New Year and where to?

Physics students get a bit annoyed when they learn that an object moved back to its original location has a displacement of zero. No work. Yet that's what a commute is. Hopefully an uneventful round trip. There is: joy, temporary connection to the life of the planet going on past your window, some increase in fitness, and a sense of accomplishment, but there is no work. I'm unlikely to ride the rest of this week, so for the year I traveled 3082-some-odd miles by bike, total displacement - zero.

I was listening to a "great course" on tape (one of the old testament studies) just to study what I normally don't consider. One analysis is straight out of folklore study- what story pattern does this biblical story fit. I remember reading once that Cinderella belonged to a folk tale group (step mother, challenge, wicked step sisters...) that had hundreds of variations. The old testament's most memorable stories come down to a handful, travel on a mission..., meeting women at a well..., the actual details become important as the plot. To understand you need to note what is said and what is left out. One of the most difficult passages, the binding of Issac, is a trip to wherever. For three days they walk to get there, but don't seem to have a goal. Christmas is a travel story, but the destination isn't the point. Everyone seems up and wandering about, peregrinations seem detailed, the long stretches of home and stability for anyone (take long lived Abraham for example) don't warrant a note while trips to Egypt, travel to the mountain, settling again elsewhere all are detailed. Travel is vital, travel to a particular place doesn't matter.

Safe travels in 2010.

Time to post

I haven't posted, though it feels like I've been biking more than last year. The new bike had a big bang-up. I sneezed and went off the road just where there was a drop off of about 4-6 inches and a small cement post to keep cars from skidding off into a bog. I was unhurt (snapping out of the pedals was apparently not a problem) but the front wheel and fork were totaled. Turns out there is also a few scrapes and a ding on the down tube.

Its back thanks to Gary at Southcoast Cycling it is back with the fork and wheel from Rocky Mountain. I am not a light waif and must have hit at around 24 mph so I doubt that any frame would have survived. In the back of my head, however, I'm developing a distrust of aluminium. The front tube with the ding reminds me of an aluminum can, can these seriously withstand the bruises of a cyclocross track?

There are turkeys in that field. They are there almost every time I go by. I doubt I'd have noticed in a car. Can you see them? They are just above the rear pannier.

To Soule Homestead and back

A lane for humans

Lovely daughter, 7, noticed the wide lanes on Clinton Street in Concord NH (formerly a bike lane when I was growing up) and declared it to be "A lane for humans"

Indeed

Art

A wonderful video stumbled upon when I saw her "thoughts from my bicycle"
Seems relevant to the post awhile ago about art (Note one of her first lines in the art manifesto is that great art requires great bike rides)

Family bike ride

With stops at Uncle Jon's and Hiller Farm for the stokers.

Peas and Bike Riding

Went to the MFA in Boston with the kids and friends. Two huge baby heads face out from the Fenway side. I thought about how that person might have been trying to express the depth of feeling and joy about seeing a baby born. Perhaps they agonized over how to exhibit and re-experience this sublime experience and struggled to make 15 foot baby heads. It occured to me alot of art is like that, trying for a feeling you could get by eating peas straight out of the garden and having a good bike ride.

I'm still here

It's probably healthy that I've been distracted and couldn't post. I've biked more as the weather has improved. I crossed 2000 miles sometime two weeks ago (I actually paid attention to when - it was May 11th on the way home, right near the last field in Middleboro, right before the Rochester line.

I also meant to write about the amazing aroma at the corner of Burgess and the Marion Road/ Neck Road. Never would have noticed it on a car. But that was May 7th, and now its gone. Its amazing the cacophony of songs that are happening, though each day has its star: one cloudy morning last week it was wood thrush . Today it was dominated by woodpeckers drumming.

There have been break ins along the route. Pretty much the entire commute through the area (Mary's pond, Alley Road, Neck Road....all the side of Rochester I bike through) I remember thinking the area had a certain unfriendliness to it (with chains and gates in driveways), now I understand how rural it is, yet easily accessible from the more crowded areas. They need more activity, more people out, more folks biking through.

