Scents

If you can follow your nose through the many scents of a ride, you should feel very fortunate. Cycling provides an unmatched and, unfortunately rare, opportunity in this modern world to move in the open air rapidly from place to place. Most people spend the majority of their time trapped in insulated, odorless (or nearly so) offices or cars, shielded from moving air and traversing space in a bubble of artificual scents. We are luckier. We travel through a continuum of diverse worlds, and environmental scents are a big part of cycling when you pay attention to them.

The olfactory bulb, the seat of scent, is actually a part of your brain, and is the only part of your brain exposed to the outside air. Cyclists’ olfactory advantage has to do with their probable lack of olfactory fatigue. Olfactory fatigue occurs after being in the midst of any scent for a few minutes or longer, as the olfactory bulb becomes saturated with the scent and stops sending signals to the brain about something new. Sedentary people tend to not notice the olfactory world because they don’t move through enough air to avoid olfactory fatigue. Their scent system is always fatigued, so they smell nothing much at all.

Meanwhile, cyclists are constantly stimulating their olfactory system with new smells. When we ride, we avoid olfactory fatigue because we’re always encountering new scents and clearing out old ones. On any ride, the smells are myriad, some familiar, others jarringly strange. Fresh-baked bread. A cluster of hydrangeas. The soft smell of natural gas on cold mornings as furnaces kick on. Fresh peat. Fresh mulch. Gas stations. Bad car exhaust. Skunk. A fast-food joint. Perfume from the lady joggers. Wet grass and leaves. Water. The array of smells is astounding, and we get to savor them all.

Follow your nose the next time you ride. Enjoy freedom from fatigue.