Black belt caterpillar wrestler - PM
Date: 14 May 15 - 12:23 PM
But what does the bicycle get out of it?

Have you not observed a bicycle closely???
(Actually, best not to let them see you watching too obviously. Just do it out of the corner of your eye.)
The bicycle gets to become more human.
It's all to do with the transfer of atoms.
Well explained in the novel "The Third Policeman"

An essay about the novel here, with illustrations, if you've a few minutes to spare.
http://www.63xc.com/johnward/flano.htm ;

"...Flann O'Brien. ...... novel The Third Policeman, perhaps the only work of literature in which the romantic lead is played by a bicycle, will be of particular interest. It offers a succinct presentation of the debate between modernity and conservatism in the matter of componentry and riding style, along with a singular insight into the physics and metaphysics of human-bicycle relations."

from the book "...
When you strike a bar of iron with a good coal hammer or a blunt instrument... the atoms are bashed away down to the bottom of the bar and compressed and crowded there like eggs under a good clucker...if you keep hitting the bar for long enough [it] will dissipate itself away by degrees...some of the atoms of the bar will go into the hammer and the other half into the table or the stone or the particular article that is underneath the bottom of the bar."

therefore,

4. "The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles."

"...You never see them moving by themselves but you meet them in the least accountable places unexpectedly. Did you never see a bicycle leaning against the dresser of a warm kitchen when it is pouring outside? [fig 6.] Near enough the family to hear the conversation? Not a thousand miles from where they keep the eatables?"