A neatly-kept village full of wonderful people...dammit.

 Even the simplest of bicycles has moving parts. Add to the trusty fixed-gear a rear rack and a set of real fenders, and there are even more little details to keep track of.

Just far enough into my ride so that I did not want to turn back and make proper repairs, I noticed that the  bolt holding one set of rear fender stays had vanished. The fender rattled against the rack, which made me look down and back to see the fender stays poking out into the slipstream, totally screwing with my aerodynamics.

Mentally reviewing what I had on board for tools and parts, I decided to scan the roadside for a discarded bit of wire or an old bread bag tie that I could use to secure the stay until I could complete my planned route and dig up a nice nut and bolt. A nice nut and bolt wouldn't help me along the roadside, because I didn't have tools to install them. Even a shoelace would have worked. 

Coming out of Ryefield Road I saw nothing useful. Out on Route 25, the litter was all cans, bottles, cigarette packages, and the occasional piece of scrap metal or wood. Here and there were pieces of fabric, bedraggled lengths of webbing too fat to fit the frame eyelet, Dunkie's cups, plastic straws, and shreds of surveyor's tape. Approaching my scheduled turn toward the village of Freedom, there were several disposable diapers, invitingly opened like a taco bowl, rather than tightly wrapped like the classic turd burrito. Highway travelers along this stretch are a classy bunch. There was even a 750ml Jack Daniels bottle. Yee haw.

I held out hope for the side road into Freedom. You never know what might vibrate off of someone's work truck. But the roadsides even in the outer environs were almost devoid of litter, and completely without the specific pieces I sought. The closer I got to the center of the village, the more manicured the shoulders looked. It was beautiful and peaceful. Placards and banners of love and inclusivity decorated lawns and homes. The road edges looked as neatly raked as a zen garden. What a great community! Would it kill you to toss one lousy bread tie?

Since the loose fender didn't present a danger, it only bothered my sense of order. The further I went, the less important the perfect piece of litter became, but I still scanned for it, which brought my average speed down. I stopped multiple times to investigate possibilities, which I then had to dutifully pick up and bring with me for proper disposal.

Re-entering Effingham across Route 25, the roadsides were a little cruddier. Some drivers on highways tend to hold their litter until they turn onto a side road with a lower speed limit, because it's easier to chuck the stuff without a 60 mile per hour gale shredding past the window. I also see it where Elm Street enters the woods just after Duncan Lake. Drivers passing through from Route 16 fling tons of crap onto the first 50 yards where nothing is built on either side of the road. The litter tapers off as you get further from the highway junction, although there is always some.

People who give a crap are always cleaning up after people who toss their crap.

Breaking the ice

With the temperature barely 40 degrees (F) and the wind gusting to 30 mph, the day was hardly more inviting than the previous week. But you have to start somewhere. So I did.

Base miles used to be a token thing. We had to remind ourselves not to push big gears before we'd spun the legs for a few hundred miles, one short ride at a time. Short is relative, too. Fifteen or 20 was   nothing. But that's the point of base miles. They were the nothing that adds up to something; the body's reminder of the shape and rhythm of the pedal stroke.

Speaking of the pedal stroke, apparently a recent study has made a high pedaling cadence obsolete. The article I read described the study and did indicate that more work is needed to see how the new information fits in with decades of practice by millions of riders. As usual, a search for answers has turned up more questions. Meanwhile, we all have to live in the real world. I'm going to maintain the cadences that have served me well throughout my cycling career.

Every rider learns the activity from the practices of the riders they know. You learn from your friends.   Maybe you learn from educational programs like Cycling Savvy, Smart Cycling, or a book like Effective Cycling. Most people just start with an interest, buy a bike, and start riding. There are also plenty of magazines and websites. Lots of people who ride and write and need money are happy to find an outlet. There's no shortage of talent.

Anyone who has forgotten to be obsessive about fitness over a long winter will need to take the base mileage phase of the bike season more seriously. I'm physically incapable of going too hard, so that's not a temptation. It's a true rebuilding process.

When I started riding with more than the attention of a child, the people guiding me shared what they knew, including the use of fixed-gear bikes as part of developing a smooth pedal stroke across a wide range of cadence. We didn't focus on that point. The initial challenge was to ride the fixed gear after growing up with bikes that would coast, especially as those bikes offered more gear options as well. The fixed gear seemed like a humorous challenge. It also shaped us as riders without making us think about it. Only after a while did someone more experienced point out the built-in benefit.

A generally human-powered lifestyle will provide a fitness base in that same unconscious way. The fact that I got drawn into the outdoor recreation industry meant that I was doing professionally what people outside the industry have to pay to do. The fact that the outdoor recreation industry pays poverty wages meant that I would never be able to afford the activities any other way. If I wasn't selling the gear and teaching what I knew of the skills, I would not have been there at all.

