Like a challenging golf course that makes you pull all 14 clubs at least once from your bag during a round, a challenging bike ride makes you use all of the gears at least once. If it doesn’t, you need to find longer, higher hills to climb. Challenge yourself.
A little trivia from Wikipedia –
Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000), nicknamed Sparky, was an American cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Peanuts which featured the iconic characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown, among others.
At its height, Peanuts was published daily in 2,600 papers in 75 countries, in 21 languages. Over the nearly 50 years that Peanuts was published, Schulz drew nearly 18,000 strips. The strips themselves, plus merchandise and product endorsements, produced revenues of more than $1 billion per year, with Schulz earning an estimated $30 million to $40 million annually. During the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday; reruns of the strip ran during his vacation, the only time reruns occurred while Schulz was alive.
When Charles Schulz spoke, people listened. His body of work illustrates the power of simple storytelling.
Credit to Dasha Minaeva of http://www.roverista.com for the image above. Her “City Cycling” series of photographs tell another story about cycling.
PedalWORKS 
Awesome post! Too bad Charles didn’t make it to the 20 & 30 speeds!
I can remember when 5 speeds were a lot. Where will it lead? 40? 50? It is ironic that single speed fixes are the rage.
A couple of thoughts, first, if you’re making $30million a year and you don’t take a holiday you need to find a bit of balance (or even hire a few people to look after the store while you take off for a while and go fishing or something). Second, I don’t get the whole fixie thing. Sydney is quite hilly and it just doesn’t make sense not to have gears, I mean it’s not as if gears are that complicated to look after …
You are right on both counts. The fixie thing I really do not understand, especially those without breaks. Vancouver is also a hilly place. I can’t imagine riding around the city without gears or brakes.