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. 

Resource competition

So here we are, modernity, the cutting edge, tablets and smart phones. No more relying on the creek for breakfast, most of us instead a slave to the grocery store and the frozen and processed foods inside. The bow long gone, we hunt these days with shopping carts and debit cards.

While nobody's shooting fish-thieving eagles in the isles of the local Safeway or Stater Brothers, that biological urge that helped keep us safe for so many thousands of years by instinctively fighting off rivals threatening to swipe our limited resources is still with us lurking in the oldest parts of our primate brain. Hardwired and instinctive...you can take the caveman out of the cave but you can't take the cave out of the caveman. Or at least, a few thousand years of civilization isn't nearly enough time to undo such a thing. Even then, there'd have to be some benefit gained from a non-competing altruism that would allow those who lack the this urge to proliferate...to live long and prosper and erase those genes responsible for our monkey-fighting clean from our genetic code. All this is moot anyway that fossil is still here today deep within us all (still fun to think about...I mean, if we didn't fight, would we still be human? Whoa.)

Cavemen didn't live alone, those that tried surely entered the food chain a few links lower than most. So as a result, those like-minded folks that grouped together naturally, finding strength in numbers, lived longer, ensuring it was their genes that got a spot in the modern human genome.  Now days, what used to be tribes and family groups are the the likes of the AARP or the Tea Party.

These groups, just as their ancient cousins, get along just fine with each other until...until they feel a threat to their status quo. Until there is, again, competition for a limited resource be it something tangible or just an ideal, a way of life. Until uncle Sam wants to cut Medicare. Then watch out as septuagenarians everywhere go digging through their stashed hoards for half-century old boxing gloves, rusting nine irons, or pitch-forks...or at least rally in preparation for battle on the first Tuesday in November. While the struggle isn't literally life or death these days, it often times feels that way if you are in the thick of it and, what's more, fighting for it gives you purpose (a whole other can of worms).  


From pro-choice vs. pro-life to a much broader liberalism vs. conservatism fighting for a monopoly on America’s compass, control of the reins, and the direction we go as a nation, group on group fighting is everywhere you look these days. These latter two groups have become as disparate as the wheels on an old penny-farthing, both thinking they’re the big wheel up front, yet they forget they’re still part of the same machine that needs to function for us to move forward as “One Nation, under God”.

That's the idea I want to talk about, that's what I want to discuss here. I want to frame the road as a resource that's indeed being fought over, especially in America, with hopes of, and ideas for, a solution once we see this big picture.

In America, we long ago decided that the roads were a place for cars and their motored-like alone. A group formed called "motorists" that took the road-resource as their own. When bicycles and the group "cyclists", decades prior removed from the roadways, tried to come back to the road be it for the commute, recreation, or necessity, that ancient and subconscious instinct kicked in on both sides. Motorists perceived cyclists as a threat to their status quo as cyclists sought to poach a little asphalt with which to belong...and the old bows drew back again, not entirely under our conscious control.