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.

Groups and competition

I have so much I want to share with you that I'm really struggling with where to begin...maybe then, twenty thousand years ago or so. 

Picture yourself in a little valley, a grassy clearing in the middle surrounded by majestic trees of all sort and variety. A rambling brook with smooth and slippery rocks, running through your small village, began its downward run sitting in a big, spring-fed lake well up into the hills to the side the sun rises on. This brook regularly provides a few fish and cold drink for your parched palate back from a long day. The smell is familiar, earthy, strong, dampened leaves  from a recent drizzle. You're at  home here, you and the others in your tribe. The sounds the forest casts, the babble of the riffles, the birdsong, it all makes perfect sense to your ears, it is familiar and comforting.

This morning, however, you awake to a new noise entirely. Splash! You peek to see a large bird has found a perch on a snag of a tree just downstream of your clay-floored hovel. In it's talons, a fresh fish plucked from your creek lays motionless, the sun's warm rays reflecting golden off its wet and scaly form. 

There is no hesitation on your part, no thoughts of how beautiful this animal is, how rare it may be, no reflection on why it's there, or where it came from, or some empathy for it's hunger that you know all too well. Your only thought, as you reach for your bow and an arrow, is that this thief has taken a fish from your creek, a fish that would have done you and your tribe much better in your own bellies, shared over this morning's fire.

Pulling hard against the protesting wood fibers of the bow, you draw back the sinew bowstring to your cheek, a task you've done a thousand times before, take careful aim, and let the arrow fly. 

The arrow arcs with a parabolic grace, the beast spreads it's wings in a defiant show of superior  reaction time, but it's still too late...the arrow finds its mark, the big bird slumps on its perch, pierced broadside by knapped flint and wood, falling in a slow pirouette to the ground, the fish still clutched tightly in its hunter's grasp.  

What am I saying here? That we've always just killed for a wanton, trophy, blood-lust...cavemen on African safari? That we've always been at odds with our environment? No, of course not, what I'm illustrating is simple competition...competition for resources, competition for food. 

This fact of competing was what life as an early human or hominid was all about. Our life expectancy for millenia was a mere twenty-six years, with our sole hope to stay upright long enough to lay down next to...to impart our haploid selves onto, hopefully into, an accepting member of the opposite sex. Coho Salmon we were for heaven's sake...doing our best to survive in the oceans fierce depths, avoiding bigger fish and toothy Pinnipeds just to fight our way up an icy cold and bear laden stream to finally...find...release...then die. Pretty simple really...thank you Charles Darwin...if we were savvy enough to make it to sexual maturity then our genes were deemed a quality that could be passed along.

Today, in this the twenty-first century with all it's healthcare and sanitary improvements, this need to compete is still with us as strong as ever. We group ourselves for strength, a simple tribe or a million member trade union, trying to gain an edge on those willing to oppose us. We won't hesitate to draw our figurative bows on a competing assembly bill or would-be law that infringes on our blessed bennies, just as my theoretic tribesman drew death on a fish-thieving eagle. 

Alliteration aside, this explains a lot. Coupled with current theories in social psychology (which I'll attempt to explain in later posts), our very evolution may be the culprit to blame for the bicycle-automobile conflict in the streets, the proverbial fox in the hen house. Moreover, if this indeed holds true, the question then becomes, can we overcome this artifact in a lifetime, or are we doomed to lash out in uncontrolled rage anytime we're challenged?

MH