The Transportation

And then there is the transportation gang, often heard before they're seen with squeaky chains propelling haggard old bikes, for whom there is no choice...or perhaps the choice is to ride or hoof it, as the bicycle is their sole means of speedy A to B. Maybe they ride to work, maybe they're unemployed. Maybe they’re homeless, lost their license, or simply cannot afford the many hidden fiscal trappings of automobile ownership. Do they prefer to ride? No, no way; they are forced to by circumstance. To them the bike is a vintage tool, a rusty shovel among backhoes, a rake among leaf blowers, not a meaning-filled symbol or a recreational activity.

These three broad groups make up the majority of cyclists. Do they get along with each other? I don't think so. They sure don’t ride together unless it's incidental, but then again, they’re not really competing for resources, yet anyway...and that's a big "yet", I mean, if there were a world of just bicycles in the streets...would they eventually begin to flip each other off and relish in name calling belittlement? I’m all but sure this would happen, as space on the road would still be a premium and thus competed for. In fact, I was just talking to a kid working the front counter of a hotel in downtown Sacramento, Ca about his commuting on the bike I saw safely locked up out front as I checked in. I asked him how getting around town was, if the city was "bike-friendly", how the infrastructure was (bike paths and the like), and the general attitude of drivers toward cyclists. All where favorable but what he added as afterthought...musing that possibly more troublesome than the inherent hazards a cyclist's fragile body encounters whilst commingling with heavy automobiles on the street were the droves of club riders who often speed up from behind in large packs on the city's many established bike paths, rude with shouts of “on your left” and often squeezing him and his bike from the narrow pavement as they sped by.

When I heard this, I have to admit, I got a little defensive as I've been in those groups that have taken the path with shear speed and Lycra-clad numbers, but until that point never thought of my actions as rude, quite the contrary...but then again, I had never heard firsthand or imagined the consequences of my actions from another's point of view.

Think about it...just look at how your attitude changes when you sit in auto traffic. Blood pressure and Cortisol levels rise, anger creeps in, what little mindfulness you have goes out the window with an urge to shake your fist, road rage begets the “effenheimer” and the entire day starts out on the wrong foot because your once peaceful and unified "group" began infighting over a resource. You are very alone at that point, a group of one, competing with other motorists for your piece of precious pavement...


Look, here's the deal...bikes and cars? They're just two machines that got in the middle of the proverbial human condition simply by giving us another way to label each other. A human condition that's been brewing and evolving within us since the Miocene...a constant struggle between our reactive, animal brain and our thoughtful, processing, symbolic brain. For years, bikes and cars, taking the blame for something they have nothing to do with but, again, giving us another way to label one-another as different, to group ourselves, to pick sides. A mere separation of the two I'm afraid, without really understanding the root problem, will just pass the buck to a different arena.

Groupism is at the root of this problem. To solve it, I'm convinced we can, we need to see this bigger picture, leave bikes and cars out of it and work on the mess that's between our ears. Limbic System be damned...we must overcome.

The Recreational Cyclist

To another group within the group "cycling", the club riders and racers, the bike is a recreational activity; like hunting, fishing, or...er...umm...Irish road bowling. The problem here is, seeing the bike as a pastime and the paved road a playing field has with it inherent contradictions to the motor-dominated status quo, no?

As a recreational cyclist, you're not out there trying to get anywhere, or go someplace in particular; you're just trying to get some miles in, work off the bear claw you ate for breakfast***, and catch up on a weeks worth of gossip with your buddies. Many rides, whether organized events or off the cuff fartlek style, are very social occasions...and when harassed by an automobile in this social context, it feels like someone just streaked the pitch and stole the game ball before security could lay on a good tackle. Party-pooper. And from the driver's perspective, seeing someone constantly playing in the office when you're trying to get down to the business of work has got to be akin to a good slap in the face. Socialist pig.

But stepping back and seeing both sides here, one group seeing the road as a utility and another seeing it as recreational...you can really see how this dichotomy adds to the competitive roots of the conflict...we are after all, whether we realize it or not, competing over road space.

***Because you have the self control of a starving dog you chubby bastard...ah, self-deprecating humor is so fun.

Inter-group Conflict: The Symbol

You can't look for a solution without seeing that groupism, with it's sharp and divisive claws, has torn apart what it means today to ride a bicycle on the American road. For those that do so are split into three main groups as far as I can tell: the commuter class, the club riders and racers, and the simple transportation types. Or to look at it another way, there are those that see the bike as a symbol, those that see the bike as an activity, and those that see the bike as a tool.

Choice defines this first group (which can be further classified within a spectrum ranging from those that own a car and use the bike when convenient to militant hardcore bicycle activists who have forgone four wheels and a motor entirely). For them the bicycle, whether because riding one is simply fun or provides for some higher moral calling, is a brand that's worn, identifying the commuter and defining them as someone who's made the very conscious choice not to use a car because of what it means not for just the transportation it provides.

In the context of groupism, this defining of oneself aides in the segregation on the streets with thoughts of things like: I am a cyclist, apart from the auto or from the motorist perspective, There's another damn cyclist, out in the road where they don't belong. Through a more inclusive lens however, a broader-group worldview, the definition looses much of it's meaning and a commuting cyclist's presence in the street is merely seen as adding to the great diversity of road users.

To some of these folks, the bike has come to symbolize a future free of fossil-fuel dependence; a human-powered and Eco-friendly transport attracting a kind of rider that speaks of cars as their nemesis, or even evil incarnate (bud-um bum). They have no car because in choosing automotive abstinence they are, in their minds, taking the moral high-ground in a junkie, petroleum addicted, world.

