Cycling: The Two-wheeled revolution;

              Cycling
In Portland, Gerald Isaac commutes to the H&S off ice, to cl ients and to law school on a motorcycle.
In Honolulu, Melinda Askew bought a ten-speed bicycle so she wouldn't be left behind when her fiance went on weekend bike trips. Soon she was also riding it
daily to work at H&S.
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InWilloughby, Ohio, outside Cleveland, senior accountant Don Seaburn's trail-biking hobby has led him to become spokesman for a group of businessmen seeking city land where they can ride their "dirt" bikes, as they call them.
These and other H&S people are part of a phenomenon of the Seventies—some among millions of executives, housewives, secretaries and other adults who are riding out on two wheels for fun, exercise, convenience and economy.
Observers of the two-wheel revolution have talked mainly about the bicycle boom, simply because suddenly there are so many of them; but H&S Reports has discovered the parallel development that motorcycles are becoming acceptable. Though some still decry the hazards and others consider them unprofessional, motorcycles are no
longer merely the outrageous noisemakers of "The Wild Ones" or the stretched out eccentricities of "Easy Rider." For the experienced, they are practical, economical, fuel-saving vehicles (Gerald Isaac gets fifty miles a gallon with his Honda CB500). For the accomplished, they are sporting wheels to take on rough trails (Don Seaburn rides his dirt bike to unwind after a hard day's work).
As you might expect, neither bicycles nor motorcycles are America's favorite conveyance, though for the past two years consumers have bought more new bikes than new cars for the first time since World War I, By this year, 65 million bicycles were in use, compared with 93 million cars registered in the U.S.
The explanation for the bicycle's popularity lies in a combination of factors: our national preoccupation with physical fitness, our environmental concerns, our efforts to cope with the fuel shortage and, for some, a desire to be free from motorized living and in touch with elemental things. Even the commonplace Saturday trip from home to hardware store can become a small adventure for a cyclist, who has an unhurried closeup view of colorful autumn leaves and brilliant chrysanthemums.
The bicycle was not always looked upon so benignly, however. In the late nineteenth century, cycling had grown from a novelty for daredevils to a
Sunday sport for young people and courting couples, some of whom rented bikes at "wheeleries" to ride in parks. But many Americans still considered the bike an infernal machine. In an effort to change the public mind, one manufacturer put on a big publicity campaign with the message that bicycling induced health and happiness. He offered prizes to doctors who published articles endorsing that view.
Medical approbation, along with other favorable publicity and some aggressive merchandising, swayed the public, so that by 1896 demand for bicycles outstripped production. Soon after that, decline set in upon the bike industry because the automobile caught America's fancy in the twentieth century.
Then, in an example of the way history, too, goes in cycles, it was a doctor who helped stimulate the new bike boom. Paul Dudley White, the heart specialist who attended President Eisenhower, began evangelizing in the 1950s about the health-giving virtues of bike riding and followed his own prescription into his eighties.
So bicycles went from being balloon-tire, banana-seat toys for ten-year-olds to being trim, sophisticated, multi-geared wheels for adults. Some of them once again rent bikes and ride in the park. Christine Seibold, H&S office secretary in Garden City, likes cycling in Flushing Meadow Park, past the memories of the '64-65 New York World's Fair.
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