. Sorry, Gun!

So, bicycles have been around for almost 200 years. The first bicycle was invented in Germany and called a Draisienne after its inventor, Baron von Drais, who invented it so he could walk around the royal gardens faster. If any of you have a balance bike, it basically worked the same way – two wheels with a seat between and no pedals, so you can coast along and run with your legs to get it moving. (If any of you don’t have a balance bike and don’t know how to ride a bike yet, I would say RUN OUT AND GET ONE NOW! They are the best, and came in at #2 on my Holiday Gift Guide list)

As you can see, it was also called a “Dandy Horse,” which I think was kind of an insult. Dandies were sort of the old-time version of hipsters. So a Dandy Horse was the kind of horse that a cool-guy-hipster (a dandy) would ride – which was not a horse at all, but a new-fangled invention with wheels. (Based on this definition, I don’t know what a dandeLION would be, though).

Pretty soon, someone figured out that bikes could go a lot faster if they had pedals on them, and the “velocipede” was born. “Velocipede” means “fast foot” (just like “velociraptor” means “fast raptor”). Once they figured the pedal part out, they came up with all different kinds of ideas for bike designs:

Back in the old days, there were a lot of bikes that had a huge front wheel on them. That’s because they used to put the pedals right on the center of the wheel, which meant the wheel had to be about twice as tall as the length of your leg. Once they figured out how to attach that loop of chain to the wheel and have the pedals attached to the chain, then the pedals could go anywhere, and the wheels didn’t need to be quite so big anymore.

Old time bikes were also called “Boneshakers” because the tires were hard and there were no springs on them, so when you rode on those old cobblestone streets, you would get all rattled around.

These days, bikes are quite sophisticated and can do much more than move from one place to another. Check out this video, which is aptly named “The Craziest Downhill Bike Course Ever”:

That ride would NOT have been possible on an old boneshaker!

And here’s another video I like that shows what it looks and feels like to ride a really REALLY GIGANTICALLY tall bike (FYI parents, there’s a tiny barely intelligible s-word at 3:11 when the guy almost gets clotheslined by a kite string):

This looked very scary to me, trying to balance on that very tall bike. But I watched another video about Tall Bike Bobby who explained that actually taller bikes are easier to balance. Surprise! Yes, you can listen to the whole fascinating TEDx talk HERE if you’d like.

It turns out there’s actually a very good and practical reason to LOVE bikes. Aside from being super fun to ride, they’re the most energy efficient vehicle ever made. Apparently, when you look at how many calories (that’s a measurement of energy) it takes to make a bike go one mile, it’s only 35, compared to a car, which takes 1,860 calories. That adds up pretty quickly! Riding bikes is SO energy-efficient – way better than gas or oil or coal or batteries or solar or etc etc etc. I actually have two very dear friends, Andy and Steve, who are spreading the idea that because they are so efficient, bikes should be used to power all kinds of things, from chopping wood to running your computer – check out their Kickstarter campaign HERE (goal already met, so this isn’t even a money grab, it’s just COOL!)

SO – if you could design any kind of bike to do anything, what would it look like and what would you have it do? Post your answers in the comments here, or if you want to draw a picture, post it on the Tuesday Drawing post or on Instagram using #bobbledybicycles.

And if you can, get outside this weekend and ride your bike! And be glad it’s not a Dandy Horse or a Boneshaker or a super tall bike or a giant-wheeled bike! Thank goodness for progress and invention! Hooray!

(Also, ps don’t forget you have till the end of today (Saturday, 3/22/14) to enter our first International Interwebs Welly Wanging competition! Winner gets a trophy, and first two runners-up get an archival print of ANY ILLUSTRATION OF MINE you want! I even souped up the trophy a little bit last night, with some Bobbledy donkeys!)

Details on the competition are HERE.