“Cycling isn’t just about getting around, it’s another way of looking at the world”

Writer, psychiatrist and devoted cyclist Jet McDonald’s new book, Mind is the Ride, which recounts his epic ride from Bristol to India and back, is the not the traditional travel writing volume. He uses the bike as a philosophical tool with which he interweaves details of the journey with reflections on different philosophies and the mind. He tells Bristol 24/7 more about the book and what cycling means to him.

Have you always loved cycling?

I wrote an article for Bristol’s Boneshaker magazine called “I Hate Cycling”, a tongue-in-cheek rant about everything that I found terrible about cycling; the sweating, the hangry sugar lows, the hills, the headwinds. The sheer mechanical efficiency of bikes pushes us to the limits of our physical and psychological endurance without us even realising. But of course love and hate are part of the same spinning coin. So yes there is the grim plod up Dundry Hill but also the glorious swallow dive of youth, the never-ending downhill back to Bristol city.

What would you do to make Bristol better for cyclists?

It has always seemed to me that debates about cycling fall into somewhat binary rants about improving transport infrastructure or enriching cycling culture. When of course what we need is both. In many ways Bristol is a morass of A roads and roundabouts like mid-Atlantic whirlpools but it is also home to the Sustrans Cycle Network and a thriving bike community, a culture that suggests, through initiatives like Bristol Bike Project, that cycling isn’t just about getting around, it’s another way of looking at the world, one that embraces self-reliance and sustainability instead of corporate culture. If we can carry on changing the kerbs and continue changing the culture, then we’re halfway there.  “There” being a moment of mystical enlightenment in which we all wake up and find we’re living in Copenhagen.

Jet McDonald will be discussing his new book Mind is the Ride at Foyles on May 16

You have said that the book has been ‘years in the making’. When did you first have the idea for it?

I didn’t really have a light bulb moment rather a dynamo moment that grew brighter and brighter until I had to set it on the page. I firmly believe cycling is a physical philosophy. It asks questions of who we are and who we believe ourselves to be, without us even noticing. Are we human beings? Or do we become something else entirely when we ride; part human, part bike, part road, part sky. These questions are fundamental if we want to find a different way of the relating to the world. Cycling doesn’t just take us out into nature, it takes us out of ourselves, it alters our self-conception, so that we become more than just automatons tapping keyboards, we become part of the landscape that is changing irreversibly around us.

How much does the finished version differ from the original plan?

The original plan was six sheets of A3 paper sellotaped together showing the outline of a bike frame superimposed on the ride to India. By its conclusion this had become both a travelogue and a manual on philosophy and bike mechanics, in which I used different bike parts in different chapters to explore different ideas; from Western Rationalism in the Bottom Bracket, to French Existentialism in the Seat Tube, to German philosophies of physical experience in the Tyre, all the way to Hindu beliefs about self-identity in the Handlebars and Buddhism in the coasting Freewheel. In other words, I took on, not just Western and Eastern philosophy, but bike mechanics and travel writing. You could say I bit off more than I could chew and then, like an excitable child who’s not allowed to leave the table until he’s finished, spent a long time chewing.

Jet McDonald’s Mind is the Ride recounts his epic two-wheeled journey from Bristol to India and back

What was the most difficult part of the ride from Bristol to India?

We stopped at Warmley bike café five miles out of Bristol and spent far too long drinking mugs of tea and wondering what lay beyond Yate (I went with fellow cyclist Jen). Riding through the mountain passes of Iran came a close second.  So Yate and the mountain passes of Iran. Very similar.

You wrote elsewhere: “We need to travel inwardly to see the world afresh.” Have you always experienced this inner journey when cycling?

There’s a brilliant clip of Robin Williams, the manic improvisational comedian, being interviewed. “I am a bike sexual,” he said, “I ride the bike.” And then, for a moment he pauses, amidst his usual torrent of ideas, and slowly explains why he likes cycling so much. “For me it’s my meditation“, he says, “I live in San Francisco and I go across the bridge twenty, thirty, fifty miles….” And then for a breath, just a beat, he is silent. In 2019, when everything we consider most certain seems to be falling away, I think this inner stillness takes us on a more important journey, to a place where we hardly seem to be moving at all.

Jet McDonald’s Mind is the Ride – A Journey Through Cycling and Philosophy is published on May 16. He will be discussing the book at Foyles on May 16. For more information, visit https://www.foyles.co.uk/Public/Events/Detail.aspx?eventid=3888

Read more: ‘My book would not exist were it not for living in Bristol’