While I don’t think you can argue about our current dependence on foreign oil being a road-block to growth, that doesn't make cars evil. It makes our nearsighted view of the world a bit immoral…it makes our consumerism suspect to sustainability…it makes corporate greed seem tangible, a wet-blanket heavy on the face...but it doesn't make cars evil. If you can’t find beauty in the lines of a ’68 Ford Mustang Fastback or find mellifluous the purr of eight steel cylinders humming in mechanical perfection then maybe you’re just not a "car person", but they’re not evil. For me, I’ll always find appeal there and the sound my Honda motorbike makes when I twist the throttle open will always be music to these ears.

Maybe some of those militant cyclists do have a point though. Do any of us really want to be tethered to the teat of the gas pump for the next thirty years? I’d like to think not, yet here we are nursing away, afraid to be weaned for fear our economy will suffer for our conservatism; afraid to swallow that bitter pill even though it will make us well in the long run; afraid that to do so would spell the end of our beautiful, beautiful cars.

Maybe it's just that it doesn't feel life threatening…yet. Maybe things have to be literally life-threatening for action in the US. Our glaciers have to melt entirely along with the Antarctic ice-sheet (hey, more shipping lanes right?), the ocean must acidify wiping out fish stocks and the rising sea level shrink the great phallus of Florida...maybe then we’ll act. Too bad we couldn't see global climate change as an evil fascist dictator, hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, committing genocide, or wanton world-domination. Then perhaps?

I'll quit babbling with this; if your use of the bike is driven by hate for the burning of fossil fuels...will a roadfull of plug-in electrics charged with the sun's power bring about a new peace? Or will a Nissan Leaf right-hook you just the same as a '59 Caddy?

European Distrust

What I’m asking here is, though the people come and go, can a feeling, a sentiment, or responses linger on? Of course it can, safe in the continuity of a civilization's ethos. Much like the schoolyard game of telephone, where one child would say a short phrase into another’s ear, then that phrase would get passed on again and again to a new child each time. The original was often scrambled, mutated and lost resulting in a copy without an original, a simulacrum. So that's the question posed here, have we in essence created a simulacrum with regards to bike hate?

Perhaps most people don’t remember a specific reason for the distrust of those Lycra-clad roadies, but some mutation of a sentiment conceivably lives on subconsciously, a copy of a copy of a copy whose original is long gone and had nothing to do with today’s bicycling enthusiast. Yet, somehow written deep in our collective mind, alive through the centuries, interwoven with the very history of this great country we keep at it; feeling a twinge of distaste when we happen upon one, an intrinsic urge to harass those people who ride bicycles on our roads with, at the very least, a cruel thought, or raising the bar...a dirty deed. Bullying perhaps?

World War II…could there be a bigger unbleachable shit stain on the britches of humanity than the atrocities that took place during these dark days? Here we are nearly eighty years later and the name Hitler still rattles the very soul of our collective humanity, a bleak reminder that we all harbor truly wicked potential deep within. A malevolence thankfully remaining most of the time safely ensconced behind the sanity of our good conscience yet that sadly peeps out now and again in a violent thought or subtle act with a cruel intention.

Europe depleted and America the savior: a pervasive belief existing in America that without D-Day, Hiroshima, and American sacrifice all those years ago, the entire globe would be celebrating the fermentation of kimchi or sauerkraut all the while sprechen Deutsch. A fact perhaps–but one that only added to the feeling of superiority the United States had toward Europe that began well before the framers began to frame, good Earl Gray began to steep in the cool waters of Boston Harbor, or quill hit parchment in the penning of the US constitution.

Years prior to any shots being fired at Lexington and Concord, the British colonies along the east coast of the future US were filled with English and other European immigrants  Whether they themselves made the trans-Atlantic journey or were born into the colonies, they were well versed in the centuries of war between England and their neighbor across the English Channel. As such, the English colonies almost certainly still harbored an ill trust toward the French, and the royal lineages that sent so many invading troops across the English Channel, weaving their thread of suspicion into the fabric of the toddling colonies. Could this seventeenth century distrust of France still persist in American culture after four hundred years?

So what am I saying? Does the current cold war between cyclists and motorists in America have its roots in colonial America? In the distrust ex-pat English had for England and by extension, France and monarchs like Louis XIV? Does it begin to heat up centuries later with the Eisenhower Administration’s move toward interstate highways and Detroit’s move toward faster cars to cruise them…the bicycle's return to the streets in a time when muscle cars and motor heads ruled the pavement and for decades prior, bicycles were what children rode before they were old enough to drive? Could it run that deep? Think about it. What country comes to mind when you think of the word "bicycle"?

Could the aura of the Tour de France and the fervor it brings to the countless swarms lining the French mountaintops or millions watching on television once a year cast a shadow on the entire sport of cycling in the collective American psyche? Perhaps it works to drive a wedge that deepens the division between cyclists and motorists? I mean, it plays so perfectly into deep seated American fears…Does it awaken those long simmering, centuries old feelings of European distrust, or perhaps more contemporary, indignant feelings of a counter-American way of life–dare I say it–socialism?

Cycling enthusiasts watch excitedly as nearly two-hundred fit men suffer through twenty-one consecutive days of oxygen-deprived agony. Their attractive physiques, muscles and shaved legs straining under skin tight and colorful Lyrca garments that taken out of context, or taken away from their bikes could certainly resemble something of a gay pride parade to the eyes of the uninitiated...a threat to someone's "manhood"?

