Unapologetically Utopian

 If you look up terms like "effective altruism" and study the many characteristics derided as "woke," you will find, in addition to ominous interpretations that project a future in no way pleasant to the majority of people who would find themselves living in it -- however briefly and uncomfortably -- common threads of utopian fantasy. These go back well into the 20th Century. The principles in some of them stretch back as far as recorded language, but by the 20th Century a lot of technological developments were well established and evolving to support many of the practical underpinnings of a society based on the greatest good for the greatest number.

Because greatest good and greatest number are elastic terms with no universally agreed definitions, the uses of these technologies diverge into the various earthly paradises and hellscapes explored in futurist academic and fictional narratives and analysis. They also underlie the current privileged areas and existing hellscapes that we have already established.

I have said for years and will repeat with tiresome persistence that human-powered transportation, most notably using bicycles, has always been a game that any number could play. The more people using bikes and their own muscles to get around, the better the world becomes. It is unapologetically utopian.

More than 40 years ago I set out to demonstrate how much easier it was to negotiate the crowded streets of Annapolis on a bicycle than in a car. What the other road users saw instead was just some idiot exposed to weather and traffic hazards, not a thought leader and influencer. They put up with the few transportation cyclists in town with varying levels of tolerance depending somewhat on the neighborhood. The further you got from older residential neighborhoods and the center of town, the more likely you were to have friction with an irate motorist. But no place was safe. A skirmish could break out anywhere. Still, the struggle seemed winnable.

By the time I left Annapolis, the local cycling group could put 15 or 20 riders onto the road in a group ride on a summer afternoon, but their consensus was that the traffic was so hostile that they would meet at the mall parking lot on the west edge of town rather than start somewhere downtown, as we had done when it was four or five plucky road racers from 1979 to 1982. Of those four or five racers, three of us also rode our bikes for transportation, because none of us owned a car. We would have to borrow one to drive to a race. By 1987, I was the last one who was living without a car.

Racing was always secondary to transportation for me. Transportation cycling provided a baseline of mileage and saddle time on which to build whatever recreational riding I had time for. Meanwhile, one of the other car-free riders invested his spare cash in carpentry tools to prepare for when he eventually started his own highly regarded contracting business, and the other one saved up enough money to make a down payment on his first home in Annapolis. He didn't buy in the most expensive neighborhood, but in Annapolis there were no cheap ones. Transportation cycling improved their lives to the point where they could give it up and never look back. The fact that they gave it up is unfortunate, but it does underscore how not everyone can use a bike to get around. Although one of them started out as a naval architect, they both ended up working as carpenters, and that requires a truck and tools.

We need people who build things. What they build depends on their vision of the present and future that they want to create, or the lack of any sorting criteria. The trap is that someone might stake their savings on tools and training to build things, and have to take jobs building things that are ultimately harmful, just to get the money to live. Principles are a luxury. To make that happy future, the human species needs more than infrastructure and tools. We need to agree on where we're headed, informed by all kinds of investigative thinkers who study the interactions of all life and environment. We need someone to design and build the transportation network that can accommodate all vehicles, including thousands of bike riders who will eventually be taking advantage of the vast benefits of simple, human-powered transportation.

I guarantee that if the human species had chosen back in the 1970s to focus its efforts on making a long term plan instead of knowingly forcing crisis after crisis in order to generate profits and duel for global dominance we would have fewer young people scornfully dismissing Boomers. Not trusting my own generation's better judgment as I saw how they were progressing I didn't add my own cannon fodder to the future that looks increasingly likely. Meanwhile, my 30-mile commuting days on rural roads and highways here in New Hampshire look less like proof of concept and more like proof of insanity. My system is stretched to its limit to try to maintain all of the things I've come to like a lot -- not to say love -- in my life. But this rickety economy depends on the considerable savings of even a half year of bike commuting compared to uninterrupted motor vehicle use. So it does demonstrate that one can still stretch a dollar a long way using pedal power where possible. It's worth expending my waning strength on it.

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.

There was fun to be had

At the end of the 1970s, the threats to human existence were clearly caused by humans themselves. War and pollution headed the list. To a peaceful person who had embraced the bicycle for transportation, the remedy seemed clear. Ratchet down the aggression. Slow down on the industrialized consumption. Use technology to improve life worldwide. Walk and ride.

Too simple, I know. Relaxation cannot be imposed, and will not be accepted. We have come too far on human sacrifice and grinding toil. It's the prison we know, into which we bear our children. It's normal.

As a hopeful idiot commuting by bike, I thought people would see me threading traffic and having a good time and say, "Hey! I could do that!" Instead, as we all have experienced, they say, "I hate that guy! What a slacker!" I acknowledge that many people will not be able to use human powered vehicles to do things that would remain necessary even in a world devoted to human happiness. But a society truly devoted to human happiness would make sure that everyone got a chance to relax and get outside. And our transportation systems would allow those who could use human power to be able to do so, for the good of everyone.

There was fun to be had. But we're suspicious of fun. It has to be wrong.

