
Bicycling unites physical harmony coupled with emotional bliss to create a sense of spiritual perfection that combines one’s body, mind and spirit into a single moving entity. Bicycling allows a person to mesh with the sun, sky and road as if nothing else mattered in the world. In fact, all your worries, cares and troubles vanish in the rear view mirror while you bicycle along the byways of the world: you pedal as one with the universe.

—Frosty Wooldridge

…. the bicycle boom is not a fad. It comes at (or is symptomatic of) a time when traffic jams are intolerable to commuters, heart disease kills too many sedentary executives, the population grows ever more pollution-aware and ecology-minded, and millions of people are looking to the simple pleasures of life.

—Steve Sherman, Bike Hiking, 1974

Imagine walking out your front door, getting on a bicycle, a horse or simply donning your backpack and within minutes of your home, setting off along a continuous network of recreation corridors that could lead across the country.

—President Reagan’s Commission on American Outdoors, Americans and the Outdoors, 1987

Happiness, freedom, exhilaration, self-confidence, assertion, friendships, creative thinking, and physical fitness are gifts my bicycle has wrapped up and tied with a bow for me to unwrap every day!

—Beth Geohagan

Rivers, lakes, and other waterways are the lifeblood of our communities, connecting us to our environment, our culture, our economy, and our way of life. The new National Water Trails System will help fulfill President Obama’s vision for healthy and accessible rivers as we work to restore and conserve our nation’s treasured waterways.

—Kenneth Lee Salazar, Secretary of the Interior

“When modern stables are transformed into sheds or shops with racks for the steel steed – which is the coming horse and a very economical one, because it eats no oats and does not kick or cut up the road – it is absolutely necessary to provide for this new order of things. This is a fad which has come to stay, and the cyclers rightfully demand good roads or paths for their accommodation. We must therefore plan additional facilities and build practicable roads for the exclusive use of the wheel, the same as we have provided bridle paths for questrians in our parks…We must reconstruct our park roads and set aside a portion of the roadway for the exclusive use of bicycles, or make additional paths for them…Good streets
and roads will attract many people to a city or town which has them…If the townships of this island would construct excellent macadamised roads, they would double their population in a short time. The cool summer breezes and fine, level country roads would make them a perfect paradise for cyclers…Brooklyn is now seriously considering a plan for building a
system of good roads and cycling paths…which will give from twenty to thirty miles of excellent paths to the lovers of the wheel, and will prove a great attraction.”

—Charles Schieren, Mayor of Brooklyn