The race now over, the fans have gone home or turned their TVs off yet are still full of enthusiasm for a good long spin on the bike. They’re gung ho to dress like and emulate their cycling heroes, little different from wearing a team jersey on game day to show your loyalty. Then take these same enthusiasts-turned subconscious incarnations of European, socialist, peculiar looking men and women and place them on an American road (indeed now truly out of context) that was paved never meant to feel the light touch of a bicycle tire, full of American cars and American love of all that’s auto, an America that cries foul at the mere word “socialism”, an America that has real issues with discrimination, and what do you get? You get what we have here today. A reflection of the closet intolerance we have become as a nation all wrapped up in a moment of time on the edge of the road...the passing of car and bike. Pay attention.
 

Mindfulness Takes Time

I had the opportunity to go on a ten day meditation retreat several years back. It wasn't what you think–no cult, no deity worship, no fasting, no saints, no sinners, just a secular exploration of the vast expanse that is this human mind. Ten days, it turned out, without making eye contact, without speaking, without even acknowledging fellow meditators sitting right next to you. The idea was that you strictly had to be with your own thoughts and those thoughts alone for ten days straight. No television, no books, no magazines near the toilet, no diversions what-so-ever to take your attention away from what it was that was going on inside your head.

Prior to the course, I thought I knew what it was to be mindful, paying attention to my thoughts and actions. As it turns out, I knew nothing. We spent the first three days focusing on the air moving in and out of our nostrils, concentrating on how that felt. At first, minutes would go by where my mind was elsewhere, daydreaming, and then I’d remember what I’m supposed to be doing and be back focusing on my breath, in and out, in and out, then I’d be gone again for several more minutes as my mind wandered once more. My mind a chaotic ride on Boston's T. Thoughts were everywhere, in, out, and jostling my attention like a train full of commuters.

By the third day however, I could stay focused on my breath for a whole sixty minutes without interruption pretty easily. If a thought came up and threatened to pull my attention away into a daydream, it was acknowledged and allowed to move on, no dwelling on it. The busy subway car of my mind was beginning to quiet down.

After the third day we began focusing our attention to other parts of the body one bit at a time. We were trying to establish a flow of attention that began on the head and moved down the trunk to the tips of the toes then back again. This was pretty hard as some parts were easier to put my attention than were others, parts of my back in particular proved a challenge, who pays that much attention to their back? There were brief, though amazing, moments however where my whole body was the object of my focus at one time. Heavenly, really.

During the times I wasn't formally meditating, my ability to pay attention to things around me was in such a heightened state that, for instance, when I would walk to meals in the dining hall the crunch of gravel underfoot was absolutely palpable as were individual pebbles pushing unevenly on the thin soles of my shoes. Walking had slowed because that’s what I was doing, just walking, my attention was there in the act without a mind full of the future, of the past. I could eat an entire meal literally savoring every bite, feeling the meal mash around in my mouth, flavors mixing, pushed around by my tongue, feeling the mouthful of good home cooking slide slowly down my throat.

At the end of the class, I was not the same person that walked in to the facility ten days prior. I had become an observing machine. The five hour drive home was amazing and done sans radio; I didn't need the diversion it would have provided, driving was plenty. I was driving with an awareness not seen since I was sixteen and my mother handed me the keys for the first time, drivers permit in hand.

Arriving home, things that bothered me before the class, like the sound, believe it or not, of my dog licking his paws, didn't anymore. Again, I had become very objective, it was just a sound and I was just an observer. If a thought popped into my head about the sound of dog tongue on dog paws it wasn't about how irritating it was, it was more about the qualities of the sound itself and the fact that was just what the dog does, lick his paws. I was okay with that.

Today, having not kept up in my practice of mindfulness, the ability is all but gone. I hate that sound again and almost always shush my dog when I hear it. But the idea of mindfulness remains, the idea and the knowledge that such laser-like attention to my own thoughts is possible and the experience of how those thoughts affect my emotions and mood remains foundational to who I am today.

Mindfulness takes practice.

Keep practicing.

Ride the Power

Take the human out of the equation and you might just get something like this:

“Where’re you going?” says the bicycle to the car.

“Just for a spin up to the lake; why do you ask?” says the car.

“You gotta take me with you! I’d give my front brake to know what 85 mph is like! I’ll ride the roof…”

“No way, you don’t belong on the road with cars like me.” 

“What?! Really?! You’re going to go there! Why not just kick me in the crank set you two-ton, gas-guzzling bastard!”

“Jeez, did I hit a nerve or what? I was just kidding… I’d never say you don’t belong on the road and really mean it. Heck, it's just pavement...and you two-wheelers were on the roads well before we four-wheelers were around in any great numbers. But really, a “gas-guzzling bastard”? Bike, that’s pretty harsh! You've got quite a mouth on you.”  

“Oh … it just came out, I’m cranky, my chain's kind'a dry and frankly,(whispering)I'm in need of a bit of oil. I’m sorry. Will you please forgive me?" 

“I suppose so.”

“Can I ride the power then? C'mon Car, be a pal!”

“All right, you can ride the power. Hop on up there and we'll get going. To tell the truth, I’ve always admired your simple design, your connection with your rider, your…uh…how you say, je ne sais quoi.”

“A French car huh? Never would'a guessed. What are you a Peugeot? Citroen?”

“No! I'm a Ford, American muscle…I just figured you bikes were all French so I’d throw a little of your native tongue at you, to make you feel at home.”

“Whatever, muscles! Let’s just go for a cruise.”

“You got it friend…here comes ninety.”

“Ninety! What, are you trying to peel my grip tape?”

