Baguette Allein

Rookie mistake, went out half asleep to ride without spreading crotch padding inside bib tights. Unless you lift each leg laterally, as if a dog marking territory, fabric bunches up and causes friction burns. Although not as badly as wearing bluejeans, can get painful, just as does improperly setting tongue of cleats, which should be stretched flat across top of foot. One can brake, dismount and rejigger, but in rush to arrive per brutal rules often just abide along with other bike hassles.

Must you move? Motility is life itself. Even lying in bed, you’re still spinning on earth at nearly 1500 feet per second, 4 times around a baseball diamond, or 5 football fields. Yet many would describe themselves as going nowhere, since they live hand to mouth in a capitalist scrap-scape and watch helplessly as net worth goes south amidst social injustice they can’t escape.

Neolithic humans hardly ever sat, only to eat and sleep. They defecated and urinated while squatting, migrated continually, and walked everywhere. Lean and toned, they lived on average only 35 years, ironically, due mostly to hazards encounters gathering, hunting, and squabbling over resources. Ever since, mankind has been determined to make life easier and safer, though extremes of either negate the other. For the first time since WWII, life expectancy has begun to decline due to what sheeple choose to do, not what nature forces them to.

Americans increasingly stay put, work from home, thereby scan same scenery and skip commute altogether. Otherwise, to avoid footsteps they ride by bus or train, take elevators, escalators, even moving walkways, turn away from exerting self at all costs. Because many jobs require that you sit in place to be productive, companies adopt policies that make you stand and stretch once an hour to head off health debt. Manufacturers mitigate excessive hand-offs and motion waste. Motorists stuff mouths at drive-through troughs, and transact business at bank kiosks an arm’s length away. Seated delivery drivers grab up and hand off parcels from portal to portal. Drones and robots will be next, followed by on-site replicators so nothing need be moved except billions of buckets of rubbish onto landfill summits. Logistics limit warfare so set priorities.

Websites let you shop by computer ap and credit card. Increasingly deserted retail malls are only for the electronically deprived or inept, nobody worth mingling with, or whoever wants to inspect quality or readiness before buying, for example, baked freshness. Drive-in theaters weren’t easy enough. Netflix now means you don’t have to get out of your electric wheelchair or leave home to experience vicariously others jumping, risking life and limb, running from dangers you’ll never encounter fixated on an oversized monitor or tethered to a virtual reality headset, unless you shop for food at a crowded supermarket. A bloated weak information slave, you’ll likely live on life support into your 70's or until by design age triggers social security entitlements.

Flight delayed? You get to sit for hours while listening to murmurs of remote conversations, rumble of people movers, and totally unintelligible public service announcements. Perhaps you’ll stand alone in a line, or walk a bit between gates or parking lots. Maybe you expected to be thousands of miles across continent already, but plane assigned hasn’t yet arrived, and departure won’t occur for hours more. Occasionally someone drifts near dropping fragments of convo out of context seemingly formed of emojis, internet acronyms, and text shortcuts. You’re conditioned to ignore placidly or too embarrassed to connect meaningfully with strangers. Society doesn’t allow you to emote, interact, or move away, only ignore and stay as if un chien sur en laisse under some dog trainner's finger snap incapable of challenging masters.

Exercise deficit has become such a broad pandemic states and towns spend up to $1 million per mile installing linear parks, recreational biking and walking paths, which too few use, mostly chain smokers, dog walkers, and teen gangs barred from everywhere else, yet skip striped roadside lanes that cost almost nothing. Deeds done and kickbacks pocketed, nothing more will be spent maintaining and patrolling, since both would cost a trifling percent and represent unwanted labor. Meanwhile majority medicates itself on food carbs and illicit, over-the-counter, or prescribed drugs when not really sick to overcome minor bother or mortal ennui of employing out-of-shape chassis made arthritic for lack of acts considered aerobic.

Pleas to shape up come from insurers who hope to roll back payouts, owners of gyms and health spas who get tired of looking at misshapen examples on streets, and whoever else finds flab repulsive or unprofitable. You have every right to hate yourself and ignore them all. It’s probable too much exercise is just as bad as none, since you can damage bones, joints, muscles, organs and skin with any strenuous regimen. Long distance runners face more heart attacks and strokes than cycling randonneurs, though both should be wary of potentially fatal heatstroke and hyponatremia, a blood sodium level below 120 mEq/L, signaled by disturbed balance, lack of focus, and nausea before seizures lead to coma.

