How to Have More Fun | Bicycling

1. Sing. Loud. As you pass pedestrians, people in their yards, getting into their cars.

2. Ride a fondo with your dad, or mom, or children. Or all of them. 

3. Set your computer to kilometers and do whatever it takes to make it flash 100kph. 

4. Get your childhood wheelie back. 

5. Be the instigator on the next club ride—town-line sprints, granny-gear sprints, coasting races, you call it. 

6. Ride in your town’s next parade. 

7. Cut across a cornfield. Follow the powerline. Poach the golf-course cart paths. (If caught, apologize sincerely and profusely—in a foreign language.) 

8. Volunteer as a bike marshal at a marathon or 10k. (Resist the temptation to throw a victory salute at the line.) 

9. Ride up your favorite descent—and down your favorite climb. 

10. Ride to a swimming hole. Pack swimwear in your jersey pocket. Or not. 

11. Fill a cooler with cheese, cured meats, beer or wine, and stash it in the woods somewhere along the route of the next day’s ride. When the group reaches that spot, feign a mechanical, then unveil your surprise.

12. Ride Cape May, New Jersey, during the migration of the Monarch butterflies in late August or early September—one of the half-million winged wonders will alight on your shoulder now and then. 

13. Plan out a local ride that’s at least 50 percent made up of roads you’ve never been on. 

14. Fade casually to the back of the group. At a slow-speed section, unclip one foot then drag your cleat on the pavement—it sounds exactly like a bike crash.

15. Stop and read the roadside memorial, sign, or marker you’ve always passed by. 

16. Splurge on a really, really, really nice bell. 

17. Don’t tamp down your helmet hair next time you end a ride in public—fluff it, spike it, exaggerate your badge of honor to unprecedented proportions. 

18. Turn Strava off. (Or sign up for it.) 

19. Pick flowers. Give them to someone when your ride ends. 

20. Start a ride before sunrise; the next day end one at sunset; on the third, go for a moonlight cruise. 

21. Get one new cyclist out on a bike ride every week for a month.

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