Think I have a pretty good idea for a book: "Bike Culture: Great Minds and the Bicycles, Boneshakers, and Penny Farthings That Propelled Them." The image above, apparently from the California Institute of Technology, is Albert Einstein riding a bike in Santa Barbara. I have also seen Ernest Hemingway on a war bike in Italy c. 1917. I'd like to develop the stories beyond the images.
Einstein is said to have meditated on his Theory of Relativity while cycling. "Life is like riding a bicycle," he wrote to his son Eduard. "To keep your balance you must keep moving" (Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Simon & Schuster, 2007).
Hemingway developed a passion for bicycle racing while in France. The sport also found its way into his metaphors: "Writing a novel is like a six-day bicycle race . . ." he told Mary Harrington of the New York Post in 1946. "Only it goes on two years."
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