Bikes were made for the road and the road was made for bikes

 On a trip to the gas station today, the card reader on the pump malfunctioned, so I had to pay inside. As I returned to my vehicle, a pickup truck with a plow blade came barreling in from my left as if I did not exist. The station is having a price war with one down the road, so it's bustling with eager customers.

I'm sick today. I wouldn't have gone out at all, but this was the least frigid and nasty day for several days out in the forecast. I half turned my head toward the truck with a well-practiced "where the fck do you think you're going?" look. He kept pushing me, but at least slowed enough for me to get across to the gas island.

I thought about all of the decades I've spent facing down vehicles that could effortlessly kill me. I thought about how mountain biking and other segregated forms of cycling avoid the confrontation and life risk of traffic, except as you are driving to your "safe" place to ride.

Good luck getting motorists to recognize the role that bicycles played in the early engineering of both automobiles and airplanes, as well as the first public pressure to improve pavement, making today's highway vehicles possible at all, especially at highway speeds. The airplane thing is less of a stretch because of the Wright Brothers, but then those guys escaped from traffic by heading to the sky.

When I first mastered a two-wheeler at the dawn of the 1960s, that was the key to freedom for a kid in those days. All the way to the 1970s, motorists seemed more willing to go along, get along, but as both cyclist and motorist numbers rose, conflicts rose with them. By the mid 1970s, road hassles were common. In some places they were endemic. It's only gotten worse since then. This follows the paradox that increased bike usage almost always coincides with surges in population in an area, guaranteeing more hostility. There are more biking organizations today than in the 1970s and '80s, and overall more riders, though I don't know the breakdown regarding the percentage of road users. And yet we still have to deal with the careless and the malicious.

It extends to pedestrians as well. On social media I see posts from pedestrian advocacy groups reporting their own encounters, and sometimes deadly incidents with drivers.

Motorists are caught in the middle between themselves and the vulnerable road users. Who here is ready to admit that they have absolutely seethed when stuck behind someone who seems to be driving much slower than conditions warrant? I have as bad a tendency as anyone to rate my speed on the basis of the limits of stability and traction. More than once I have come out of an entrance ramp a little sideways, though definitely not in the last 30 years or more. When the road is open I drive fast, so I can drive slowly when I get to the congested parts. So I don't preach from a stance of superiority. Motorists, I am a sinner like yourselves. The difference is when I'm around vulnerable road users.

From the moment I started driving I sensed peer pressure to keep up the pace. Back before internet navigation services, if you had to find your way around an unfamiliar area, good luck with the locals. They all knew where they were going. Even in your own area, you would attract unwanted criticism. This was when road rage shootings happened a lot less often. There again: more than a hundred million fewer people in the country when I started driving. For social animals we really seem to piss each other off a lot.

As someone who was bullied for a few bad years in school, I developed a defensive offensiveness because I couldn't develop the kind of sense of humor that launches entertainment careers. I grew tall and broad shouldered enough to make most of the tough kids decide not to bother in high school. I wasn't tall by any means. Just tall enough. The idea of defended personal space translated readily to road riding in the 1970s and beyond. It's a shame that it has to be that way, and it's hardly a foolproof charm. It's just part of claiming the bicycle's ancestral territory.

Last rides of 2025

 "Second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia." It's an old punchline. I just spent three weeks there, while the cellist underwent a medical procedure at Penn Medicine's facilities.

In matters medical, some things can't be scheduled at your convenience. Thus I got the call to drop everything and get my ass down there at the end of November, to care for her in recovery from a surgery on December second. She would need to go to follow up appointments, lab visits, and any unscheduled turbulence that might hit us as a result of a major procedure.

My annual mileage total is nothing impressive, but it stood tantalizingly close to 3,000 miles when I headed down. With less than a hundred miles to go, I would have nailed it easily. I thought I might sneak in a ride or two while I was down there, because I keep a bike on site, but that didn't work out. I didn't want to stray far from the patient, even though she was making a relatively stellar recovery.

