Last Dance with Mary Jane

Bike commuters cover serious miles. Hundred-mile weeks provide plenty of time to play with words, plow through ideas, and wonder how many more trips a body nearing eighth decade alive can survive before it just won’t go no mo'. Riding before dawn, Labann feels blessed to do what few care or dare to, but has surely earned right to complain that just past next hill crest or horizon test might be the last dance on bike and chain.

Maillot Jaune (pron. mahjo zhawn), now and then corrupted as Mary Jane, Tour de France’s yellow jersey worn exclusively by individual time leader, viably excuses Labann's preference for reflex yellow as a color to admire and wear. Also highly visible under all conditions, it’s what they paint caution signs, fire trucks, and school busses. Plus it signifies curiosity and fear, enlightenment and peril, races and taboos, yang and yin under the pale primrose sun, yeah, a potent talisman. To survive, you should make it as difficult as possible for motorists to collide with you, use a blazing headlight, blinking Lanterne Rouge, reflecting fields or stripes at night. Or not: Stealthy routes or total avoidance also work. Can share tactics to try, never demand that others must comply. Recreational and sportif cyclists don’t necessarily confront same set of issues that transportational riders do.

Pluralism: Look it up! Pluralism fuels a powerful economic engine from dozens of different approaches, heeds unusual threats, rounds out varied contingencies, and swells revenue for defense, since needs indubitably vary without uniformity. The reason 20th became known as The American Century can be summed up by nation's ability to aid every ally and avoid war on its shore. That was without neutrality, mind you. And to what do you attribute this unprecedented status? Surely not just an ocean obstacle. Some would argue it was a melding of many customs, skills and viewpoints. Since science cannot define every fact, opinions remain highly debatable, even rejectable. Diversity for its own sake is daft; rather assemble exceptional talents to meet unforeseen demands without bias blinders, class distinctions, creed casteism, gender defenders, or racial recriminations. Or else you can give folks a chance and have faith they won’t disappoint. Science says you’ll choose correctly 3:1. Life’s a gamble at best.

Today's Americans are dissatisfied with how government is run, which engages in billion-dollar-a-day wars that cause widespread civilian suffering, favors rich, and reneges on agreements, entitlements, and promises. Three branches are made up of five hundred and forty-six members, with token exceptions, wealthy white males. One can trace all recent domestic terrorism directly back to attitudes that leaders leak, Fox agitprop, and Trump on stump. Arrogance and avarice made apparent, such enemies recklessly make more enemies for you. Meanwhile, they demand heightened internal security, tightened law enforcement, and whitened brain bleachery. It's exactly how totalitarianism implants itself, by expanding threats and forcing everyone to act or be alike, not better, just enough to ensure fear, manipulation and silence. Must everyone and everything else be eliminated? Inability to deal with variety is a defining symptom of mental instability.

You'd think Christian forbearance would preclude silent acceptance of murder or slavery as a solution. Bible thumpers cite good book - merely a history of an ancient obscure tribe - as a compliance cudgel, though constitution encompasses a wide range from atheists to zealots, thereby requiring separation of religion and state. Extreme right narrative, “We are few, but we have facts, so only we can set state straight,” which then proceeds to pepper hate speech with 5% of science used to conflate 95% self serving opinion, would be laughable, even pitiable, if it didn’t entertain genocide. Worst of all sins is to start a war and justify it under God’s will, as if any human could ever speak authoritatively on behalf of an invisible, omniscient power. Many a crusader defending Christ posthumously slaughtered innocents in diametric disobedience of His teachings. Where were they when He was being crucified by Old Testament's authors?

Confessors divulge whatever best suits them, put a positive spin on shortcomings, stack deck toward their saintly legacies. Who wants to be remembered as a boot licker, corporate chump, money grubber, servile stooge, system minion, or total loser? You're a rebel Jedi warrior, but only in your own delusional mind if you've consistently dismissed doing heroic deeds against evil empires that would qualify as outstanding. By living long, you’re largely a detriment, unless you've restored more than you ruined. Most can’t even claim carbon neutrality, never mind net contributions or improvements. Consider species extinctions, desert wastelands, habitat destructions, toxic fields, and water pollution for which only humans can be blamed. How many really exceptional individuals will it take to overcome adverse effects of seven billion incompetents who instead preen an appearance or stand by stupidly?

Despite courts, who supposedly serve public's best interests alone, no small group or sole individual should presume to judge what others do. All one has ever been allowed is to act responsibly: Do no harm, refuse no one in need. Few ever meet this minimum requisite. Since no two bodies occupy same place at same time, everyone experiences own life and follows different paths. This can be both good and too bad. Empathy is a supremely important virtue, one neither readily acquired from privilege nor valued by most until a lack of any personally affects them. Without, freedom and justice aren’t possible in a nation with highest percentage of population incarcerated. Leaders and media shouldn’t be inciting hate crimes unless prepared themselves to die or do time. Public’s has a duty to prosecute offenders and remediate mess.

It occurs to Labann on mornings when he passes state’s prison that being able to bike about will forever beat staring out from behind bars or staying in bedridden. Then, again, from bicycling there’s an aftermath of forbidden murmurs and foxtrot twitches from dodging pavement impediments any bicyclist must bear.

Is every crutch now legal - booze, guns, motor vehicles, narcotics, prostitution, weed - at the cost of core freedoms - from tyranny and want, unafraid to present another perspective, unashamed to reason aloud, unmolested by religious bigotry? Amidst political imbalance and war of words destined for worse, there’s plenty to resolve, but does this effort require you? Who slept though only to awake and find hard fought rights eroded beyond recovery? Can never stop. To maintain your way of life, you must make it as difficult as possible for any apathetic imbeciles or April Fool to rule.

"Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain. I feel summer creepin' in and I'm tired of this town again. Well, I don't know, but I've been told, ‘You never slow down, you never grow old.’“ - Thomas Earl Petty (1993)