It may change some day. Right now we are clearly headed in the opposite direction, cranking up the hatred and arguing about whether people need lethal weapons in hand at all times. On the road, motorists threaten cyclists with injury or death as a matter of routine. Cyclists learn to deal with it in the criterium of life, or they give up and let the terrorists win.

What was true in the 1970s is still true. Ratchet down the aggression. Slow down on the industrialized consumption. Use technology to improve life worldwide. Walk and ride. Be more appreciative of simple comforts we take for granted. There is fun to be had, and it is not at the expense of others. 

I know better than to keep believing it will happen. But I still believe in the principle. I will never stop believing in the principle.

A lucky break and some chilling thoughts

When my house was broken into a couple of weeks ago, the investigating officer left his card and said I should call if I noticed anything that could help the investigation. I had little hope that the investigation would yield anything, but I did call when I noticed that a flashlight I kept near the front door had been stolen. It was a PeliLght Submersible light that I had used for kayaking. I had exchanged parts between this orange light and a black one of the same type, giving the light a distinctive appearance.

Three days later, I got a call back. Cooperating law enforcement agencies in several communities on either side of the Maine-New Hampshire border have been working on the burglary epidemic for months. They had just managed to catch and arrest a couple leaving the scene of another burglary in the next town to the north, which led investigators to a stash of loot in a town about 30 miles to the south. Among the identifiable items they recovered was my funky flashlight.

I may never see any of my stuff again. Some may have been sold or bartered. Some may have been tossed as worthless in the thief and drug addict economy. Recovered items will have to serve as evidence for an undetermined length of time. But it's nice to know that someone has officially connected names and faces to the crime.

Effingham's police chief told me that opioid users in this area may be living in the woods. Items stolen are often bartered directly for drugs, or used for survival. Thus the Gerber knife, the flashlight, and the binoculars taken from my house might go directly to support an encampment, wherever it might be.

Guess I'll have to go armed when I go bushwhacking now. What a drag. Fortunately, I do most of that in the winter, when snow will reveal the tracks of any forest dwellers. I already dress in muted colors. This may give me a better chance of seeing them before they see me.

What a thing to have to worry about. I think about it on the night commute, too. I'm riding along, brightly lit, a movable feast of useful and salable items on a deserted forest path. The illuminated person is the one at risk in the darkness. I've toyed with contingency plans for years. Now they seem more realistic. How do I escape? How quickly can I shuck reflective items, to blend with the darkness and escape or counterattack? I load my bike and personal pack with this in mind. I want my phone, a weapon, and one light in my possession, ready to run when I abandon the lighted bike and use it as bait. How I respond after that depends on how many assailants gather, and how badass they look. Certainly an open line to 911 is first. Then use the darkness myself to observe the enemy.

Probably nothing will ever happen. But you can't predict what a jonesing addict might think is a good idea. And the average lifespan of an opioid addict after the onset of addiction is 15 to 20 years. They don't instantly turn into frail twigs hovering at the edge of death. They may be sturdy, muscular people who have turned all their energy toward acquiring more of their chemical best friend by any means necessary. Whether they are truly bad or good is immaterial, if they are opportunistic, and driven by a craving.`

The path was my refuge for the night commute. If I leave it to ride the road, I'm exposed to narrow, rural highways in the darkness. That not only adds the possibility of a collision with an inattentive driver, it may increase the chance of being picked off by a "shopper" who would not have seen me if I was not right there on the public right of way.

All this is no more true than it was before I was aware of it. The opioid crisis has been building for several years. But any kind of personal contact with the effects of the crisis makes it more real. Is danger a reason not to do something worthwhile? Of course not. But new dangers add new elements to be managed.

In case you think something is too trivial to attract a miscreant's attention, consider the shaving kits: I had marveled that the thieves had taken mine when it contained nothing I thought they would want. I reckoned they had snatched it just because it might contain prescription drugs, and that they would toss it as soon as they had time to look in it. Nope. The investigating officer called to ask me to describe my shaving kit, because the people they arrested had a bunch of them. In light of that, and because you do hear about riders on urban paths getting mugged for their bikes, I figure it's only a matter of time before the light bulb comes on over some dirtbag's head around here, and they try to pick off a lone rider in a secluded setting.

Ideas like this reinforce people's idea that they are safer in their swift-moving armored vehicles than they are on a slow, wobbly bicycle. The fact that they would be safest of all on foot, efficiently but lightly armed, does not fit most people's work schedule and world view. I'm certainly not going to start hiking to work with a side arm and a medium-length blade. Not yet, anyhow. Ask me again in a couple of years, when the social order has collapsed because of disastrous economic policies and fully unleashed xenophobia. But at that point I will probably be self-employed and working from home. Or I will already have been killed while defending one or another of my less mainstream friends from the aforementioned xenophobia.

We have so much to look forward to in the exciting future created by at least 30 years of ignoring what were once soluble problems. Or maybe -- unprecedented though it may be in all of human existence -- our species will finally have that long, deep talk that we've fought countless wars and squandered millions of lives to avoid.