This reminds me of the torn sack thread - Explain it to me...
Health and fitness? Ok, I'll take it easy on the beer the night before I know I'm going for a ride! So there's that. Truly, I just get immeasurable pleasure in the hunt, salvage, and caretaking of these classics. I love most of all bringing them back from the grave. I get sentimental imagining the lives these things lived long before we've crossed paths, and how much further they'll go now since we have. Every ride is a revisiting my first taste of freedom as a kid on a new bike crossing the "highway" alone for the first time! The pre-ride inspection ritual, taking my time before, during and after a ride. So it's not just about the ride. But for sure, coasting slightly downhill through a wooded trail on a well-tuned classic is a high worth every ounce of energy it took to get me there. I get the modern bike mentality and I'm trying to think of a way of saying it bores me without calling it boring. Oops. It's either your cup of meat or it isn't.