My four year old son Third eyed me curiously as I prepared my bike for a night ride. It was a miserable and drizzly evening and he was no doubt wondering why I would venture out in such conditions. As I attached bike lights and donned a rain suit he finally asked, "Daddy, why do you bike?". It was a loaded question, certainly not something I expected from someone so wee. I pondered a while, and finally said, "Because I love doing it, Third", and kissed him on the forehead as I wheeled out the door.

And indeed I do love riding. As I begin to bike through the night I ponder why. I have the usual selfish reasons for doing so. Everybody knows that exercising at an elevated heart rate for at least 15 minutes a day is physiologically beneficial. Riding a bike on a daily basis allows me to achieve this. My calorie-burning output allows me, within reason, to eat as much as I want without getting overweight. It is for this reason that I know almost all the pastry shops along my favorite bike routes. And every cyclist knows that riding is fun. I take delight in propelling myself down a crowded street, stitching a path through lesser vehicles (cars) stuck in traffic.

But the best selfish reason I have is the zen-like tranquility that descends upon me when doing anything bike-related. Cycling, especially when I am not in a hurry, has this effect on me. As I churn the cranks at a comfortable pace I propel myself through a world that has magically slowed down. I see the environment clearly. Trees, flowers, streets, people are impressed upon me as I constantly scan the path that I ride on. I am free to meander along, becoming a pedestrian when I dismount and a road u when I'm aboard. As I see the beauty around me, I likewise see the ugliness of the environment. Seeing garbage piled up on street corners, depressed living areas and the downtrodden sectors of society only heightens my social conscience. A curious mingle, peace of mind and social awareness coexist.

The peace within me expands especially on rides such as this particular night's. With just enough rain and mist to make one slightly miserable, my bike buddies and I wandered through a deserted Central Park like ghosts on wheels. We were a bunch of fireflies flickering away through the gloom of the park, oblivious to the eerie city lights that were glowing like stars through a vaselined window. We chased each other's blinkers as we went past the Metropolitan Museum, Cleopatra's Needle and other interesting sites. We rested with the sleeping ducks by the manmade lake. We dodged perverts in trenchcoats and sneaked behind couples walking dogs. Any true-blooded cyclist lives for journeys such as this.

Cycling certainly has good neighborly effects. Everyone knows that using a bike is good for the environment. I bike knowing that I am in no way contributing pollution to the environment.

The lesser vehicles (cars) spew out thousands of tons of noxious gases each year. In burning up fossil fuels, a finite source, they utilize this energy in a most inefficient way; driving a hefty weight 90 percent of which is its own. So what a car in effect hauls around is practically its own weight, with the driver and passenger comprising an insignificant percentage. More so with the advent of those heavy SUV's that seem all the rage today.

The bicycle on the other hand usually propels a weight 7 or 8 times more than its own. A 25 pound bicycle can easily transport a 175 pound person; special bicycles such as pedicabs and those haulers in Divisoria can carry much, much more. Imagine more people on bikes. Car use would be lessened, traffic would be nil, air pollution would abate, people would come in closer contact with each other, street life would be rejuvenated, and there would be an overall calming effect on roads and neighborhoods. Utopia!

I would like to think that people get light-hearted whenever they see bikes. People stop and admire a pack of bicycles at night, gazing at their twinkling lights that remind them of Christmas. I get amused whenever I see a parent riding a bike with a child perched on the top tube (Kapit nang mabuti anak!). There's this guy in Cartimar who has a most fluid bike; he attached to it all sorts of shiny faucets and other plumbing fixtures. What he wanted to convey I do not really know; perhaps a protest against Manila's water delivery system? Or maybe he was just a plumber with some excess merchandise. But the grandest, most eye-catching bike spectacle in Manila is the yearly Tour of the Fireflies, where people just gawk in amazement at the number of children, women and men biking through the streets. Traffic literally halts to a standstill as a melange of wheelpeople roll by, jamming the intersections. Onlookers would see that a number of the cyclists are wearing costumes, from a clannish caveman to katipuneros and various sorts of insects, to name a few. There's a chance that spectators think cyclists are looney, but they get the picture that bikes are decidedly fun.

What is good for the neighborhoods is certainly good for the country at whole. Besides a healthier, less stressed populace, massive bike use would certainly do wonders for our national treasury. If enough of us would take to bikes instead of our cars, then we could cut our dependence on foreign oil, which comprises a significant amount of our import purchases. These savings could then be channeled to more humanitarian projects, such as education and public health. A pipe dream?

But we're not going to stop there. If all countries had effective bicycle programs, the collective need for petroleum would be decreased. This would, hopefully, render oil less important, so much so that it is not worth that much fighting for in the Middle East. The downside is that as demand for bike parts mount up, the new flashpoints would be the Far East, where nations would clash with each other over control of Shimano bike parts and aluminum bike frames! Wars would be waged using bicycle driven tanks and ....

And these are the musings of a cold, wet rider. A steady freezing downpour ends the ride at midnight and I head home, hydroplaning over the glistening streets of New York. I was as wet as a drenched puppy with the Cheshire Cat's smile. I toweled my bike and myself dry and kissed the forehead of my sleeping son, and as I always do, kept my face an inch away from his while he slept. He stirred, bothered not by my closeness, but by the carbon dioxide that I was giving out while I exhale. One wonders, if he reacts to this, the air that coursed through the lungs of his parent, what more devastating effects do pollutants have on him? This ritual of mine reminds me of the need to do what we can to keep our world's environment as clean as possible. It is, after all not ours to mess up as we only borrowed it from our children.

Peace in ourselves, peace in the streets, peace in the neighborhoods, peace in the cities, in the nations. Peace throughout the world. Peace for our children's generation. Do we need any more reasons to bike than those?

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Pio is currently based in New York, U.S.A. He was last year's Tour of the Fireflies ride leader and head marshal. He wrote this essay as a show of support for this year's Tour of the Fireflies: Peace and Pedals on April 27 which will tour 50 kilometers of Metro Manila. You may write to the author at bykerouac@yahoo.com.