My mentors in bicycle mechanics were the kind of people who learn how the machinery works and use that knowledge to fund their participation. As skillful tool users, they managed to do a lot of things because they could refurbish old equipment and build some new things with the tools and knowledge they had acquired. They didn't have to follow the more conventional route of making as much money as possible in some unrelated but sufficiently lucrative field and then spending the money on equipment they didn't know much about, to enjoy an activity that they had to fight to find time for. Their interests went well beyond bicycles, and included boats, motorcycles, and airplanes.

The mushrooming crises caused by the consumerist lifestyle make all recreation look extravagant. But at the heart of any human powered recreational activity is the concept of human power. If you are accustomed to getting around on your own feet, or powered by your own exertion in or on a vehicle made for that, you'll be more ready to slide into a more human-powered existence in general.

The separation of human exertion into categories of beneficial exercise, destructive overexertion, and sedentary occupations has led to a general physical decline in which we have some phenomenal athletes, a percentage of fitness hobbyists who are fairly well toned, and a large percentage of people who are so entrapped in the machine age that they have lost most desire and ability to function without a cocoon of mechanical assistance. Labor-saving machines have become barriers to activity. People given leisure face financial demands that make leisure a burden. Free time is just another word for unemployment. Leisure is for the leisure class.

I have always welcomed time to think and to appreciate the beauty that I see around me. But I have had to acknowledge that I pay for this with my precarious financial state, and the likelihood of an impoverished old age, should I live to be old. Perhaps this is the real deal that we should all have been acknowledging. It seemed like we could do better for everyone with our technology, had we been able to convince ourselves to give up the winner-take-all mentality that we had been led to believe was best for us. I've been observing competition for more than 60 years now. I can tell you that it improves nothing but itself. It's a good thing to push your own capabilities. It is not a good thing to build your life around beating other people. It may be natural. It may be the inescapable seed of our destruction. But it ain't good.

In our bloody past it was normal to torture captives and criminals, and to enslave the vanquished. Peel back the technology of weapons until you get to spears, clubs, arrows, and crude blades. At that point, competition for resources makes sense, because hostilities can be contained to more or less natural methods on a short-range battlefield, protecting territories defended by slow-moving ground forces. Border skirmishes keep everyone honest. Start adding alliances and evolving better weapons, communication, and transportation and you reach the point where we perch today, teetering over two or three precipices.

What does it mean to all of you out there? It means that there's a better reason to go for a bike ride than not to.

Mettle fatigue

This was the kind of winter that makes owls starve to death. It was not an epic snow year, but the snow we got was dense, and melts slowly. The weather has not been very cold, but cold enough to make the winter very long. Snow arrived in November and never left. It's still here, more than a week into "spring."

Owls have been unable to reach their prey under snow too solid for their bird-weight to penetrate.

Until a couple of years ago, I would have been out there already, claiming my space on the road. As soon as the ice retreats fully from the pavement, I figure all's fair. At least I did. I needed base miles, and no one was going to stop me.

On my last days off, the temperature was supposed to top out in the mid 30s (F), on sunny, slightly breezy days. That's not inviting, but it's not bad. Dress for it. But on Monday I woke up with a weird digestive ailment that made me cold, depressed, occasionally lightheaded, and reluctant to venture far from the house. The malaise receded overnight, but enough effects lingered on Tuesday to make me stay off the bike then, too.

Each additional day off the bike gives me more time to contemplate the steadily increasing size of pickup trucks. Traffic looks less intimidating when you join its flow, but the big beasts are dangerous nonetheless. I have held my line with my elbow inches from tractor-trailer tires a number of times. It’s all part of the experience. Not a good part, mind you, but it will happen in the traffic criterium. It’s one reason that biking isn’t always a great way to see the sights. You need to concentrate on what’s in front of you while you try to herd what’s around you. You want to see the sights, take a leisurely walk or ride a tour bus.

It could be better. But any time we try to increase our speed using a wheeled conveyance we increase the risk of an unfortunate event. Balancing on two wheels is more precarious than squatting on four. You could stuff it riding on a separated bike path by yourself.

It’s not about the crash. I hate to crash, and I refuse to consider it inevitable, with experience and due care, but I have burned in a number of times, and always gone back to riding as soon as I healed up enough.

Mostly I dislike the public exposure of riding. We remain a minority, a bunch of weirdos who go without engines, on devices most people consider a phase of childhood, or perhaps don’t consider at all. We are simultaneously ridiculous super athletes and ineffectual dorks. Nothing we do will make us respectable. The best we can hope to be is tolerable. I did not understand the terms of this agreement when I committed myself to bicycling at the end of the 1970s. All of the idealistic bike nerds of the day thought that our time was coming. Surely the world had to notice that practicality and fun coexisted perfectly in the bicycle. It was true then and it is still true. Just because we haven’t won doesn’t mean we’re wrong.

