It has a somewhat more profound sense than that, and I think the easiest way of understanding what the Buddha meant by "the middle way" would be to call it "the balanced life" - avoiding falling into one extreme or to another extreme. When you ride a bicycle, you do something that is very much like following the Middle Way, because to stay upright as you go along you balance to avoid falling to either side. But the curious thing about riding a bicycle, which is so difficult for beginners to understand, is that when you start falling, say to the right, you have to turn the handlebars and the wheel to the right, to the direction in which you're falling. And as a result of this, surprisingly enough, you come upright. One would ordinarily think, perhaps, that if you start falling to the right you should turn your wheel to the left, but if you do that you'll collapse.
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