A Trip On Bicycle Day

Today is Bicycle Day.  Tomorrow is Weed Day.

About the latter, there are many stories about its origin--why, specifically, the 20th of April is associated with marijuana.  The most plausible-sounding one involves a group of teenagers in Marin County, California (the birthplace of mountain biking) who met at 4:20 in the afternoon to partake.  They chose that time, according to lore, because their schools' extracurricular activities ended by that time and as Dave Reddix, one of the group, recalled, "We got tired of the Friday night football scene with all of the jocks."  Because they met at that time, "420" became their code for weed.  Later, Reddix worked as a Grateful Dead roadie and the term went viral, so to speak.

On the other hand, the story of how today became Bicycle Day is more closely documented.  On this date in 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann ingested a small amount of a compound derived from ergot fungus.  Feeling disoriented, he rode his bicycle home.  Along the way, he experienced the beautiful and terrible effects of that compound, lysergic acid diethymalide.  So,. in more ways than one, Dr. Hoffmann took the world's first acid trip.

So, in honor of Dr. Hofmann on Bicycle Day, I am posting a video of the song that, in its own way, is "a real trip":

Hofmann lived another 65 years after his "trip," to the age of 102.  It must have been the bicycling!

(Tell me what a latter-day hippie living in California had in mind when he called his book about bicycle touring "Bike Tripping.")

Today Is Bicycle Day. And It's A Real Trip

Sometimes people give a knowing (or think-they-know) grin when I tell them I took a trip on a bike.  Yes, even at my age, at this late date. 

I'm sure many people reacted in the same way--or less approvingly--when they saw the title of Tom Cuthbertson's Bike Tripping.  It's one of those primers, if you will, that came out during the '70's North American Bike Boom.  Most of the advice in it is still pretty sound, even if some of what he says about equipment is dated.  And, as with Cuthbertson's other books, it can be enjoyed for its witty tone and those fun illustrations from his friend Rick Morrall.

First of all, the book came out in 1972--one year after Cuthbertson's first classic, Anybody's Bike Book.  Although the calendar may have said the world was in the 1970s, in many ways,  it was still the late '60's, complete with the anti-war and environmental movements.  And hippies. (Cuthbertson's books looked like they were created by hippies.  And he looked like one.) And, of course, drugs.

Among the drugs of that time was Lysergic Acid Diathymalide-25, better known to the world as LSD or simply "acid".  Although it still has a stigma from the overdoses and the people who had terrifying visions while taking it, there are still researchers who are trying to find ways to use it for which it was intended:  medical purposes.

At least, that was the way Albert Hofmann intended it.  He was the Swiss scientist who first synthesized it, in 1938, as   a stimulant for the circulatory and respiratory systems.  He learned of its true power five years later, when he accidentally absorbed some into his fingertips.  The "not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition" he experienced intrigued him enough that he did what any intensely curious researcher would do:  He experimented on himself.

On 19 April 1943, he took what he thought was an appropriate threshold dose:  250 milligrams.  That was a bit too  much; today we know that a standard dose is 200 mg. (I am using the imperial "we":  I have no firsthand experience!)  Within an hour, his perception began to ebb and flow rapidly.  Then he became the first person to "freak out":  He was convinced that his neighbor was a witch, and he was going insane.  He wanted to go home.

In 1943, wartime restrictions were in place, which meant that, like many other people, Hofmann had no access to a car.  So he rode his bicycle.  

Image by jibberjabber

That trip home was a stressful one:  His vision wavered and he felt as though he were motionless.  After he reached the climax of his condition, however, he came back from a "weird, unfamiliar world" to reassuring everyday reality.

Albert Hofmann, therefore, took the world's acid trip.  And he did it on his bike.  That is why 19 April is celebrated as Bicycle Day--though I think Bicycle Trip Day might be more appropriate.

That Bike Ride Was A Real "Trip"

If I were to offer advice to the young, one thing I'd tell is that they should look forward to getting older because the statute of limitations runs out.


Thus, I can admit to having done some riding in my youth after intaking substances that may or may not be banned by the UCI and WADA, if not Federal and  State authorities. 


Thankfully, there are many more substances with influences under which I never rode.  For that matter, I never took any of those drugs.  I have to wonder, though, what it was like to ride under the influence of what Albert Hofmann took before his ride home on 19 April 1943.


Herr Hofmann had synthesized several derivatives of ergot, a fungus found on rye, in search of a new stimulant drug to induce childbirth.  He accidentally ingested a small amount of his 25th derivative while synthesizing it, and recorded the effects thusly:




“… affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.”


Three days later, on the 19th, he intentionally took 0.25 milligrams--what he believed to be the "threshold dose"--of his new drug.  However, he soon realized that he had greatly underestimated its potency.  Within an hour, he was experiencing vast shifts in his mental perceptions.  Because of wartime vehicular restrictions, he asked his lab assistant to escort him home by bicycle. 


After he awoke on his couch and his physician assured him that he indeed had not been poisoned, he recorded his "trip":


 “… little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux…”


By now, you probably realize that what Hofmann made and ingested was not one of today's energy bars or Red Bull.  It was Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-25, or what we now call LSD or "Acid".

Trippers and stoners today refer to 19 April as Bicycle Day, in honor of the world's first "acid trip".  (I would argue that the first trip was actually experienced, and recorded, by the author(s) of the Book of Revelations.)  Hofmann had never dreamed of such a thing, or the late 1960s Haight-Ashbury scene, for he had envisioned his drug as an aid to psychotherapy:  Its "intense and introspective nature", as he described it, would limit its popular appeal.


Note:  In writing this I am not endorsing the use of LSD-25 or any other hallucinogen or banned substance, whether or not I used them in my long-ago youth!