What I did do was drive a pretty vicious stretch of Interstate 95 between Wilmington, Delaware, and Philly, over and over.

I left Megalopolis in the late mid 1980s with no regrets at all. I've devoted my life to quietly advocating against the concept of Megalopolis since I first learned about it in school in the 1960s. I was always a kid who found a patch of woods to play in. I saw early on that they were an endangered habitat. I can do highway driving, but I would rather not.

It's like the line that comes up in various gun oriented movies, where the protagonist declares his antipathy to gunplay. Later on he's forced into it by the triumphant bad guy who assumes that it'll be an easy win. The reluctant good guy nails the baddie with one perfect shot and says, "I didn't say I couldn't, only that I didn't like to."

Drivers between Wilmington and Philly are some of the most aggressive assholes you will encounter anywhere. The worst of them specialize in a maneuver I call "The Delaware Shoot-a-Gap." General traffic may be romping along at 70-75mph, and one of these road heroes will come shooting up out of nowhere, weaving sinuously through the shifting crowd. No doubt they feel proud of their skill at getting ahead of the dubs.

I had to drive the stretch each way multiple times. All of the runs northward were between mid morning and mid afternoon, but the return trips were at night several times. For instance, on the night of her surgery, which was scheduled in early evening, I drove back down close to midnight. The day I visited her during her post-op hospital confinement, it was after 8 p.m. Later, she had a crisis that had us in the emergency room at Penn, and I was driving back around four in the morning, after sitting with her for twelve hours, waiting for her to be officially admitted. One of my jobs was taking care of her cats, so I did have to get back down to her work-season apartment.

I looked like this a lot:

This picture is from the morning after her actual surgery. She texted me at 7:00 a.m. She'd been awake since 5:00 a.m. And she'd had the advantage, despite having a surgical team remodeling her insides, of being under heavy anesthesia, whereas I had been languishing somewhat anxiously in the waiting "lounge" for hours. Then I had to drive on 95. I got to bed after 1:00 a.m.

I figured out within a couple of these trips that the secret to 95 was to merge onto it like you're throwing yourself into a bar brawl, work your way to the left lane to cozy up to the center barrier, and floor it. Do whatever it takes to hold your place. Sometimes you have to wedge into the middle lane to slingshot some terminal asshole who can't find a hole to weave through, but for the most part the southbound key is that left lane, and 75-80mph.

It's fucking insane, but it's their normal routine. Pieces of car and truck bear mute witness to the calamities that their haste brings them from time to time, but in the three weeks I navigated the area I only saw one, on my transit north as I began the trip home. Some idiot in a flashy Porsche with race numbers and shit had gotten tangled with a bland family minivan as we all navigated a heavy rain with gale force winds during the latter part of rush hour. No one appeared to be injured, but the sporty car was badly dented front, rear, and on  the one side I could see. Other than that it was just a daily series of miracles in which I nearly got clipped or nearly nailed someone hovering in my blind spot several times, but made no contact.

The northbound run was trickier, because we had to exit on the right, but needed to avoid getting sucked into a lane that then peeled off entirely. Hugging the left wall could get you trapped over there, but the middle lane makes you everybody's punching bag.

I hate that shit.

Eventually, the cellist was ready to send me back north and rely on her local support team of excellent work colleagues. I had missed a moderate snowfall and some temperature swings that meant my driveway will be a chunked-up mess of frozen ridges until spring, but what can you do?

The best part is that the roads were clear and dry on a day when I could actually get out on them.

Yesterday was sunny and I had a couple of items to take to the post office. Pump up the tires and suit up. Temperature 18 degrees F. Light westerly winds. What would I find after three weeks of basically no exercise? Fortunately, with the air that cold I had no urge to push for high speed.