The weather warms grudgingly. As usual for this time of year, warmth brings wetness, followed by resurgent cold. It used to be easier to take, when the whole world didn’t seem so cold in general. Funny thing to say in a warming climate, but you know what I mean.

Coulda used good news. This ain't it.

From the National Weather Service today:

...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH
THURSDAY EVENING...

* WHAT...Heavy snow possible. Travel will be very difficult to
  impossible, including during the morning commute on Thursday.
  Total snow accumulations of 6 to 12 inches are possible.

* WHERE...All of New Hampshire and western Maine.

* WHEN...From Wednesday afternoon through Thursday evening.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Snow covered and slippery roads, and
  significant reductions in visibility are possible.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The daytime highs hop right back up to the forties immediately after this bounty of slop. And it falls in many cases on bare, thawed ground. Spring skiing is not done on spring snow.

Astronomical spring, marked by the equinox, is not meteorological spring, measured from the beginning of March. While by one measure we are still in winter's province, the sun grows stronger even before the day lengthens to 12 hours and beyond. Winter-type precipitation is likely from any storm, but it falls into a more hostile setting than it would find under the long nights and brief days of January and early February.

A quick inch last night was just a foretaste, and something to mess up the roads for anyone rashly contemplating a morning wobble on the fixed-gear. I should grab one now, though, as the sun has warmed the roadway sufficiently to clear it. Six to 12 inches will not go as quietly.

The magic number is 300

When I dabbled in bicycle racing, the training manual we passed around recommended laying down about 300 miles of low-gear base mileage before beginning differentiated training. This was in a climate zone that did not offer a strong alternative training activity like cross-country skiing on a regular enough basis to count as a real routine. Even if a rider took up speed skating, which was available and had a small following, the change in muscle use at the beginning of regular riding season required some adaptation.

In a climate that shuts down outdoor riding pretty completely, base mileage is vital. I don't do any competitive sport riding, but any open-road commuting is part criterium, part time trial. Lacking the discipline to ride a trainer with the religious devotion necessary to provide a real fitness base, I need to get those base miles before launching the commuting season. Alternative outdoor activities have nearly vanished in the changing climate, so I'm coming off the couch with only good intentions.

Last week I hit the 300-mile mark and noticed an immediate improvement. I'd been trying to go easy, but you can't hold back when you're sharing the road with motor vehicles. If a traffic situation demands a quick sprint or a longer interval, you do your best.

Even before the 300-mile mark, I noticed that my whole body worked better now that I was using it as it was meant to be used. We're built to propel ourselves. Obviously, walking and running are our natural forms of locomotion, but the genius of the bicycle was that it adapted those motions to the circular pedal stroke. The bicycling position has evolved so that it places some potentially destructive demands on the upper body, but the general concept remains completely benign. If you ride a lot in a forward-leaning position, you will want to do some stretching and strengthening exercises to prevent neck and shoulder pain. And a little core work is never a bad idea.

I wonder who first came up with the idea of strength and flexibility training. There we were, scruffy hominids scrounging in the landscape for things to eat, devising tools of various kinds. Life was an endless camping trip. We walked, we ran, we climbed. We picked things up. We figured out how to build things. It was all based on walking, running, and moving things into useful configurations. Some people were stronger than other people. Who first figured out that strength and physical efficiency could be enhanced with specific exercises?

It doesn't matter. We know it now. Ignoring the whole noisy industry and marketing campaigns promoting specific programs and products that will make YOU, yes YOU, STRONGER, HAPPIER, SEXIER, AND MELT AWAY EXCESS POUNDS LIKE MAGIC, we know that using your own power to get from place to place will make your body work better. Rest is a vital part of the training cycle, but you can actually be too rested. Crawling toward this year's bike commuting season, I wondered if my accidentally sedentary winter might actually have shortened my life. In a country that considers health care a luxury, who can really afford to live an unhealthy lifestyle?

People who try to live gently, self-propelled and modestly housed, end up looking like parasites in a consumer-driven, wealth-obsessed economy. We slip through the small spaces, gleaning our sustenance like mice. We don't have much of a wallet with which to vote. It makes us an easy target for the contempt of the worshippers of hard work and self advancement. No one is questioning those sacred precepts. Hard work in the service of destruction is not a virtue. But voices of reason are drowned by the noise of traffic, industry, and broadcast media.

Many hands make light work. We could be taking turns doing short stints at the destructive labors that need to be done, rather than trapping some people in those destructive endeavors until they are crushed, and letting others evade that contribution to the general welfare. Like any simple solution, it's too complicated to arrange, so we will continue to live haphazardly and let evolution take its course. I just thought I would throw the idea out there. We could have arranged things in that way and coasted our population gently down to a sustainable level. Instead we live by instinct, as always. The result will reflect our true nature and potential, as will be evident from the ruins we leave behind.