So, what am I saying? I'm saying, strip people from the machines and the machines would get along just fine. Strip cars and bikes from their people and you're left with just people...no labels, no groups--no cyclists, no motorists--just people...let's not forget that next time we buckle up or throw a leg over a top tube. Just people. Expand your group.

Why do some motorists hate cyclists so?

Why do some motorists
hate cyclists so?

Is it because we slow you down?
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Is it because we ride in groups
and hog the road? It is a
road after all…

What about motorcycle clubs?
They ride in the road in big
groups and hog the road but
I don’t see too many folks
giving them the ol’ one-finger solute.

Is it the clothes we wear?
They do have a purpose,
and many of the sponsors
plastered all over them are
local businesses supporting
a local bike club. 

Is it because we weave around
the road? Because when I’m
riding hard my heart rate is
going at least 160 beats
per minute…it’s hard to
do anything smoothly
with a heart rate like that.

Not to mention all the crap
in the road that I have to
avoid: glass, rocks, and sticks,
just to name a few.



Don't be a jerk!

Cyclists aren't exactly helping
the relationship with all the stupid
things they do on the road.
I myself, on occasion, do
dumb things on the road
while on the bike.

Like ride in the wrong lanes.

Like blow through stop signs.

Scream through red lights.

Ride the sidewalks.

Or even ride distracted.



Don't be a jerk!

Because...we really have
to stop meeting like this.

Rick Derringer Said So

There are times however, 
when I’m on my bike, that I 
don’t feel welcomed by 
others on the road.

Sometimes, it goes well beyond 
a feeling of being unwelcome, 
it feels like loathing or hatred even. 
It feels…well…horrible.

Once, a while ago, someone 
threw a cup of tobacco spit at 
me from a car window. . . 
at that moment, I had 
some hatred myself.

I feel like if I were on the 
side of the road, putting along on a tractor…

…or a horse, that I would be 
tolerated…celebrated, even! 

On the bike I feel…
dare I say…un-American? 

Self Flagellation

I enjoy cycling.

I also enjoy my Ford F-150 FX4.
Yup, Stock 18's and a tow package.

And my Honda VF-R 800
makes me feel alive like
little else.

I usually get along fine with myself...
Heck, we all usually get along
fine with ourselves...
don't we?

Blev-ees and Car Racks

BLEVE (pronounced Blev-ee) is an acronym for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion. I'm sure you've all seen one or two on the news, some amazing video caught on camera show, or YouTube at some point, but...just as an example, if someone takes a sealed can of any flammable liquid and throws it onto a campfire (this is a very, very bad idea by the way...rednecks beware), the liquid within begins to boil, and the pressure inside, of course, increases. As the pressure builds, the remaining liquid becomes super-heated to temperatures far beyond that which would normally find it excitedly changing states to a gas under less tense conditions.

When the vessel, because of the fire's intensity finally weakens to the point of rupture, the super-heated liquid, now free from the confines of the can, vaporizes in an instant, expanding violently as it goes. A massive and dangerous event by itself, but, mixing with the atmosphere's oxygen and then being licked by the surrounding flames, the combustive mixture ignites and explodes into something even more devastating and all consuming, shattering windows for miles around if the container of fuel was big enough.

For reasons mentioned earlier, the late 1960’s and 1970’s saw bicycles begin to find their way once again into the hands of American adults. Understanding this so-called “American Bike Boom,” an event signaled by a doubling of annual sales for adult bikes between 1960 and 1970 and then a doubling again between 1970 and 1975, is pivotal in wrapping our heads around the conflict on the streets today.

You can just picture it, no? The rise of the muscle car and the interstates coinciding with the reappearance of lowly and slow bicycles on an American road that hadn't seen the chain and sprockets of the bike used as a mode of transportation since Henry Ford and the model-T made the auto affordable.

Years earlier, bikes in the hands of children doing laps around the neighborhood and building jumps in the driveway, the road had become the exclusive territory for cars, trucks, and buses. This was nobody’s fault, just that nobody had any interest in, no one was advocating on behalf of bikes during rule making and road construction back then. Shoulders and lanes were narrow, only as wide as they had to be for cars that were fast and gigantic...and traffic laws? Made for cars and trucks alone, I mean, why would those that penned those laws even consider anything else?

But with the American Bike Boom, American adults were once again riding, cyclists began forming clubs and pushing for cars to share the road. Bicycle commuting and advocacy was becoming trendy and hip. Bicycle racing, that had enjoyed continuous popularity in Europe since the safety bike's invention, began gaining new ground in the US, and in 1986 Greg LeMond became the first American–first non-European even–to win the Tour de France...a race that's been going on since 1903! Spandex-use mushroomed on the local cycling scene as club riders, whether they had a body for it or not, wanted to emulate their racing heroes. Cycling simply became popular and like it or not, drivers just had to deal with it as more and more bikes appeared on the road for fun, for exercise, and transportation.

Now...I can see if this Boom just happened yesterday that there might still be a problem today, but as we all know too well, several decades have gone by now and bikes are still having a hard time fitting in (ever try and trip an Induction Loop Sensor with a carbon fiber bike?).  Drivers still don't like (dare I say hate) cyclists, period. Drivers are still yelling at us for no apparent reason and yet, be honest now, many times there's plenty of reason to yell and get angry...we're still going the wrong way down the street...still running lights...still running stop signs...still riding sidewalks.

What the heck is really going on here?

What's a car rack if not a symbol of would-be bipartisanship?

Taint that the truth

Detour for a second. A sidebar.

