El Queso Grande had to solo one day while I was away. A repair and rental load that would have seemed ominously scanty when we had a full staff is more than enough to paralyze the shop with only one or two mechanics available, and only one of them very experienced. With El Queso Grande juggling all the chainsaws by himself, it looked to the untrained eye like a man barely finding time to open the cash register to stash away the shower of doubloons that must be coming from all these customers lined up at every door and counter.
Someone even said, "You must really be raking it in."
Bike shops are never raking it in. One nice young man with money to burn did buy an eleven thousand dollar road bike from us this summer, but that was one guy, one bike, one time. The average bike sells for maybe $400, with a clear profit of less than $100, after you extract overhead expenses. Probably closer to $10. Bigger shops are just making more of those average sales, with correspondingly higher overhead expenses. They might also sell more of the higher end bikes, but probably not a lot of the $11,000 variety. And more expensive bikes require lots more diligence, skill, and experience to assemble correctly and tune precisely enough to satisfy a customer who has dropped anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000 for what is now a mid-range or barely high-end bike. It still seems like a lot of money to most of us, even if the steady march of generational inflation has made it worth less.
Because of our short staff, we have had to turn work away. This is the first time since I started there 30 years ago that I have seen the management say we just couldn't do something. We've always tried to cram it in. Granted, it's partly because they've realized -- belatedly -- that life itself is more valuable than money, and that they have to get out of the shop to enjoy that life, but it's also because business itself is now so scanty that we couldn't afford staff even if we could find any. We have to make do with our own selves, and the couple of welcome fill-in people who will work specific days. And one of them just got a real job, coaching cross-country running and cross-country skiing at Clarkson University. His last day was Sunday.
When the rush of business ends, it dumps us into a weird solitude. The town still looks pretty much the same. The late summer sun spreads its golden light over the waters that are still warm, the green trees abuzz with cicadas. But no one jockeys for parking. No crawling, baking parade of motor vehicles inches through Main Street. No throng of pedestrians spreads out in all directions from the center of town. No money comes into the cash register. Because summer has shrunk to Fourth of July weekend and the first three weeks of August, that's it for major earning potential. Foliage tourism has dwindled significantly since the 1990s. Winter tourism for us depends on good natural conditions, which have become even more unreliable than New England's schizophrenic weather already was.
The changing climate and polluted world have led to such things as algae blooms that will kill your dog if it swims in an infected lake or pond, and a surge in tick-borne illnesses. El Queso Grande got anaplasmosis this summer, on top of his other challenges. In our country's asinine treasure hunt of a medical system, that entailed driving to labs "in his network" that he can also afford. That really cuts into the "raking it in." And that was after his carpal tunnel and cubital tunnel surgery: more overhead expenses related to remaining alive.
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Summer is not a bell curve
Summer seemed to arrive sooner and last longer around here 20 years ago. It seemed to crank up at Memorial Day and go pretty steadily until Labor Day, with some peaks and valleys, but all on a pretty high plateau. Whatever has contributed to the decline, the shape has been distinctly different since shortly after the turn of the century.
Summer now is Fourth of July weekend, and August. Depending on the year, July might stay a bit active, but August is as close to crazy as we ever get anymore.
This summer, I left for a vacation trip at just about the worst possible time. Because the cellist has limited time at home with her out-of-state employment, we had to schedule the trip when she had the chance. I knew it would put me on the long-term shit list with my employer, but the cellist has limited time in more ways than one. I spend most of my time disappointing someone. I just have to choose who it will be. So I returned from the trip feeling like the guy who sneaked out of the Alamo before things got really bad, to hit the saloon and brothel. In reality my goals were more lofty than that, but the siege mentality of a small shop with inadequate staff leads to high stress and exaggerated emotions.
Because so many schools go back in session before summer technically ends, the crowds should drop right off this week. Because some schools are making a point to start after Labor Day, we might see more residual activity in this period of tapering. After Labor Day we'll get the early September rush of people who make a point to take vacation after the crowds are gone, when hospitality businesses might be offering discounted rates. That's what I used to do, decades ago, when I took vacations.
Has summer travel always been a business? Back 12,000 years ago, or even just three or four centuries, did seasonal travelers interact with fixed populations in ways similar to the economic exploitation of today? Exploitation sounds like price gouging, but it isn't always. It's just a matter of harvesting a resource when the resource is available. I've used the metaphor of hunting migratory herds to describe our handling of regular cycles of tourist business. We don't actually kill and eat them, and wear their hides -- except perhaps in some of the more remote hollows of the mountains -- but we extract as much as we can from them when they're here, knowing that they will be gone in a few weeks.
Summer now is Fourth of July weekend, and August. Depending on the year, July might stay a bit active, but August is as close to crazy as we ever get anymore.