Snow was forecast for today, but the forecast had it starting later in the morning. Today's conditions were more demanding, with colder air and fully gray skies. The sun isn't strong this time of year, but when it's bright it imparts emotional warmth, and some actual warmth on darker clothing. Still, I managed to push my sore legs around one more time. The storm forecast has gotten bigger and bigger, and I will be pulling more hours at work than I have since the 1990s, so probably no rides until spring arrives. I'll just run the stairs in my house every day. Weight-bearing exercise!

How I know I’m not a real cyclist:

 Facebook feeds me cycling pages one after another. Worship of new technology and “n+1” dominate the content. Even among fanciers of the retro, people with large collections boast about their hoards and receive lavish praise.

I have no desire for more bikes than I have. I don’t want to get rid of any, but it’s already hard to find time to ride each of them. I could cut it back to one or both of the Surly Cross Check variants if I had to. That said, I put a lot of miles on the beater fixed gear. The vintage steel road bike is nice. The converted mountain bike commuter still might come in handy.

Particularly when it comes to the older bikes, I’m grateful for the collectors who preserve large numbers of the versatile steel frames from the 1970s to the ‘90s, especially those without vertical dropouts. They represent a resource, not a museum of superseded technology.

Because I started working on bikes in the mid 1970s, I view frames and parts as elements to combine and reshuffle. I could never afford a fancy complete-gruppo bike. It was fun to piece together something competitively functional within my budget. Some new features did represent actual improvements, so I incorporated them as I could.

My first “ten speed” was a used Peugeot. The first summer I had it, I put on a lighter alloy crank to replace its original steel Stronglight, and my friend and mentor Diane did a lot of fancy drill work, as well as hand painting all of the decals after a rattle can repaint. She also pinstriped it and added some personalized details.

A few years later, I’d picked up a used Eisentraut frame to build a second bike. That led to a few extra bike parts lying around. So I picked up a used Raleigh Super Course frame to build a sporty urban assault 5-speed like my racing buddy Mark had built. That quickly morphed into a fixed gear.

Those three frames formed the basis of a modifiable fleet. I raced one summer on the ‘Traut, then put a rack on it and slapped in the touring wheels I’d built, to ride for three weeks from San Mateo, California, to Eugene, Oregon. Back east after the tour, I put the race gearing and sewups back on it.

The Peugeot turned into a cyclocross bike that spring. Then I moved and took a different job, so it became my fixed gear commuter with fenders and, eventually, generator lights. The Super Course was my stripped down training fixed gear. 

When the Eisentraut got its first frame cracks (chainstays), I got a Grandis frame to build up with the parts from it. I raced that for a couple of years before Diane and her husband put new chainstays into the ‘Traut. Pinched for cash, I sold the Grandis frame, with a different parts kit, to a triathlete.

See how this can work? Three frames became half a dozen different bikes as needed. Good luck doing that with today’s excruciatingly specific designs.

My first mountain bike was someone else’s trade in at the shop. I swapped out the solid rear axle for a hollow one — same hub — to have both wheels quick-release. Put on sportier tires. Longer stem. Good to go.

Next, in about 1991, was a Specialized Stumpjumper, the first brand new complete bike I’d gotten in 20 years. It needed a couple of things, mostly just that longer stem. 

The Stumpjumper was a tad small. I wanted a steel frame, but none of the other mid-‘90s index-shifting crap. Working in a bike shop has some advantages, like employee discounts. A 1996 Gary Fisher Aquila had a decent frame. I transferred everything from the Stumpjumper that would fit, and sold the Stumpjumper frame with the rejected Gary Fisher parts.

The Aquila evolved as the 1990s reached their end. It finally grew fenders and a rear rack around 2009. So it’s been at least two bikes all by itself. More than that if you count its mountain evolution prior to the commuter conversion.

According to the algorithm, I should be a lot more acquisitive. I should always be craving one more. I did build one more to leave where my wife works for months at a time, so I wouldn’t have to transport a bike to and from. But it was another build on an old frame. With unlimited funds my answer would be the same. It’s an art.