Doctors say low impact muscle reps, especially cycling along gentle terrain of converted rail trails, control diabetes, desensitize patients, manage their mood, and reduce cardiovascular risks about as well as medication. Extended sunlight, fresh air, and gross motor activities aid oxygen uptake and deter Vitamin D deficiency. Or you can hide indoors and pop expensive pills. Doctors also claim stress and worry are as bad as high fat diets. Satiated busybodies should have less to say than suffering bastards, but seems today reverse holds sway. Bicyclists find frequent relaxation, life balance, and rancor ignored by officials who could easily remedy. If you ride to bakery by bike, you can probably enjoy that baguette a bit with each meal without guilt. Pity those who can’t take advantage of this simple conveyance upon ribbons of roads that usher all who otherwise slog through gridlock and shouldn’t be indulging in such goodies. Conversely, white lines edge space and provide slippery pavement that hastens cycling scorchers to goals.

Decades of own research and 15,000 hours of direct experience confirm that bicycling is 2000% safer than driving. It’s in the physics. Bicyclists collectively average only 11 mph; at that rate they can collide with almost anything and ride away with no more than a bruise, dent or scrape. Motorists double, even quadruple on roads that flow traffic faster. Steel cages surrounded by glass colliding at 25 mph or more will break bones, cause brain trauma, severely lacerate, or worse. Vehicles occupy entire lane, so crash plenty. Bicyclists instead hang near road edge, smartly don helmets, so sporadically succumb to risks. Have fallen and resumed en route, was nudged but never lost balance, witnessed cyclist accidents but never needed to call for rescue, but you can go too fast on a bike. Peloton racers often exceed 100 mph on mountain descents, yet since 1894 only about one hundred and fifty racers globally have died pursuing such extremes. In contrast every day thirty-two hundred motorists die in crashes. Shouldn’t mess with motoring’s crushing momentum unless stupid or suicidal. NASCAR remains popular among redneck racists, rude misogynists, Trump apologists, and total idiots, who’ve repeatedly proven they have no grey matter worth preserving for sake of species.

You can clearly identify intolerable scenarios and terrible situations, but trying to eliminate or overcome all of them isn't possible. Too many causes to count, or factors to calculate, to arrange things the way you'd like. Thus morality and philosophy came about, as ways to handle distress emotionally at least. Some committee might study to exclusion of more immediate concerns. A consensus requires mutual understanding, but communication relies on shared perspective. Your location on life's arc isn't likely to correspond with anyone else's, even others born on same day, and view from a saddle varies from behind a dashboard enclosed in a rolling car. Labann aged better than own kin, watches obits for contemporaries and coworkers who've fallen by wayside, and wonders who'll be next when not analyzing trends or bargaining details with deities and demons.

At a campus campaign stop Bern Grinders mentioned raising wages to a $15 minimum, a topic with which students can relate, and what comes from living hand to mouth. If you can't afford to fill or fix your car, you might lose your job and wind up on a bread or dole line instead of achieving your potential as a hero. Sounds sensible until you consider that many millions gainfully employed don't own cars, live in cities with busses, subways and taxis subsidized by taxes, or ride bicycles instead. Then again, why allow such cruelty on company's part to lay off loyal staff upon some stupid commuting snafu? Decent ones permit flexibility in arrive and leave hours. Some may gripe, "Nanny state," or groan over "gummint" getting too intimate, usually those who brought on oversight to begin with by causing injuries, losses and troubles. Agencies exist to expound fairness and surround careless, so they're cordoned off for mutual safety, not to hound them about their recklessness. They also draw lines around corpses of victims of crime or mayhem to investigate causes. Between dying and thriving where does anyone draw the line?

“I leave after breakfast, full tummy. Tying up my laces, kiss your pretty face, and I'll be on my way. Putting on my shades, and give you another wave, bye-bye, it's getting late. Do I look too cool? On my bicycle, on my bicycle, yeah, I’m sorry I rule.” Filous, Bicycle, single (twee pop), Ultra Rec., 2019