What is the most important part of the bike?

After spending the weekend in Portland at least partially immersing myself in bike culture (the Hopworks Oregon Handmade Bike and Beer Festival), and talking with several custom builders from the area, and then a long drive home listening to The Guardians of Ga'Hoole (yep, the one about the owls... book on CD), I lay in bed unable to get to sleep, and thinking...

Every once in a while, a philosophical question will drill its way into my brain and fester there.

So this particular night, it was the question of the importance of the parts on the bike, or, more properly, what is THE most important part on the bike?

Could it be the wheels? I mean, really, the entire meaning behind the moniker "bicycle" means "two wheels". That kind of defines what a bike is, right?

Or maybe it's the frame. The supporting structure of the thing, which defines its manners, handling, weight balance, and comfort.

Possibly the saddle. The weight-bearing interface between the rider and the machine, where a most-intimate contact can become something that you never think about, or a misery that you can't NOT think about.

Or the pedals and cranks, where the efforts of the rider are transferred into the machine to provide forward progress, the most efficient form of transportation yet conceived-of by man.

Maybe it would be the handlebar, the interface to the wishes of the rider as to where that machine goes.

Well, all those things are important and make the collection of "things" into a bike. Much is made of how that collection of things should look, what are proper proportions, and largely that is what we were celebrating, discussing, and drooling over through the entire show.

But without the most important part of the bike, all that could be nothing more than "art", a lawn sculpture or showpiece. Without the most important part of the bike, the bike is just "a bike". It doesn't do anything. It doesn't go anywhere.

No, the most important part of the bike, to me, is the rider.

I believe that "the bike" is a dynamic thing, and that in order for it to truly be what it was meant to be, it needs to move. And that requires the rider.

Riders come in all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, and races. Speed does not make the rider. Being on a bike makes the rider. And likewise, the rider makes the bike. It's a synergy of human and machine -- a cybernetic melding that creates efficient movement.

And if you really get infected with the notion of two-wheeled transport, you become like me -- a rider even when you're not on a bike.