This summer, I left for a vacation trip at just about the worst possible time. Because the cellist has limited time at home with her out-of-state employment, we had to schedule the trip when she had the chance. I knew it would put me on the long-term shit list with my employer, but the cellist has limited time in more ways than one. I spend most of my time disappointing someone. I just have to choose who it will be. So I returned from the trip feeling like the guy who sneaked out of the Alamo before things got really bad, to hit the saloon and brothel. In reality my goals were more lofty than that, but the siege mentality of a small shop with inadequate staff leads to high stress and exaggerated emotions.
Because so many schools go back in session before summer technically ends, the crowds should drop right off this week. Because some schools are making a point to start after Labor Day, we might see more residual activity in this period of tapering. After Labor Day we'll get the early September rush of people who make a point to take vacation after the crowds are gone, when hospitality businesses might be offering discounted rates. That's what I used to do, decades ago, when I took vacations.
Has summer travel always been a business? Back 12,000 years ago, or even just three or four centuries, did seasonal travelers interact with fixed populations in ways similar to the economic exploitation of today? Exploitation sounds like price gouging, but it isn't always. It's just a matter of harvesting a resource when the resource is available. I've used the metaphor of hunting migratory herds to describe our handling of regular cycles of tourist business. We don't actually kill and eat them, and wear their hides -- except perhaps in some of the more remote hollows of the mountains -- but we extract as much as we can from them when they're here, knowing that they will be gone in a few weeks.
Trash talk
The 1990s were ugly. The sudden influx of cash from the mountain bike boom led to a surge in incompetence and dishonesty. People would drive many miles to check out different bike shops, in search of a little lower price or a particular brand that the magazines or their friends told them was the only one to buy. Shops a hundred miles apart -- or more -- would badmouth each other’s work.
The bike business attracts competitive people. I showered plenty of napalm on other shops’ bad workmanship. The apparent easy money in the mountain bike market led to a surge in "bike shops" and increased bike sales through more generalized outdoor sports stores. Between the unprepared merchants and mechanics, and the bike industry's own rush to dump poorly designed and barely tested products into a market loaded with consumers unable to judge the merits of the so-called new improvements, there was plenty to criticize.
With the fragmentation of the bike market, all that seemed to have subsided. Overall participation dropped, and the riders who continued to ride fell into multiple categories, none of them dominant. Addicted bike collectors with sufficient funds and time might ride in several categories, but those riders are a minority. Special interest riders seek the shops that specialize in their interest, or patronize large shops that can afford to have stock in each category, and staff to cover the range of complexities. You hope so, anyway. A lot of it is just absorbing and regurgitating industry propaganda, as it was in the darkest years of the mountain bike boom. There was no time to study it all in depth, as it blasted out of the firehose. The term "retro-geezer" was coined at that time, to describe cranks like me, who critiqued the avalanche of temperamental junk that creates six problems to solve one.
The parallel lines of complicated machinery ridden hard by novice enthusiasts is ushering in a little resurgence of trash talk. Our shop is in a town with a year-round population under 7,000. Of those, only a small handful will use anything non-motorized for recreation or transportation. This is America, and normal people drive. We draw from surrounding towns, but they have even smaller populations. This makes it impossible for us to stock in depth in any category except the most basic recreational path bikes, and even that market seems to have gone a little soft this year. When one of our customers does business voluntarily or involuntarily with another shop, they sometimes share that other shop's scathing assessments of our work and knowledge. And I silently critique every bike that comes through my work station from some other mechanic's hands. I just don't bother to share my observations with the customers. I share them profanely and profusely with my fellow mechanics, on days when there are any, but that's as far as it goes.
Trash talk was a symptom of the hyper-competitive bike market of the 1990s. Now it is a symptom of the competitiveness born of famine. But competitiveness itself is a symptom of the belief that there's something to win. Part of what has driven fragmentation is habitat loss. Bikes are looking for places to thrive, or at least survive. It's Darwinian speciation, as the basic pedal-powered ancestor adapts to specific niches: varying levels of technical trail; gravel roads; sedate paths; roads; BMX tracks; freestyle parks. Shops don't shape customer interest. Customer interest shapes shops. We fight a constant battle to remain competent and relevant.
The bike business attracts competitive people. I showered plenty of napalm on other shops’ bad workmanship. The apparent easy money in the mountain bike market led to a surge in "bike shops" and increased bike sales through more generalized outdoor sports stores. Between the unprepared merchants and mechanics, and the bike industry's own rush to dump poorly designed and barely tested products into a market loaded with consumers unable to judge the merits of the so-called new improvements, there was plenty to criticize.
With the fragmentation of the bike market, all that seemed to have subsided. Overall participation dropped, and the riders who continued to ride fell into multiple categories, none of them dominant. Addicted bike collectors with sufficient funds and time might ride in several categories, but those riders are a minority. Special interest riders seek the shops that specialize in their interest, or patronize large shops that can afford to have stock in each category, and staff to cover the range of complexities. You hope so, anyway. A lot of it is just absorbing and regurgitating industry propaganda, as it was in the darkest years of the mountain bike boom. There was no time to study it all in depth, as it blasted out of the firehose. The term "retro-geezer" was coined at that time, to describe cranks like me, who critiqued the avalanche of temperamental junk that creates six problems to solve one.
