I've got a mountain bike. When I was back in my hometown, I rode it to a lot of places.
I bought it on JD.com and assembled it myself when it arrived. I'd only been riding it for a month when the seal plug on the front fork fell off. So I took the fork off, mailed it back to the manufacturer for repair, and they mailed it back after fixing it. All in all, it took almost half a month round trip. Just like that, in one month, I went from a total newbie who'd never touched a bike to an "old hand" who could swap out a front fork.
That bike really did its job for me. During those boring days back in my hometown, it carried me away from that place and let me explore the world around it. Most of the time it was the same routes nearby over and over, but I did go to two places I'd consider pretty far — one was Xiangyang, the other was Danjiangkou.
A simple vehicle can really broaden your world in a big way. When I was a kid, I thought the place I lived was all plains. Later I found out it's actually the center of the Nanyang Basin, and if you go more than 50 kilometers in any direction, it's all mountains. On the way back from riding to Danjiangkou, I followed the mountain road around the east side of the reservoir. The road went up and down the whole way — some spots I had to get off and push. Then came a big downhill, and right after that, flat plains as far as the eye could see.
(Translated with DeepSeek)