Winter bliss

Ok, so I get into a trance and I find myself chugging along while my head is moving down some other track. Not exactly automatic pilot, but close. We went to see a Tibetan choir in New Bedford, apparently in Tibetan monasteries the head monks occasionally clap or ring sharp bells while questioning novices. It gets them out of their introspective heads and living and answering in the moment. I was chugging along on some long train of thought, thinking how I had said hello to five humans and at least one dog that day. It seemed unusual to see so many people out and about in the winter. Though, of course in was nice to say hi to someone, I don't do that in a car... then again there is all this muck and cloud and cold. Yeesh, there was this icky, grimy snow goo on the side to look forward to the whole way home. And was it me or did it always turn cloudy coming home...

HONK - just then a pick up truck blasts me with the horn. No reason visible, just nasty. Or perhaps he was a Buddhist master and getting me to respond in this moment. Oh look, grasshopper, there are maple syrup buckets. Namaste.



edit - see http://www.bicyclemeditations.org/road.html

Managed to go twice again this week. Car troubles helped a bit. I made the mistake of letting some air out (to aid in gripping the road). I was in a rush and just guessed. It was like biking in on sand. Turns out my quick seeming "swisssh" let the pressure down to around 20 psi (from max of 110). I went slower than when I was sick last week and quite nearly wound up crawling the last mile.

Finally back at it...

Went twice this week. Did a shake down ride over school break and felt comfortable. My dear wife got me some merino wool undies, alas they are getting too warm. It is a miracle, they don't stink 1/2 as much (or they have a bit of a odor, but its not body odor, left over lanolin?) Thurs. I got the tummy problems my family had and I crawled home (heaved later at night). I'm home on a sick day now.

Spectacular light on the various slush and lightly iced ponds and cranberry lagoons on the way in. Still feeling a bit rushed so I didn't take pictures, but will remember the colors rippling off the ice around the dark silhouettes of geese hunkered down in the twilight.

Don't ignore the squeals

Haven't been riding for a long time. Snow and ice and my 27 in x 1.25 tires didn't seem up to the task. Now, I'm trying again. Could have gone twice this week had I played more with the mechanics.

Monday I got going nearly on time and there was an odd thunking sound by the time I about 2 miles away. Turns out the bolt holding the rear rack (with the panniers), brake and fenders decided to come undone. Couldn't just re-attach easily, decided to peddle home (only 2 miles out). Thought I fixed it but didn't do the test ride. Today left and there was a squeak, the clip holding up the rear fender was rubbing on the tire. Less than a 1/10 of a mile I tried fiddling, but it appears I'll need to redo the bolt again.

Why?

Why do I ride? Should I be riding more given pressures to keep up at tasks at work and home? As I've noted in the previous post on miles I pop over to the car in mornings that are hectic or iffy with weather.

I'm realizing that I've only half committed to this idea, admitting the relatively small goal biking to work only anonymously on a blog. And although I have this small goal (2 times a week on average) I don't have a clear view of the reason why I have this goal. Perhaps writing will help me figure it out, for I've noticed that I give up on things that don't seem to fit my outlook and values, or appear not to at the time.

What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
- Ezra Pound

So, why ride? There is the cheapness that is the origin of this blog. Don't think cheap is a bad thing. It means efficient, saving resources (both money and non-renewable energy sources). I'm not alone, the environmental/stewardship/saving money enters into the thoughtful Minuscar project and what seems like a horde of middle aged males who blog about biking instead of driving like You don't want to; crazy bike commuter, MN bike commuter. Admittedly I think this may have been the driving factor that caused me and others to drag out bikes when gas prices were at $4 a gallon. But I'm not sure this is what is keeping me going. Consider that I've still spent more on bike gear than I have saved on gas (partly because gas prices have gone down). The direct environmental benefits (less carbon, less non renewable fuel used) seem to be pretty slow to add up. But they are adding up. Plus, the more practiced and fit my legs get, the more I'll ride. I'm guessing I'm 30-40 pounds more than I ought to be and getting rid of any portion of that ought to help. But the impact on the environment may not be directly from the miles ridden and more though the changes in perspective, ability to think clearly, and to be inspired.