The parallel lines of complicated machinery ridden hard by novice enthusiasts is ushering in a little resurgence of trash talk. Our shop is in a town with a year-round population under 7,000. Of those, only a small handful will use anything non-motorized for recreation or transportation. This is America, and normal people drive. We draw from surrounding towns, but they have even smaller populations. This makes it impossible for us to stock in depth in any category except the most basic recreational path bikes, and even that market seems to have gone a little soft this year. When one of our customers does business voluntarily or involuntarily with another shop, they sometimes share that other shop's scathing assessments of our work and knowledge. And I silently critique every bike that comes through my work station from some other mechanic's hands. I just don't bother to share my observations with the customers. I share them profanely and profusely with my fellow mechanics, on days when there are any, but that's as far as it goes.
Trash talk was a symptom of the hyper-competitive bike market of the 1990s. Now it is a symptom of the competitiveness born of famine. But competitiveness itself is a symptom of the belief that there's something to win. Part of what has driven fragmentation is habitat loss. Bikes are looking for places to thrive, or at least survive. It's Darwinian speciation, as the basic pedal-powered ancestor adapts to specific niches: varying levels of technical trail; gravel roads; sedate paths; roads; BMX tracks; freestyle parks. Shops don't shape customer interest. Customer interest shapes shops. We fight a constant battle to remain competent and relevant.
Friday, August 02, 2019
That which does not kill me...
That which does not kill me provides adrenaline and a bit of draft. Sometimes it provides quite a bit of draft.
As much as I resent being a disposable citizen because of my cycling habit, I can’t stay pissed off all the time, and constant paranoia is exhausting. If you really want to avoid all risk of collision, don’t go out there at all. Good riding habits will save you from most causes of cycling mishaps. The rest is up to your fellow road users. You may learn that certain places or times in your riding area are best avoided.
Commuting puts us all on the road at the same time. That increases traffic density and impatience. I used to think that drivers would see that I was having a better time out there than they were, and that it would inspire them to give biking a try. Instead, it only inspires resentment. In 40 years as an adult bike commuter, I have inspired four or five people to take it up. None of them still do it. Most of the people I used to ride with have quit.
Sometimes I’ll hear a vehicle behind me and wonder if it might be the last sound I ever hear. You have to find a balance between insouciant denial and hypervigilance. You might not hear the one that gets you. Or that snarling truck could turn out to be as bad as it sounded. All this goes through your mind. Is it worth it?
Rear view mirror users recommend them, but the mirrors for a bike are either dinky or obtrusive. And you have to be looking at the right time. Much of the time, the view in front of you is far more important than trying to assess the shrunken image of what is overtaking you. The worst parts of my commute are where I would have nowhere to go to escape an attacker coming up behind me.
My experiments with lane control have led me to abandon it for the most part. Drivers are single-minded idiots when it comes to overtaking a cyclist. They routinely swing far over into oncoming traffic to pass without slowing, rather than take the hint and wait behind me for a good gap. The worst of them make a point of squeezing me at the same time.
Here in the Land of the Free, getting hit by a motor vehicle launches you not only into the pain of the crash and the complications of treatment and recovery, but the financial disaster that goes along with it. When perpetrators routinely flee, you won't get compensation from them or their insurance -- if they have any. Reports of cyclist injuries in Canada and Great Britain conspicuously lack the usual links to GoFundMe pages to try to defray a tiny fraction of the medical expenses. That's always hovering over us as well.
When I sit in the car day after day, I can feel myself dying of the inactivity. When I ride the bike day after day, I can feel the pace taking its toll in a different way, with the threat of a crash also looming and fading in my awareness. I am forced to ride harder than I want to when I'm dealing with traffic. By the third day I feel fatigue. By the fifth day I'm really ready to take a couple of days off the bike. The distance matters. Riding just under or over 30 miles a day in hilly terrain takes more out of me than short hops in a fairly flat town would. All of this contributes to my mental state.
I do my best to appear as emotionless as a machine. A driver sits inside the bodywork of the motor vehicle, screened by glass that is apparently hard to see through from both directions. A cyclist is the bodywork. Masked perhaps by sunglasses, and topped with a helmet, the rider is the larger part of the total machine. Eyes front. Cadence steady. React to nothing. Appear invulnerable, even though we all know it isn't true.
Commuting puts us all on the road at the same time. That increases traffic density and impatience. I used to think that drivers would see that I was having a better time out there than they were, and that it would inspire them to give biking a try. Instead, it only inspires resentment. In 40 years as an adult bike commuter, I have inspired four or five people to take it up. None of them still do it. Most of the people I used to ride with have quit.
Sometimes I’ll hear a vehicle behind me and wonder if it might be the last sound I ever hear. You have to find a balance between insouciant denial and hypervigilance. You might not hear the one that gets you. Or that snarling truck could turn out to be as bad as it sounded. All this goes through your mind. Is it worth it?
