It’s interesting, and perhaps unique, in that it doesn’t commemorate the thing for which it’s named.
Believe it or not, yesterday was Bicycle Day. I’m sure that some club or another had a ride marking the day. And I’m sure at least one of the riders has dressed or made themself up to look like the man who, however unwittingly, made yesterday Bicycle Day.
On 19 April 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann rode his bike home after taking a mild dose (or so he thought) drug he synthesized several years earlier. “I was taken to another place, another time,” he recalled. “My body seemed to be without sensation. Lifeless. Strange.”
One thing we don’t know about his ride was its pace. He may have been pedaling vigorously but I somehow doubt that he was riding like a Tour de France or Olympic racer in training. So whatever he was experiencing—which, he said, lasted until the following day—probably wasn’t the result of endorphins. Thus, he can be said to have been on the world’s first LSD trip, literally and figuratively.
Ironically, the day after—today—would, decades later, become another “holiday” having to do with chemically-altered states of mind: 420 is a code name for marijuana and, at least in the US—where we write our dates in the exact opposite way from the rest of the world—the 20th of April is known as “Four-Twenty.”
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| The doctor at 87. See what cycling can do? |
By the way, Dr. Hofmann died fifteen years ago—at 102 years old. What was the key to his longevity? It must have been the cycling.
Very interesting.
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