From the point of view of a chamois pad in the crotch of a pair of cycling shorts, your perineum is purpose, period. The bike saddle? The bane of existence, the Nemesis of said purpose, 'tis what road salt is, once applied, to black ice. And chamois cream? Aah, beautiful chamois cream and its silky, silky, goodness, uniting as one skin with fabric. What is it but a tool to succeed, a laptop to a blogger, a chain to a cyclist, salt to a french fry.

Joseph Shivers was an American chemist, working for DuPont, who in 1959 perfected the formula for a material that, in this mind anyway, just may play as big a role as history itself in the auto/bicycle conflict...or maybe it's just an interesting historical sidebar...maybe icing on the cake or insult to injury...depending on the disposition of your glass...half-full perhaps? Whatever, weirdo.

In 1959 Spandex was born, but it wasn't until more than a decade later that this miracle cloth was adopted by the nuevo cycling crowd and put to good use holding testes firm and vulvas...well, admittedly, I'm not too sure what it does vulvas but I imagine it can't be too bad a thing...at any rate, surely keeping lesser fabrics from chaffing your tender vittles raw on long, long, rides. So...eh-hem... how does this stretchy material play such a prominent role in this ever present war of transportation styles you ask? Well, let's just say if I had a dollar for every time some dick-for-brains called me a faggot while I rode clothed in Lycra's tight grasp I'd have enough dough for a couple Appletinis at the Blue Oyster down on Howell.

Moreover, aside from prodding homophobic twenty-somethings into hollering hate-speak ignorantly from their car windows, Spandex (or Lycra as it was later branded) has, as we all know, become the undisputed uniform of the recreational cyclist. Though it serves as a very functional garment as I explained above, it also serves, unfortunately, to define those that wear it...to put them firmly in the group we call "cyclist", to separate them, oil from water, from any other users of the road.

As I rambled in an earlier post, Spandex may have a negative effect on not just a driver's perception of those who wear it...but by simply donning the cycling kit, the Spandex hugging tightly the skin, a cyclist may subconsciously alter their perception of the auto/driver system, unknowingly change their demeanor toward something confrontational while riding. Pit them unaware against their fellow road users...

We the Consumer

With the bike now off the road for all intents and purposes as a mode of adult transportation...at home, but content minding the kids, teaching skills of balance and basic first aid, teaching that taking things apart is often easier than putting them back together again, teaching would-be engineers the finer points of ramp building and how to fix a flat tire...the paved streets and the automobile grew up together. Volumes of traffic code and regulations, speed limits, traffic flows, infrastructure, whole towns grew up around interstates...an entire auto-centric culture developed and flourished economically...this cannot be understated nor should it be demonized in hindsight.

During that growth, during that, dare I say, reign...there were no advocacy groups pushing for wider shoulders and bike lanes to accommodate a waning bicycle traffic. The car was affordable now and everybody wanted one and the convenience they offered, the speed, the power--seductive...who gave a crap, who was even thinking about the bike except the kids who owned them?

For decades this auto/road symbiosis went on. Bigger, longer, faster, year after year. Then a few things happened: Rachel Carson had a book published, OPEC was founded and began to exert its power, and America began to get fat.

Tit for Tat

Maybe there was some sibling rivalry through the early years, the good, healthy kind of sibling rivalry where, because of the friendly competition, bikes and cars became better machines together. Tit-for-tat.

The growth toward becoming better was far from equitable however. America was solidifying itself as the world’s hub of innovation and manufacture, and the car was on the fast track to celebrity with new ideas to make it safer and faster, popping into American dreams every time the sandman came peeking through the bedroom window. Braking, steering, and drive-train system advances pushed the auto industry forward while the bike remained stuck in time, the same chain-driven steel contraption it had always been, an alligator in a mammalian world.

Once the auto took off, ideas to make the bicycle better were few and far between. Instead, Daimler’s motor driven bicycle got a shot of attention as more gas tanks were bolted to top tubes, more engines replaced crank arms, and the motorcycle was developed with an auto-like fervor. The early years of the twentieth century saw many start-up companies cooking with this new fire; Indian, Excelsior, Pierce, and Merkel were just a few early chefs trying to find the tastiest recipe for motorcycle pie. In 1903, William Harley and his buddies Arthur and Walter Davidson hit on just the right blend of sugar and salt when they incorporated into the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. What a pie it was, I mean, talk about iconic Americana...how many companies are still even around from back then?

Even though they were destined for years of growth and an immutable place in American hearts, cars weren’t very popular in those early years on either end of the turn of the twentieth century. They just weren't affordable for the working man. But you didn’t have to be Henry Ford or Carnac the Magnificent to see where the future was heading and a few bicycle manufacturers, jumped ship and made the forward looking leap to auto production. That was where the money was. In fact, the first commercially successful safety bicycle invented by Englishman John Starley was called “the Rover”…yeah, that Rover–the very same company that eventually brought us the Land Rover…the legendary 4-wheel drive machine that was just as at home chasing prides of lions through Africa’s grasslands as it was plying the streets of London.

This is hugely important in understanding today's conflict. Very early on, before many roads (especially rural roads) had any pavement, before stop lights as we know them, speed limits, and traffic cops, We the People decided that the auto and motorization would be the standard-bearers of American transportation. Bicycles were pushed from the streets like the horse and carriage...eventually ending up, like the pedal car, no more than a children's toy.

That's the part of this history that's hard for a cyclist like myself to swallow. Roads grew and became the sweet, smooth riding, pavement they are today because of America's early growing interest in the automobile, not my beloved bicycle. Roads and cars grew up together...the bike? Stuck baby-sitting, minding the kids.