Rear view mirror users recommend them, but the mirrors for a bike are either dinky or obtrusive. And you have to be looking at the right time. Much of the time, the view in front of you is far more important than trying to assess the shrunken image of what is overtaking you. The worst parts of my commute are where I would have nowhere to go to escape an attacker coming up behind me.
My experiments with lane control have led me to abandon it for the most part. Drivers are single-minded idiots when it comes to overtaking a cyclist. They routinely swing far over into oncoming traffic to pass without slowing, rather than take the hint and wait behind me for a good gap. The worst of them make a point of squeezing me at the same time.
Here in the Land of the Free, getting hit by a motor vehicle launches you not only into the pain of the crash and the complications of treatment and recovery, but the financial disaster that goes along with it. When perpetrators routinely flee, you won't get compensation from them or their insurance -- if they have any. Reports of cyclist injuries in Canada and Great Britain conspicuously lack the usual links to GoFundMe pages to try to defray a tiny fraction of the medical expenses. That's always hovering over us as well.
When I sit in the car day after day, I can feel myself dying of the inactivity. When I ride the bike day after day, I can feel the pace taking its toll in a different way, with the threat of a crash also looming and fading in my awareness. I am forced to ride harder than I want to when I'm dealing with traffic. By the third day I feel fatigue. By the fifth day I'm really ready to take a couple of days off the bike. The distance matters. Riding just under or over 30 miles a day in hilly terrain takes more out of me than short hops in a fairly flat town would. All of this contributes to my mental state.
I do my best to appear as emotionless as a machine. A driver sits inside the bodywork of the motor vehicle, screened by glass that is apparently hard to see through from both directions. A cyclist is the bodywork. Masked perhaps by sunglasses, and topped with a helmet, the rider is the larger part of the total machine. Eyes front. Cadence steady. React to nothing. Appear invulnerable, even though we all know it isn't true.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
This was a hate crime
Former Bicycling Magazine editor Andrew Bernstein was struck by a hit-and-run driver on Saturday, July 27, as he rode home from a velodrome near Boulder, Colorado. The ER doctor described it as "a high-energy impact," based on Bernstein's injuries.
The only evidence from the crash is a piece of turn signal lens. Investigators have said that they think it might be from a 2000 Dodge Ram van -- a touch of dark irony -- but it's not certain, and anyone could pick up a front end ding. These cases go unsolved more often than not. A teenage girl jogging along a road in Washington, Maine, was left for dead by a hit-and-run driver last week. Remorse is in short supply out there.
I say that Andrew Bernstein's injuries were the result of a hate crime because cyclists are all too familiar with the kinds of things that motorists post in comment threads after a crash involving a motor vehicle and a cyclist. We're all too familiar with the intimidating behavior that some drivers exhibit in the presence of witnesses, let alone when a hostile driver encounters a rider on a lonely road.
Drivers who mow down cyclists are cowards. Drivers who mow down cyclists from behind are the same kind of cowards who would shoot someone in the back and then brag about beating them to the draw. Violence against cyclists stems from the same assumption of superiority that inspires racist, religious, and sexist violence. Violent people are the minority, but you only have to meet one psychopath at the wrong time to wind up dead.
In the 1960s, civil rights activists went down to the part of the country where racist murders were not only not prosecuted, they were encouraged. I draw the parallel not to put cyclists on an equal footing with the people who risked lynching in order to advance racial equality, but to point out that the white supremacists act from the same sense of entitlement and cowardly overkill that motorists exhibit when passing inches away from your handlebar, or blatantly hitting someone just for riding a bike. And road cyclists need to find the same courage and resolve to keep going out there without knowing when or if an attack will come. Most of the time, it doesn't. That does not mean that it won't.
On Wednesday, some worthless piece of human refuse thought it would be funny to squeeze me against the guardrail on Route 28. He was in a string of traffic, so he could't take time to nail me right into it, but his intention was obvious. He suddenly appeared, nearly touching my elbow, and then pulled slowly and deliberately back into the lane after he had passed. It looked like a white Chevy Blazer with a Fox Racing sticker in the upper right corner of the back window. It was just the fox head outline, no words. On another day, a tractor trailer slid his big tires right past me on Center Street. That seemed more indifferent than aggressive. If I died, I died. He would not face charges, or even much disapproval. It was a safe bet for him.
Nothing good is freely given. No one in their right mind would have climbed out of a landing craft onto the beaches of Normandy, or any of the Pacific islands wrested back from the Japanese. The battlefields of the American Revolution were great places to get hurt. It completely sucks that merely riding a bike turns into an act of defiance and an invitation to assault and murder, but that's the kind of species we are.
