But powering vehicles with my muscle strength is not what my body is built for.
And here I was almost starting to feel sympathetic toward your position. This is exactly what your body is built for. It's what every body is built for. Else we'd have died out long before the first motorized vehicles came into being.
I support the idea that some people live in situations in which cycling is untenable. I do not support the idea that people with working limbs simply physically can't.
I see. So when our monkey ancestors jumped down from the trees, they had a bike waiting for them? My mistake. I totally assumed most female bodies were made for generating babies and engaging in gathering - generally at a slow pace due to the care of young. But now I see my mistake - I was actually built for cycling. I will be sure to take a moment to chastise myself for being so lazy as to be a slow, sweaty, heat-stroke prone cyclist.
If I had a time machine, I would also travel back in time and kick my third-grade self in the behind for always being picked last for sports. Alas... I don't think one exists. Unless those cycling monkeys also invented that?
I've read some overly defensive stuff on these forums, but this is near the top.
In between births, do you suppose your monkey ancestors moved? Were all the females just waiting in stationary positions when they weren't delivering babies? Or did they sit all the time in awkward positions that are impossible to achieve without backed chairs, like you do in a car? Was your body built for continuously pushing a gas pedal? For sitting and turning a steering wheel? Are these ludicrous rhetorical questions that prove nothing? You are built to move. Humans are built to move. The gluteus maximus did not develop so that it felt better to sit on our asses. Of course our ancient ancestors didn't ride bicycles, but then, that wasn't my point. My point was that your muscles do exist for, among other purposes, locomotion.
Appealing to what one's body is built for is probably not the best way to argue in favor of driving a car, seeing as how whatever else the monkeys were doing to track down food, they sure as shit weren't driving.
Oh, and I was picked last for sports, too. Not sure it has any bearing on being able to ride a bike now.
Cycling, like driving, is a skill, and sometimes it is helpful to have instruction, practice, and outside assistance in getting better at it, which is what most of the posters in this thread have offered, my previous post notwithstanding. I realize we've gone far afield of the original topic, though, so apologies to the OP.