Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own.
Louis J. Helle, Jr., Spring in Washington
Cycling isn't just a metaphor for flying - it is flying. Wheels, let's face it, are wings, especially on those downhills, freewheeling, soaring, gliding through space.
If you are a cyclist and you live in a community like I do where birds are as much resident as humans, and you watch these birds, particularly the seagulls, you will soon realise the parallels between freewheeling and soaring. In both cases it is momentum that propels the organism through space; the wind too is crucial as every cyclist and seagull knows. The capacity to breathe 'physics' (which invariably leads to metaphysics) on a bicycle, in one's understanding (under-sitting) of momentum, inertia, force and mass, is not to be underestimated. Indeed, I have often thought that instead of sitting in laboratories examining ticker tape and wave machines, students of physics would be a lot better off just cycling, and writing up a log of their findings. The joy of physics is in doing it, not in having it imposed upon you. You can see this joy in the freewheeling gulls and soaring cyclists, especially children on bicycles who simply enjoy the bicycle as an end in itself.
For people who dream of flying then, the logical thing to do would be to get on your bike, and learn of the prevailing winds. As every seagull and cyclist knows, having a tailwind is like having a second engine, a second engine that invigorates and ventilates as you go.
What more could you ask for?!
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