The thing about homicidal cowards is that they don't care how contemptible they are. They derive their self worth from their machinery, whether it's a car, a truck, or an assault rifle. They feel pride in their willingness to hurt people that they deem inferior. The fact that their targets can't retaliate only provides further proof to them of their superiority. And yet most of them would be rather unhappy if every trip on the roads and streets turned into a tank battle between them and their armored adversaries. Think of it: "Honey, I'm going out for milk, eggs, and toilet paper! My will is in the top dresser drawer! Kids? Who wants to be my turret gunner today? Remember, only the strong survive!"
They're not looking for a good fight. They're just bullies. It's easy to act tough when you expect your adversary to back down.
Most riders prefer quiet roads. Light traffic or almost no traffic seems less threatening. It's easier to relax a little. But long gaps with no other witnesses present drivers with the best opportunity for a quick act of malice or an easy escape from a moment of carelessness. "Oops! I think I hit that biker! Oh well. I promise to feel sorry about it and try not to do it again. They knew the risks."
Cycling has become a form of passive resistance. It can't be active resistance, because the context is not a declared war. Motorists are armed with deadly battering rams and can kill or maim us with a twitch of the steering wheel. We have nothing.
Many riders have abandoned the field. They're like people who might support the troops but would never enlist. They're the ones who call it wisdom when they chuckle patronizingly and say that they have the sense to take up mountain biking or ride only on separated paths. They are motorists with a cycling hobby.
White supremacists argue that white people ended up on top because they won evolution. In the kill or be killed worldview, the people with the best weapons and the willingness to use them conquered the planet, except for the extensive parts that they didn't. Motor supremacists argue that motor vehicles won the right to dominate the road by technological superiority. Might makes right. In both cases, the technology and philosophy provide temporary dominance at the cost of ultimate destruction.
Is it worth fighting a losing battle? More people reach driving age every day. If the economy doesn't completely collapse, these people will get some form of motor vehicle to carry them between the multiple jobs they will need to earn enough money to pay for necessities like food, shelter, clothing, and that crap-box car. They'll call it normal, and resent anyone they see on a bike, who is obviously a less useful citizen. If you have time to waste on a bike, you have time to work more. Put some normal clothes on and get a car like a normal person. Abnormal is inferior. Inferior is weak. Weakness should be destroyed. See the logic?
The only evidence from the crash is a piece of turn signal lens. Investigators have said that they think it might be from a 2000 Dodge Ram van -- a touch of dark irony -- but it's not certain, and anyone could pick up a front end ding. These cases go unsolved more often than not. A teenage girl jogging along a road in Washington, Maine, was left for dead by a hit-and-run driver last week. Remorse is in short supply out there.
I say that Andrew Bernstein's injuries were the result of a hate crime because cyclists are all too familiar with the kinds of things that motorists post in comment threads after a crash involving a motor vehicle and a cyclist. We're all too familiar with the intimidating behavior that some drivers exhibit in the presence of witnesses, let alone when a hostile driver encounters a rider on a lonely road.
Drivers who mow down cyclists are cowards. Drivers who mow down cyclists from behind are the same kind of cowards who would shoot someone in the back and then brag about beating them to the draw. Violence against cyclists stems from the same assumption of superiority that inspires racist, religious, and sexist violence. Violent people are the minority, but you only have to meet one psychopath at the wrong time to wind up dead.
In the 1960s, civil rights activists went down to the part of the country where racist murders were not only not prosecuted, they were encouraged. I draw the parallel not to put cyclists on an equal footing with the people who risked lynching in order to advance racial equality, but to point out that the white supremacists act from the same sense of entitlement and cowardly overkill that motorists exhibit when passing inches away from your handlebar, or blatantly hitting someone just for riding a bike. And road cyclists need to find the same courage and resolve to keep going out there without knowing when or if an attack will come. Most of the time, it doesn't. That does not mean that it won't.
On Wednesday, some worthless piece of human refuse thought it would be funny to squeeze me against the guardrail on Route 28. He was in a string of traffic, so he could't take time to nail me right into it, but his intention was obvious. He suddenly appeared, nearly touching my elbow, and then pulled slowly and deliberately back into the lane after he had passed. It looked like a white Chevy Blazer with a Fox Racing sticker in the upper right corner of the back window. It was just the fox head outline, no words. On another day, a tractor trailer slid his big tires right past me on Center Street. That seemed more indifferent than aggressive. If I died, I died. He would not face charges, or even much disapproval. It was a safe bet for him.
Nothing good is freely given. No one in their right mind would have climbed out of a landing craft onto the beaches of Normandy, or any of the Pacific islands wrested back from the Japanese. The battlefields of the American Revolution were great places to get hurt. It completely sucks that merely riding a bike turns into an act of defiance and an invitation to assault and murder, but that's the kind of species we are.
The thing about homicidal cowards is that they don't care how contemptible they are. They derive their self worth from their machinery, whether it's a car, a truck, or an assault rifle. They feel pride in their willingness to hurt people that they deem inferior. The fact that their targets can't retaliate only provides further proof to them of their superiority. And yet most of them would be rather unhappy if every trip on the roads and streets turned into a tank battle between them and their armored adversaries. Think of it: "Honey, I'm going out for milk, eggs, and toilet paper! My will is in the top dresser drawer! Kids? Who wants to be my turret gunner today? Remember, only the strong survive!"