History

Heeding my...err...bike's advice I started to snoop around, do a little research, and found the following...

Early automobile history is fraught with controversy, patent disputes, and in-fighting...so wading into that soal too deep could be all-consuming, deadly and thick black bottom mud holding you fast, and still yield no actual truths.

I mean, knowing how subjective any history is, the quest for a past reality becomes more of a personal soul-search than a hunt for absolute facts. We believe what we want to believe, see what we want to see. It takes a very strong person to search for something, find that something counter to their established beliefs, and not dismiss it outright... cognitive dissonance hard at work. This being said, it's pretty obvious then that the brief history put forth in the pages that follow is knowingly arguable depending where in the argument you yourself stand...but, either way, it does make one step back and begin to frame a bigger picture of what I believe my bike wanted us to see.

Anyway...

Shortly after the word “bicycle” was being tossed around for the first time in the 1860’s, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing and Germany’s Gottlieb Daimler was dreaming of something bigger than mere pedals and leg power. His golden dreams eventually took a physical form with cylinders of cast iron and steel directing the work of oxygen, petroleum, and spark toward a final drive, together shaping the basic structure of the modern gas engine. Engines and motors of all shapes and fuels were popping up well before this, most notably the steam-driven and electric varieties, but in 1885 Herr Daimler was the first to patent the gas-driven design that set the precedent for today’s powerful, internal combustion engines. He was also one of the first (arguable of course) to slap an engine on a wooden framed bicycle, creating a motorcycle that same year.

In 1886, Daimler’s countryman Karl Benz got the first patent for the gas fueled car and these two, Daimler and Benz, eventually started making the precision machines of the now-legendary Mercedes-Benz.

What was known as the “safety bicycle” was patented in 1885 in England by a chap named John Kemp Starley. This was not the first “bike” in the world but became the template for modern bicycle design. Indeed if you were to put the very first safety bicycle next to the latest two-wheeled offering from any big-box superstore, they'd look strikingly similar.

The safety bicycle was preceded, most notably, by a couple of non-chain, mechanically driven machines in 1839 and 1863 and then, most famously, the evidently not-so-safe, high-wheeling, directly-driven penny-farthing in 1871, so called because it resembled those two disparate-sized coins laid side-by-side. These machines had front wheels better than 50 inches in diameter and mounting pegs above the rear wheels just to get up on the saddles. A modern "10-speed" road bike by comparison has wheels about half that size. Lord knows that isn’t safe, but, lots of folks rode them none-the-less.

Prior to those mechanically driven designs, the bike really had no propulsion system, some very early on even lacked a simple steering system, sporting just two wheels on either side of a seat that you pushed around scooter-style with your feet, like Fred and Wilma. The chain and sprockets of the safety bicycle made all of these other designs old-fashioned and eventually obsolete. Now with pedal power, chain driven torque, and a gear ratio, bicycles became utilitarian, a safe and efficient means of travel across Europe and the USA.

So, the gist of this historical babble, there was really only a year between the English invention of the safety bicycle and the German Karl Benz’s patent, and no difference between that and the 1885 Gottlieb Daimler invention of the modern gas engine.

You see, modern bikes and cars were born of the same Victorian era inventiveness from a marriage of pure necessity to move faster about the landscape and the organic human ambition to build, to invent, that which is only dreamt of or imagined; to bring into the real that which only exists in the mind. Bikes and cars? Heck, these were fraternal twins destined to change the world as we knew it.

She Left Me

I woke up this morning and with the usual rigamarole got ready to seize the day. Carpe Diem and a load of dirty clothes I went out to the laundry room, that's when I saw it. The letter--written very neat and tidily, scroll-like, on a sheet of blue-paper shop towel. The black ink looked and smelled like a mix of WD-40 and old chain grease.

It said simply:

Dear Jerry,

I'm leaving you. Learn some history so the next bike you pedal can have some respect for her rider and won't mind so much a sweaty ass on her seat.

Best of luck,

Bike


Holy crap! My bike is gone and wasn't stolen...she just...left me. Is it crazier to think my bike just left me under her own free will, or that I am actually going to heed her advice left on a paper towel scrawled in old chain grease?

I've got to learn some history...

The Bike Speaks

My bike told me to "screw-off" this morning.

She then went on about "how crap my behavior" becomes when I ride; that things were "fine" between bikes and cars long before I threw a leg over a top tube...long before even my grandpa got his hands oily tinkering with his first greasy two-wheeler. That we "fleshy, civilized, bipeds", gripping handlebars or steering wheels, have gone and screwed up a perfectly good thing.

Just what "thing" was she talking about?

I flipped her off with a dismissive "Pfff", she said "typical", then called  me a "pig".

                              I've got to get to the bottom of this.

Civil War

A large black limo comes to a stop at a light at 7th and H Streets, downtown Washington. A cyclist pulls up and puts a foot down to the right of the big Lincoln as two men begin to talk in the plush, leather backseat.

“This bike thing is getting out of control. It’s blowing up in our faces and starting to affect the election. Polls are pointing the wrong way for us. We need a plan, tell me you’ve got one? What’s the plan, how are we going to handle this?” Said the governor, panic in his voice.

“I don’t think it’s quite time to panic yet Governor. Sure there’s some backlash from the environmentalists, but they complain about everything and going green is red hot right now. I think with some artful spin we’ll be able to head it off at the pass, maybe even turn the tides to our advantage.”

“Go on…I’m listening.”

