As a Sunday School kid in the 1960s, I was told, in simple terms a child could grasp, that the world would be destroyed by fire. We'd had the flood. Our loving creator had been there, done that. It was going to be fire next time. We were Episcopalians. We didn't speak in tongues, or handle snakes. We spoke in the sonorous, stately phrasing of the 1928 prayer book. The Apocalypse was theoretical. But the theme was fire.
It seemed obvious in the 1960s that fire meant nuclear holocaust. I remember walking to first grade, or in various neighborhoods, past the big yellow sirens on poles, wondering if today was the day I would hear them go off, and have to remember what sort of shelter gave me the best odds of survival. Fire was coming.
Here we are, some sixty years later. The world is indeed being destroyed by fire, but it's millions of fires, in internal combustion vehicles, combustion-based electrical generating facilities, the heat islands of paved and built up urban areas, the smoky fires of poor people, jet engines, sprawling industrial complexes, and humble kitchen stoves. And more, of course. The air conditioner we run to survive the heat waves that sweep over us is making the problem worse, when multiplied millions of times.
Fire fed the creation of the humble bicycle, once it progressed beyond a walking aid carved out of wood. Other transportation machines had used the wheel and the lever to navigate the inclined planes of the travel ways built for them, but the bicycle pulled together all of the essential elements into a device once described as the perfect mechanism for transforming human effort into forward motion.
To get us to the small fires of brazing torches, ore had to be mined and refined, smelted, forged, cast, whatever, to produce tubes and the joints that connect them into a steel frame. Everything that humans make changes a material from its found form to the form we find useful. How damaging that is to the environment depends on the scale. Steel went out of fashion as the 20th Century ended, which has made it very fashionable indeed with a niche audience. Your hard-core technolemming wants carbon fiber now, although the ones with limited budgets settle for aluminum. But the modern bicycle began with steel tubing.
Here in the prosperous United States of America, bicyclists are an unpopular minority. Roughly six percent of the US population rides a bike according to statistics from 2022. That figure included people who only ride once a year, so the actual percentage of regular users is definitely lower. Seems hard to believe if you're in one of those areas teeming with riders, like popular paths, urban areas, or mountain biking destinations. Venture outside of those circles and the road gets very lonely. If all of those riders stopped today, no one would miss us except the businesses that sell us equipment and service the machines.
At this point, someone reading this might leap in to share statistics about how bikeable and walkable communities see improved local retail income along with the better quality of life that comes when you push the noisy, stinky armored vehicles of the perpetually irritable to the periphery. Those perpetually irritable people in their motorized vehicles are the majority. They don't live in a world of retail statistics. They live in their cars. They vote for people who say it should be legal to run over crowds of distressed fellow citizens misguidedly trying to draw attention to social problems by blocking roadways.
Since mountain biking bloomed and faded, forever mutating the bike industry into a cynical syndicate bent only on separating the gullible from their money, the only thing that has made the purchase of a two-wheeler wildly popular has been the addition of a motor. More fire.
The fire isn't just physical flames and heat. It's also in the constant undercurrent of irritation that flows through most of us. I was going to say all of us, but there must be someone out there who feels only benevolence all the time. What an idiot! Only kidding. Anyone who can sustain that is a remarkable human being just as susceptible to thirst, heat stroke, a punch in the face, or bullet as any of the rest of us, but nonetheless a vessel of light.
Meanwhile, at work, I get to deal with some of the minor architects of destruction of the American Experiment, at both the individual voter level and the moderate donor level. They are nearly always very pleasant people, often complimentary. Indeed, last week a woman came in with her son's bike. She was sincerely pleasant, and very understanding of the challenges facing a small business and a specialty service provider. Her family owns a tree service that reportedly does excellent work for extremely reasonable prices. I ride past their house frequently. I don't think they know that the guy on the bike riding by is the guy at the bike shop, so they have no incentive to be extra nice for favors. We don't exchange greetings, but they don't throw anything, yell anything, or let their dogs chase me. On their garage door is a fresh new banner that says "Trump 2024: Fuck Your Feelings."