They're not looking for a good fight. They're just bullies. It's easy to act tough when you expect your adversary to back down.
Most riders prefer quiet roads. Light traffic or almost no traffic seems less threatening. It's easier to relax a little. But long gaps with no other witnesses present drivers with the best opportunity for a quick act of malice or an easy escape from a moment of carelessness. "Oops! I think I hit that biker! Oh well. I promise to feel sorry about it and try not to do it again. They knew the risks."
Cycling has become a form of passive resistance. It can't be active resistance, because the context is not a declared war. Motorists are armed with deadly battering rams and can kill or maim us with a twitch of the steering wheel. We have nothing.
Many riders have abandoned the field. They're like people who might support the troops but would never enlist. They're the ones who call it wisdom when they chuckle patronizingly and say that they have the sense to take up mountain biking or ride only on separated paths. They are motorists with a cycling hobby.
White supremacists argue that white people ended up on top because they won evolution. In the kill or be killed worldview, the people with the best weapons and the willingness to use them conquered the planet, except for the extensive parts that they didn't. Motor supremacists argue that motor vehicles won the right to dominate the road by technological superiority. Might makes right. In both cases, the technology and philosophy provide temporary dominance at the cost of ultimate destruction.
Is it worth fighting a losing battle? More people reach driving age every day. If the economy doesn't completely collapse, these people will get some form of motor vehicle to carry them between the multiple jobs they will need to earn enough money to pay for necessities like food, shelter, clothing, and that crap-box car. They'll call it normal, and resent anyone they see on a bike, who is obviously a less useful citizen. If you have time to waste on a bike, you have time to work more. Put some normal clothes on and get a car like a normal person. Abnormal is inferior. Inferior is weak. Weakness should be destroyed. See the logic?
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Thank you, your lordship
The Walton Family Foundation has established a utopia for bike enthusiasts -- primarily of the off-road persuasion -- around the company town of Bentonville, Arkansas. Because I know someone on the inside, I get to hear about the great work they are doing in their own fiefdom, as well as in other places through generous grants. How fortunate for cyclists that someone in the family is interested in cycling.
Initiatives like the Waltons' promotion of cycling infrastructure, the Gates Foundation's worldwide efforts in aid of global well-being, and billionaire Hansjorg Wyss aiming to buy up 30 percent of the remaining relatively wild land in order to retain a barely sustainable planetary ecosystem put a golden light on a small percentage of the super-rich who happen to like things that are good for rest of us. But it all exists at the whim of the aristocracy.
We're in the mess we're in because the majority of the money has favored destruction. Walmart is regularly criticized for devastating small town business districts and paying its staff so poorly that they need taxpayer assistance to survive. Wyss sold his medical device manufacturing company to Johnson and Johnson, an even bigger corporation fully vested in America's profit-driven, patient-consuming health care racket. He still holds stock in medical research companies equally enmeshed in the current system of medicine for profit. That philanthropic money doesn't grow on trees.
The problem of philanthropists digging one hole to fill another goes back at least to the 19th Century. The great union-fighting titans of the gilded age established our standard of opulence and laid the groundwork for targeted philanthropy in the modern era. But it's all a variation on the whims of the nobility. You know the Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
I have wondered whether a more even distribution of wealth would just lead to more people owning destructive toys and chopping up ecosystems into mini-estates. The current crop of oligarchs sets the tone, because they're really just normal folks like you and me, only unbelievably richer. Mitt Romney -- really just upper middle class with a net worth of merely $250 million -- had a lively conversation with El Queso Grande about all the different machines a person could use to burn gasoline and churn up the lake in pursuit of fun. One of the Walton boys has his own Bell UH-1 "Huey" helicopter he likes to play in. And when I lived on Tuftonboro Neck, some rednecks rode their dirt bikes around a pretty little grassy field, gouging down to subsoil and shredding the air with the rasp of engines, where I had previously seen deer and foxes enjoying peaceful evenings. Only they weren't your average kickers, they were from a famous hotel family that owns an increasing percentage of shorefront along that section of the lake. Normal people. Who wouldn't, if they could afford the equipment?
Left to pure democracy, the planet's survival would probably face no better prospects than it does now. People tend to look at what's right in front of them at any given moment. They'll vote up or down on individual issues without connecting them to each other. We like to keep things simple. I'm no different. But everything is connected, and not in some touchy feely way -- although that is also true. It's all physically tangled together. Cut the tangle and you might sever the expensive and irreplaceable power cord to your favorite piece of electronic equipment along with the that wad of half-worn shoelaces someone threw in the drawer with it. The poor aspire to prosperity as demonstrated by the already prosperous. Normal people want to move up the pyramid, and not to undermine its foundation in case they do get to rise through the tapering layers to its pointy peak.
