This pedal pusher calls the tunes

Michael Bluejay has set himself in the center of a low- to no-horsepower world. As of 1988, his only mode of transportation has been cycling. He even moved all of his belongings -- including a couch and an electric piano -- using an adult tricycle and a trailer.

It’s fitting, then, that his taste in music runs to tunes loosely revolving around wheels, spokes and derailleurs. At his website, bicycleuniverse.com, he’s compiled a greatest hits collection that starts with “Bicycle Race” by Queen. “That’s the quintessential bicycle song,” Bluejay writes, “opening with the several-part harmony chanting, ‘BI-cycle, BI-cycle, BI-cycle!’ and continuing with, ‘I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like.’”

Other titles include “Cycling is Fun” by Poopiehead (which, he notes, includes a verse sung in Japanese “for no apparent reason”) and “Tour de France” by Kraftwerk. Many, he says, “are from folk singers and environmental in nature.”

Also on his roster: bands whose names suggest an affinity to the site. There’s Hit by a Car, which he describes as a garage punk band, and This Bike is a Pipebomb, “a punk-folk band from Pensacola, Fla.”

A fan of the site rewrote Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” as an indictment of car culture. That’s fine with Bluejay, who created his site in 1995 for bicycling fans in Austin, Texas.

Bluejay is almost lyrical in his passion for cycling. “I want to show people that if I can go 15 years without a car, maybe people can consider leaving their car home once a week.”

-- Michael T. Jarvis