There's a lot of research on the mental health benefits of cycling, and I think a big aspect of that could be chalked up to it being one of the few forms of mostly un-alienated labor available to people under capitalism. You work the machine to move yourself. You own the means of your own transportation production basically. Just some 'shower thought' that keeps coming back to me.
It's very common for people to talk about going for a bike ride like it is a form of therapy, that it clears the mind and puts you in a better mood after a bad day, etc. Let me know what you think about this idea.
I think it's interesting to consider that being on a bike in a public roadway is more legal than being a pedestrian. Being on a bike changes your social relation in various ways compared to being in a car or on foot. If you are commuting to a job on a bike, that certainly makes it part of reproductive labor to maintain that job. This is very common with lower paid workers especially, there's even the term in bike advocacy for this: 'invisible cyclists'. I guess I'm most interested in how the augmentation of labor via the machine of a bike changes social relations. There was a huge aspect to this related to Women's Suffrage and Feminism. Bikes offer a transportation option that is quite self-reliant and often quite independent of existing economic power structures. This is why women biking was viewed as a socially destructive force by many at the time.