We thank the nobility for their charity. We ask them for grants and use the facilities they are so kind as to provide. We accept that this is their world because they bought it when the rest of us couldn't. So we can only hope that enough of them want to take good care of it.
Initiatives like the Waltons' promotion of cycling infrastructure, the Gates Foundation's worldwide efforts in aid of global well-being, and billionaire Hansjorg Wyss aiming to buy up 30 percent of the remaining relatively wild land in order to retain a barely sustainable planetary ecosystem put a golden light on a small percentage of the super-rich who happen to like things that are good for rest of us. But it all exists at the whim of the aristocracy.
We're in the mess we're in because the majority of the money has favored destruction. Walmart is regularly criticized for devastating small town business districts and paying its staff so poorly that they need taxpayer assistance to survive. Wyss sold his medical device manufacturing company to Johnson and Johnson, an even bigger corporation fully vested in America's profit-driven, patient-consuming health care racket. He still holds stock in medical research companies equally enmeshed in the current system of medicine for profit. That philanthropic money doesn't grow on trees.
The problem of philanthropists digging one hole to fill another goes back at least to the 19th Century. The great union-fighting titans of the gilded age established our standard of opulence and laid the groundwork for targeted philanthropy in the modern era. But it's all a variation on the whims of the nobility. You know the Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
I have wondered whether a more even distribution of wealth would just lead to more people owning destructive toys and chopping up ecosystems into mini-estates. The current crop of oligarchs sets the tone, because they're really just normal folks like you and me, only unbelievably richer. Mitt Romney -- really just upper middle class with a net worth of merely $250 million -- had a lively conversation with El Queso Grande about all the different machines a person could use to burn gasoline and churn up the lake in pursuit of fun. One of the Walton boys has his own Bell UH-1 "Huey" helicopter he likes to play in. And when I lived on Tuftonboro Neck, some rednecks rode their dirt bikes around a pretty little grassy field, gouging down to subsoil and shredding the air with the rasp of engines, where I had previously seen deer and foxes enjoying peaceful evenings. Only they weren't your average kickers, they were from a famous hotel family that owns an increasing percentage of shorefront along that section of the lake. Normal people. Who wouldn't, if they could afford the equipment?
Left to pure democracy, the planet's survival would probably face no better prospects than it does now. People tend to look at what's right in front of them at any given moment. They'll vote up or down on individual issues without connecting them to each other. We like to keep things simple. I'm no different. But everything is connected, and not in some touchy feely way -- although that is also true. It's all physically tangled together. Cut the tangle and you might sever the expensive and irreplaceable power cord to your favorite piece of electronic equipment along with the that wad of half-worn shoelaces someone threw in the drawer with it. The poor aspire to prosperity as demonstrated by the already prosperous. Normal people want to move up the pyramid, and not to undermine its foundation in case they do get to rise through the tapering layers to its pointy peak.
We thank the nobility for their charity. We ask them for grants and use the facilities they are so kind as to provide. We accept that this is their world because they bought it when the rest of us couldn't. So we can only hope that enough of them want to take good care of it.
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Motorists are like diarrhea
For a cyclist, motorists are like diarrhea: You can only hold them back for so long. You'd prefer not to have them at all. When you do have them, you'd like to get them out of your system as quickly as possible. You try to hurry to get to a more convenient place to eliminate them. Sometimes you don't make it.
The roads and streets are just a big, irritable bowel. We keep cramping each other's style.
Yesterday, I was a bit of a shit. I think in a past life I was a car-chasing dog. I'm addicted to drafting large vehicles. On the last couple of miles of my commute, I heard a tractor-trailer rig behind me on a narrow, bendy section. I stayed to the right to encourage him to go around, but he had no good opportunity, and was too conscientious to take a bad one. I dropped into a side street, hard right, left, onto a converging straightaway that rejoins the main road at a yield sign. That let the truck get by. It was a big heavy equipment flatbed, empty, doing about 30 mph. At a comfortable distance behind it was a string of passenger vehicles. I launched for that big gap, but I'm too tired and too old. I didn't get to top speed in top gear quickly enough to get into the pocket. The long, low, empty trailer didn't pull enough air to pick me up easily. I managed to get to about 27 mph when I maxed out. Horns broke out behind me.
On a normal day, I ride a line just outside the storm drains, at a speed comparable to what I was doing after the unsuccessful chase. Drunk with adrenaline and incipient tachycardia, I resented the horny driver behind me, and signaled my displeasure with a low, dismissive finger. This elicited a further burst of honking. I made a slightly more graphic gestured suggestion involving my buttocks. The honker passed, at a safe and legal distance, but the next vehicle administered a punishment pass. I shut the gate behind that one, holding back the rest of the motorists for a few more yards until I could dive onto the path.