“There is a movement, even a strong movement yes, among cycling advocates and greenies, all demanding equal rights and more room on the street–everything from bike lanes and ‘Share the Road’ signs to green ways and converted rail lines. And sure, building these infrastructures will create jobs, and having people out of their cars will help lower health care costs and bring communities together in a way not seen since the 1870s…but…”

“But what? Put it that way and I’ll go by a bike right now. Driver, to Walmart as quick as you can; Jim here has me needing a new Schwinn. Come on, what are we going to do? The polls are telling me that I cannot win this election maintaining that bikes belong in the dirt and cannot join autos on the road. But if I flip on this I’ll just look weak. I can’t flip, I won’t flip. The hard-line appeals to the base, that’s who I need to stick with. The base is where we get our strength–but they lack the numbers to be sure we’ll win this thing.”

“Stop worrying sir, we won’t flip. We’ll make it look like there is no problem… that there is no conflict, or better yet, if there is one, it has nothing to do with cycling and autos, but is more about just being human. It wouldn’t matter what people are doing or riding, driving, or walking, that the fact is that they just naturally war with each other.”

“You may be onto something, Jim; there are two forces at work here and two angles we can come from. Human nature being naturally at war with each other, and–cyclists making the whole thing up, making themselves out to be the victim but they perpetuate and exacerbate the problem by not following the established rules.”

“And wearing goofy clothes.” Smiling and nodding toward the window.

“Yes, and wearing goofy clothes.”

“They are the bad ones, inventing a problem, growing and nurturing the problem with their disobedience, and then insisting on a solution for their own gain at the taxpayers’ expense.”

“All we want to do is keep the status quo. Roads are for cars. What’s wrong with that?”

“This is really about interpretation… that’s how we have to frame it. Cyclists interpret the problem in the street as human-caused, as a social issue, fueled by bike haters and decades of auto-domination on the streets. A real fight for equality, for equal rights among cars...real bleeding heart kind of stuff that, of course, appeals to the left. The truth is, this phenomenon is totally natural and it wouldn’t matter if there were no cars at all and everyone was on a bike. Human nature would dominate and cyclists would be venting their road rage on other cyclists just like cats and dogs.”

“Now we’re talking…I need you to find every clip out there of cyclists fighting with each other. Scour the internet, YouTube must have dozens of them. We’ll buy the rights and repost them according to our needs.”

“Can we make a civil war out of this thing governor?”

“We will make a civil war out of this thing.”

“Look at her, standing there, all gussied up in her Spandex. Why do they wear that crap anyway? Doesn’t she know it makes her ass look big?”

The light turns green.

Third Party Arbitration

I was on a ride just the other day spinning down a nice wide street west of town. There were cars around but not too many as to cause competition for space. It was enjoyable really. Up ahead, a group of ducks that had been milling around a roadside ditch began to waddle their way across the road causing what little traffic there was, myself included, to stop and wait. I smiled as I watched the group awkwardly go along and looked up long enough to see the solitary driver stopped in the other lane smiling as well. Our eyes met and in that instant we were one and the same. Just two users of the road brought together by a group of ducks who happened to point out that fact, that we are one-in-the-same, by taking a slow and single-file march across the road we usually call our own.

The Mantra

There are two things that need to be done to fix this "groupism". First, realize its presence in everyday life, this is mindfulness, then broaden your definition to be more inclusive…you need a bigger group. 

Make the group you share big enough and you’ll have no group at all; all will be one, the crooked tree–straight, the cyclist–just another user of the road. Mindfulness is what we have to practice if we are to become the humanity we imagine and dream of...dare I say, the humanity we pretend to be.

So that's what I've been working on lately, expanding my group. Making a conscious effort, whether behind the bars of my bike or behind the steering wheel of my truck, to actually say to myself "just another user of the road" when I see poor behavior in the street. It really helps by keeping this noggin of mine present. Keeping me from short circuiting my power of reason...keeping me in control of these often wicked thoughts and associated emotions.

Try it out, tell me what you think. I'd particularly like to hear from self professed road ragers. Does it work for driver on driver conflict?  

MH

Knucklehead On a Bike Part 2

That incident in the intersection and my reaction to it gets to the very heart of my argument and the whole point of this blog. At the moment I witnessed the so-called knucklehead, my mind was firmly in the group "Motorists" and that guy on the bike...well, undoubtedly, firmly in the group "Cyclists"...how do I know? Because I've been there, many-a-time, in both groups.

When I'm in my truck and see someone sneak through a light just after it turns red or make a turn without signaling, I notice...but I don't have the urge to chase them down and verbally bitch-slap them like I might when I see a cyclist do it something similar. Why? Because the other car is part of my tribe, part of my group when I identify myself as a motorist sitting behind the steering wheel.

Now it starts to get weird...when I throw a leg over my single-speed townie bike in my street clothes to do some errands around the big metropolis of Bishop, CA, I don’t feel like a cyclist. I'm on a bike, sure, but don’t define myself as a cyclist in this instance; my group-view is just as it is when I'm driving, a motorist, and I do my best to follow traffic laws just as I would if I was in my Ford F-150.

And now it gets a bit crazy...when I throw a leg over my race bike, shave my legs, and don my spandex cycling kit, I change into a different beast entirely. I identify myself as a "Cyclist" and I wholly, consciously and subconsciously, become a part that group and all-together separate from the group "Motorist" yet using the very same road.