Lets consider the inspiration others have (as found on the web:)
I read the incredible adventures of a newspaper writer and biker Jill Homer in Alaska and she seems driven to bike, convincing me as I read that she is enjoying subzero challenges and slogging through fluffy snow. She is training towards a goal, being fit for racing. I have some more enthusiasm on days I ride. While my health, or at least my weight, is improving I'm not sure that is the main reason keeping me going. But exercise hasn't really motivated me, look at my gut to prove this.

Is it the challenge from an individual ride? A mountain climber once said it was worth climbing nearby hills as "You can't feel bad about your self when you're climbing." This might be part physical sensation - a "runner's high"?

Biking is unlike other transportation like flying in a plane, or zipping around in a car. YOU are achieving something. You are doing the moving. The bike includes us:

Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds.
The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient
Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own.

Louis J. Helle, Jr.

To bike is to accomplish something yourself. Travel by bike for its own sake Kent Peterson's Three Hour Tour post. He says it well:

Our devices capture mathematics in metal, casting abstract ratios in solid cogs and chains. Hard roads yield to soft rubber and the resiliency of captured air. Our legs don't pound, they spin. We need not walk or crawl, for we roll with a strength so smooth it seems like flying. Our simple machines, machines that cannot even stand alone without us, come to life when we balance on saddles and dance on pedals and reward us by taking us farther, faster, than we could ever go alone.

I get to ride such a machine three hours each day going back and forth to work.

A thrilling feeling, but is enough to accept traveling to work at a slower pace as opposed to just biking on the weekend for sport? Why commute slowly? Just to save additional time at the gym? I'm not sure I'm that thoughtful about my time management.

There is much poetic moments noticed by others on the web: Ecovelo has a category of "amazing little things" seen during a commute that would have been missed when driving, making the everyday full of wonder and small bits of joy. Rick Smith's Yehuda Moon comic is all about love of biking, look through all the archived comics for the engaging characters and story but I like this and this or this or this. While a given ride can't guarantee such moments of insight they do have their pull.

From Bike Route

Finally there is the sense of moving in an awesome landscape as opposed to driving by it and just seeing it. I've thought of how people pay to take tours through the area I'm bike in every morning and afternoon. There are plenty of marks on the road from the Narragansett Bay Wheelmen and the Coalition for Buzzards Bay watershed ride. Hundreds of people go out of their way to carve our time (and finances) to pursue a recreational visit to where I commute. I am beginning to understand the draw. Its not just the little details, but the overall feeling and experience. I have gone back to my longer ride home through Hiller Farm as it is just so much more spectacular than the shorter, suburban trip through Rock Village (still a nice New England village and a pleasant ride). I feel a part of the open spaces more than the many private house lots. The lift from the brilliant afternoon light as I go by the old farms and open fields and crossing Snipituit pond is something that constantly rewards a visit. All it means is a few more miles and minutes. Its funny, but I don't feel moved to go the same route by car, then I just want to get home. In the car I don't experience the environment, I experience a ride in the car.

From New bike pictures

This is the difference that seems most important to me at the moment. My commute is no longer really a commute of 20 minutes changed to 60 minutes. It is not a time period, it is a journey into and through the land. On the most basic level it is one of the few times I'm doing something outside during the school year. What use to be living in a place if you don't choose to be out in it? I am not passing through the area that is an obstacle between home and work. I'm part of this wide community (both human and natural) and I'm living here.

Mile drop

338.8 mileage in September 2008
318.2 mileage in October 2008
322.6 mileage for Nov 2008
133.7 mileage for Dec 2008

I had some issues with ripping out my valve trying to reduce the pressure. Icy and crusty roads were a problem in December (I don't have a winter set up) and this was the first week I could have gone more days, but Friday illustrates my problem. On Friday I was delayed as son climbed into bed (he had a fever as it turned out) and a mysterious oil smell needed investigation (and a call to the oil folks). I needed to get home early due to a bank appointment, which would have been cut close with the bike. In short I felt like a lot of excuses presented themselves and I took them. I need to really think about what is motivating me to ride, as I find it enjoyable, but is it powerful enough to claw its way through all the other things in life?

Next post perhaps.