Sometimes, when a motorist makes a big time about how I'm slowing them down and blows by me, I get to pull out onto Main Street in front of them, because their fellow motorists en masse have slowed them down much more. Not this time. I didn't care either way. I was just hammering to work, same as any morning. Only after I got to the shop and got my heart rate down did I reflect on my own contribution to the tension. I should have been the grownup, says the guy in short pants, riding a bike.
The descent into sin is often a simple thing, a single act that is the trapdoor. In this case, it was running the yield sign like a Boston driver when I didn't have the horsepower to pull it off. I plead the temporary insanity of my drafting addiction, aggravated by the persistent memory of when I could rely on my sprint. As recently as a couple of days earlier, I had managed to slingshot a box truck on the same stretch and tuck right in behind it for a sweet pull to my next exit. But that hadn't involved an intersection violation. To be fair to the honkers, I really had strained their congeniality and relied on their mercy.
The only way to get past a mistake is to take responsibility for it. Learn as much as you can. Look at all of its facets, even when they reflect you clownishly. The fact that it was an anonymous encounter with strangers means that I will never have a chance to acknowledge that they had a point. This makes it all the more important to ride in ways that don't take the low road. If I'd blasted out of that side street into the draft and been whisked away at an effortless 30-plus, they could all admire my shiny lycra ass, because I wouldn't be taking up any more room than they were already leaving behind that big rig. But because I blew the sprint I was now a double failure.
You have to take risks in life. But make sure they're worth it. Often, people interpret this to mean deadly consequences, but more often all manner of less dire consequences are at stake. In this case, it's a black mark on cyclists that one aging hammerhead failed to pull off his rude and dangerous maneuver in morning rush hour. I looked like a rude asshole and affirmed the image of rude assholes on bikes. I'll defend my territory vigorously out there. But now I've been reminded that the line is easy to cross in the intoxication of speed.
The roads and streets are just a big, irritable bowel. We keep cramping each other's style.
Yesterday, I was a bit of a shit. I think in a past life I was a car-chasing dog. I'm addicted to drafting large vehicles. On the last couple of miles of my commute, I heard a tractor-trailer rig behind me on a narrow, bendy section. I stayed to the right to encourage him to go around, but he had no good opportunity, and was too conscientious to take a bad one. I dropped into a side street, hard right, left, onto a converging straightaway that rejoins the main road at a yield sign. That let the truck get by. It was a big heavy equipment flatbed, empty, doing about 30 mph. At a comfortable distance behind it was a string of passenger vehicles. I launched for that big gap, but I'm too tired and too old. I didn't get to top speed in top gear quickly enough to get into the pocket. The long, low, empty trailer didn't pull enough air to pick me up easily. I managed to get to about 27 mph when I maxed out. Horns broke out behind me.
On a normal day, I ride a line just outside the storm drains, at a speed comparable to what I was doing after the unsuccessful chase. Drunk with adrenaline and incipient tachycardia, I resented the horny driver behind me, and signaled my displeasure with a low, dismissive finger. This elicited a further burst of honking. I made a slightly more graphic gestured suggestion involving my buttocks. The honker passed, at a safe and legal distance, but the next vehicle administered a punishment pass. I shut the gate behind that one, holding back the rest of the motorists for a few more yards until I could dive onto the path.
Sometimes, when a motorist makes a big time about how I'm slowing them down and blows by me, I get to pull out onto Main Street in front of them, because their fellow motorists en masse have slowed them down much more. Not this time. I didn't care either way. I was just hammering to work, same as any morning. Only after I got to the shop and got my heart rate down did I reflect on my own contribution to the tension. I should have been the grownup, says the guy in short pants, riding a bike.
The descent into sin is often a simple thing, a single act that is the trapdoor. In this case, it was running the yield sign like a Boston driver when I didn't have the horsepower to pull it off. I plead the temporary insanity of my drafting addiction, aggravated by the persistent memory of when I could rely on my sprint. As recently as a couple of days earlier, I had managed to slingshot a box truck on the same stretch and tuck right in behind it for a sweet pull to my next exit. But that hadn't involved an intersection violation. To be fair to the honkers, I really had strained their congeniality and relied on their mercy.
The only way to get past a mistake is to take responsibility for it. Learn as much as you can. Look at all of its facets, even when they reflect you clownishly. The fact that it was an anonymous encounter with strangers means that I will never have a chance to acknowledge that they had a point. This makes it all the more important to ride in ways that don't take the low road. If I'd blasted out of that side street into the draft and been whisked away at an effortless 30-plus, they could all admire my shiny lycra ass, because I wouldn't be taking up any more room than they were already leaving behind that big rig. But because I blew the sprint I was now a double failure.
You have to take risks in life. But make sure they're worth it. Often, people interpret this to mean deadly consequences, but more often all manner of less dire consequences are at stake. In this case, it's a black mark on cyclists that one aging hammerhead failed to pull off his rude and dangerous maneuver in morning rush hour. I looked like a rude asshole and affirmed the image of rude assholes on bikes. I'll defend my territory vigorously out there. But now I've been reminded that the line is easy to cross in the intoxication of speed.
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