I become the cyclist that sees the road as a limited resource, a creek full of fish, and begin to compete. There is even an accompanying feeling of somehow being a freedom fighter that courses through my veins as I ply the streets, at odds with the imperial, subverting, car driving motorist. Seizing lane space not because I have to, to ride safely, but because of a strange feeling of obligation to “teach” motorists to share, show them that cyclists belong here as much as they do. I don't think twice about blowing through stop signs or distractedly screwing with my playlist; cars are viewed as adversarial--and their rules? Their motorist rules just don't apply to me. In short, I act like the very knucklehead I described above.

What the hell is going on here? Am I a madman? No. In either case, whether I'm pissy with a road-hogging cyclist, or fighting for road space clad in spandex, it's all very automated and subconscious. It's my primate brain doing what it's always done and trying to keep me safe. Literally, worlds are colliding, the present and the ancient past, right there and I really have to pay attention, be mindful, of what's going on in my head or else I get all caught up in the senseless roadside drama.

More to come...

MH

Knucklehead On a Bicycle Part 1

I saw this guy the other day, on a bike, seemingly following traffic laws, which was a good thing and something everyone who rides a bike should strive to do. Not because traffic laws always fit perfectly to riding a bike on the road, they sometimes don't, but because doing so helps keep the peace. Violating traffic laws, running stop signs and the like, merely pulls a pin on a potential hand grenade.

Since I've been so obsessed over this asphalt dynamic lately I laid off the gas to watch this guy and his performance as he approached the biggest intersection in town (yeah, I know, I live in a small town, there is but one biggest intersection believe it or not). This intersection is so big if you can imagine, that it even has a left turn lane complete with a left arrow light to guide you on your way!

Okay, so this cyclist came over from the right shoulder in the northbound lane, as he should have, crossed two lanes of highway and came to stop behind three cars waiting in this left turn lane to go west onto the mountains. In a few seconds, the red arrow predictably turns bright green...and what does my impatient, spandex clad friend do? He out accelerates, out sprints if you will, the three cars in front of him and passes them on the left, in the intersection, as they were turning.

My switch flipped. WTF!  I was trying to admire a responsible cyclist and then this...a real slap inmy motorist face.  One minute driving along, then the next minute I was gripping and shaking the steering wheel like I’m trying to subdue a boa constrictor that found it's way into my trucks cab. Then I caught myself, began running those thoughts of vehicular manslaughter through my rational brain, and calmed down. Mindfulness thankfully at work.

In my experience, the vigilante justice dished out on the street to an errant cyclist is often ill befitting of the crime, a felony conviction for the likes of jay walking. At times, it reeks of middle school, of the schoolyard, and the bullying that had me thrown in a big green dumpster more than once during recess. This guy, however, really crossed the line in my opinion and should have been ticketed somehow. Aside from the rule breaking, every driver there that day that witnessed that stupidity has a bad taste for cyclists thanks to his actions.

Let’s be honest. What are you really saying to the driver of an auto when you run a stop sign right past a guy who was looking both ways long before you were there? It’s like saying a big “Screw You Buddy!” that’s what, and it’s just not right in the moral sense. Why wouldn't he be pissed? It’s like continually goading your overweight coworker about his morning cruller until he snaps while you fill up your mug at the office coffee pot and socks you one, squarely in your big, fat mouth. What did you expect?

Stay tuned...

MH

A Flipping Switch

With all the conventions going on I thought I'd wax political...

“Senator, Senator, Dave Mandel from Cycling Reviewer. Your view of ‘Don’t ask, Don’t Tell’ is well known, as is your firm belief that marriage should be solely between one man and one wom–”

“Yes, yes David, I am quite the conservative on the social issues” interrupts the senator.

“Yes, you are that, Senator; you are that. I wonder if I could get you to speak to another powerful social issue. Your opponent, Governor McHassel, recently came out in support of bicycles sharing the road with automobiles. Where do you stand, or should I ask where do you ride, on this, err…cranky social issue?”

“Great question, a timely one, and I welcome the opportunity to discuss this heaviest of subjects with the American people. I myself am not a cyclist so must speak from what’s in my heart and in my gut.”

 “Honestly, cycling in the roadway, or more to the point, cyclists who ride their bikes in the roadways of this Country simply do not belong. The road is for autos, motor-cycles, public transportation, and the vital trucking commerce that keeps this economy on the top of an ever-more competitive, increasingly diverse, global economic battlefield.”

“To ride in these roads, these arteries if you will, impeding the life’s blood of the American economy is akin to clogging those arteries with too much fried food and cholesterol. This Country will not have clogged arteries! Cycling in the road, quite frankly, is…un-American…and costing this economy precious jobs in a time when those jobs are needed more than ever.”

“As President, I will work with Congress to keep cyclists where they belong, off the road, in the dirt, with the wildlife, the turtles, and the deer.”

Boy if anything can flip my switch from rational human to reactive primate it's politics...or religion. Surely that's why we're told, if we want to remain polite, not to talk about either of them. But sometimes it just comes out, sometimes someone will say something contrary to what I believe and BAM!, KA-POW!, like a freaking light switch I'm thinking things like--How #*&$% ignorant can you be?  My neurons bypass any rationalizing circuitry and turn my normally cool demeanor into a frothing, raging, whack-job. Short circuited into lunacy, caught up in a moment that I'm not fully processing. We've all been there. I'd much prefer reserving such reaction for things like grabbing a hot pan, running from killer bees, or leaping from the jaws of a hungry alligator, but not a simple discussion, and especially not simple discussion on a topic that really needs to be calmly discussed in this day and age, in this country of ours...politics and religion.  
What can we do about it though? A Xanax scrip for everyone? Hmmm. No. Maybe we can never get rid of the short entirely, but surely we can temper it...I believe mindfulness is the key.