At a higher level of culpability in the increasing heat, a certain guy representing the state of Utah after serving as governor of Massachusetts voted as a senator for conservative justices on the Supreme Court who perjured themselves to get confirmed and have been gutting the Constitution ever since. He comes in like a regular vacationer to get his annual flat tire fixed. He's just a regular guy who likes buzzing around the lake in various forms of motor boat, and lining up for ice cream at one of the iconic local shops. I never recognize him at first glance, dressed down, hair awry. He never says "fuck your feelings."
Another family with Utah connections, rather big in the hotel business, is quite fond of us, including me. I have done a lot of bike work for them over the decades, and done it well, because that's always my intent. The bike industry has made it harder and harder to feel good about my job, but I try to do whatever can be done to the highest standards. It was easier when I felt some actual desire to own high-end equipment.The high end is just vastly more expensive ephemeral garbage now. I loathe it, and recommend only things that I think will make the badly designed and cheesily built crap work a little better for a little longer than the life span of a chipmunk. But I digress.
The hotel family has recently invested heavily in local businesses they have enjoyed over their many years as summer residents, and donated hefty sums from their charitable foundations to support our cross-country ski trails. We were commiserating over the steady decline in snow cover. One of them even mentioned global warming. But their voting behavior has prioritized tax cuts and deregulation for decades. Will that change now? And would it be too little, too late?
The majority of people in our area have voted for the fire, time and again. We even have a punk asshole in a noisy truck rolling coal this summer. He blew a cloud at me as I rode up Main Street in the final quarter mile of my morning commute one day in June. I had to laugh. Northern New England is always years behind in fad and fashion. But it also fed my own fire of frustration. Even though I knew that humans were going to destroy themselves, probably within my lifetime, I hoped that they would prove me wrong. I still wouldn't have had kids, because life is pain, and all the joy of it is just making the best of the situation once you're here. But people are here, and keep putting more of themselves here. I was determined to leave the world no worse than I had already made it by existing at all, and by my unwitting cruelty during a shamefully sustained adolescence. All around me I see people determined to make as big a smoking crater as they can, and saying "fuck your feelings" to anyone who begins to stutter a word of advice to the contrary.
Muzzle flashes are fire. Each one burns into the public consciousness, raising the emotional temperature toward general combustion. We have one last chance to vote against the fire. Even then, the fire will resist. A coal fire in Pennsylvania has been burning underground since about 1962. Fire in all its forms wants to consume us. Maybe it's just unstoppable physics. The universe itself expands and contracts on an immense cycle. Maybe each time it reaches the point of producing conscious life it collapses on itself to start again. The motes of consciousness have their moment to believe that they have significance, and to value individual existence, even as each mote willingly consigns others to destruction for various imperfections. "Do what I want or I'll kill you," has been popular for centuries. In my neighborhood I see the flags of the proudly armed and dangerous, including at least one all black, signifying "no quarter asked or given." Pretty bold assertion from someone living in a prefab dwelling you could probably shoot through with a decent quality air rifle. But you can't have a war if you get too wrapped up in critical thinking.
I stand by the work bench, repairing recreational equipment, while the world burns. Bikes are toys. I know it seems silly, but the world would really have been a better place if we'd had a general consensus that it should be a safer place to ride a bike. The shape of society really does come down to individual actions repeated by many. Look at the competition now between a nation of narrow-minded hardasses and one of broad minded generosity. Accounts have to balance, but there are many ways to achieve that. It doesn't have to be The Way of the Hardass. I spend bleak hours alone with my thoughts, trying to remain interested in technology that has made bikes more expensive and complicated while doing nothing whatsoever to improve riding conditions. The heat in the afternoon radiates off the uninsulated back wall of this 1850s barn the way the cold winter wind seeps through it in nor'easters. The fire is strong. Will we choose to stoke it or to extinguish it?
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