Always meant to sum up best advice for bicycling before shuffling beyond:
Ask yourself, “Can I bike there instead of drive?”
Beware bad pavement and mad motorists.
Brake and downshift before you must.
Carry a cell phone, tools, and tubes.
Choose best venues and times, mindful of weather forecasts.
Don’t antagonize motorists or pedestrians.
Hydrate often or suffer later.
Keep at least one hand on handlebars, preferably two.
Lock bike up securely when not riding, lest you wind up walking.
Maintain equipment in proper order; recheck before each outing.
Mind traffic controls at intersections, where behaviors are unpredictable.
Never lay or lean bike on derailleur side.
Pay attention above, afar, ahead, around, beneath and behind while you ride.
Pick and stick to a sensible track; weave only as much as you must.
Tuck in on curves to avoid clippers.
Use lights and reflectors.
Wear gloves, helmet, safety glasses, and visible apparel.
Surrounded by even more dire threats, also warned people about losing health, liberty, life, love, sustainability, and what matters most, despite fact that everyone is beset by so much detail they can’t digest the least bit and forget or ignore it. Facing enormity of this universe of reality, carved out a niche from which to observe, test and theorize, if only to make sense for self’s sake. Someone else benefitting would be an unexpected plus.
Bicycling is safer than driving, even when both are equivalently done responsibly, though those with vested interests will dissuade against pedaling, or persuade you into frivolous spending. Neither destiny nor doom will ever be assured, except by lying schemers who’d use such notions while deluding simpletons to pledge devotions. After all, humankind has always lived on borrowed time, but paradigm continues to unwind despite fret and grime, while peeps pursue crime, football, sitcoms, or some other stimulating pastime with hours they have left after working double shifts or overtime.
Why do so many submit to wills of authors, celebrities, dictators, emperors, experts, geniuses, kings, leaders, opportunists, rulers and saints? Because it’s easier and lazier than figuring things out and putting in effort themselves. Never underestimate craving for convenience and extent of mankind’s laziness. But someone, maybe a self funded scientist or street corner prophet, ought to simplify complex issues with intent to inform, not just opine, perhaps even reform.
Used to be that social commentary about newsworthy facts was what they broadcast during dead air and ratings voids. Political infotainment primetime only became possible because cable and network programming reeks of seen reruns and unentertaining chores. If not for discovery, history, movies, science programs, and sports, there’d be nothing worth watching on basic cable. Broadband advancements now allow internet streaming; soon cable will be obsolete, though monthly fees haven’t yet declined to reflect this fact, rather increased while anticipating inevitable end.
Historically, cults of personalities brought civil and social catastrophes. Broadcasts named for hosts instead of topics prove they persist. Those who ruled inevitably committed prideful outrages and sacrificed enthralled followers. Pride goeth before your humiliating fall, while prideful instigators are protected from it all. “In a land of wolves and thieves, don’t put your hope in ungodly man, or be a slave to what somebody else believes. Trust yourself,” advised Bob Dylan in 1985. Leader of the world's most powerful country is a magnet for history's most evil villain.
Gone are the days when one scandalous act was enough to cost candidate an election. Today, politicians rely on constant mixed publicity to raise status to celebrity. Being known as a circus spectacle seems to trump securing spotless renown. No one is innocent when it takes society’s consensus to cause this predicament. But unless you’re on the campaign bus stealing alongside bosses, you’re never informed as to what their intentions really are, so should you blame yourself? Frank Zappa urged others to despise apathy, insincerity, phoniness, and lies, since almost everyone’s passionate about own investments toward success.
Admit, also, any subrogation of autonomy can be considered a root cause for all sorts of ills, among them burdensome oversight, government interference, political corruption, and reprehensible “sheeple-dom”. This doesn’t impugn or negate contributions of agents of improvement and regulation, but does warrant questioning motivations and outcomes. If you fail to arrest and indict, laws become shams, something Zappa once described as randomly enforced and suspiciously written, ways to keep masses afraid and subservient. Yet those who bristle over guidelines recommending distance and masks during a pandemic miss real human rights violations directly imposed upon them.
What should citizens expect as a baseline in a just society? For starters, The Four Freedoms - from tyranny and want, of religion and speech, ratified by both UN and USA - imply a host of specific rights. Each revolves around identifiable conditions, none indelible, often lost, and only regained through battles, death, pain and sacrifices.
Tyranny takes many forms, among them browbeating, bullying, crime, extortion, low wages, jailing journalists, misinformation, monopolies, price gouging, propaganda, slavery, state religion, unconstitutional acts, unforgiving policies, and vote restriction. Worse, bicyclists are being forced off ever more roads through elimination of shoulders and lack of accommodations. One shouldn’t have to fight skirmishes daily, scrutinize some bureaucrat’s decisions, take lawmakers to task on how well they represent will of constituents, or worry over secret agendas. Oaths seem to be taken as empty rites that don’t apply personally.
Want includes homelessness, hunger, joblessness, lack of hopeful enfranchisement, and poverty, which kills more people than any other cause. Dickens’ twin specters of ignorance and want arise from failure or refusal to create own opportunities and too few owning too much. Wealth is a finite resource that allegedly rewards able bodied and agile minded. However, for every new billionaire, more than twenty-thousand families tragically sink below poverty line. Among industrialized countries, USA has the most lopsided ratio of poor to rich. Unlike others, Reagan’s trickle down with tax breaks for richest few has proven a dismal failure in countless ways, worst of which are burden on middle class taxpayers for corporate and family welfare, resentment of failure and success, and sense of despair and envy that a few who sell their souls can make it while you are condemned to ignominy and poverty after shouldering responsibility upon every opportunity. Forever coming in second or up short can be maddening, but never having a chance could either be devastating or liberating.
Some Americans persecute members of certain religions, notably Muslims, and favor others, often white Protestants. Evangelicals polled showed a notable bias toward cult leadership and empty promises, with three quarters tenaciously supporting Dolt 45, who attorneys general of 5 states want to indict and imprison. While creed is poison to villains, one shouldn’t fear being agnostic, atheistic, Buddhist, Catholic, Jewish, or new ageist, yet often must. Religious rights include clear passage to place of worship and no private or public penalties for your affiliation to any congregation, but not forcing your beliefs on others, since that constitutes tyranny. Founding Fathers kept religion and state separate based on disastrous precedent and no theocratic upsides to celebrate.
Americans, unlike probably billions of others, can supposedly speak aloud with access to existing forums over worldwide web. But social media reeks of obligatory guidelines and self appointed censors who limit what you post about taboo issues: Politics, religion, sex, and wages, that is, what affects lives the most. Wars of words aren’t going to save you from iron fisted oppressors. Increasingly, First Amendment doesn’t exonerate those whose message departs from what ruling class imparts. Not even fiction and films are exempt, lately losing credibility for truths they convey. Only coalitions acting at local voting boards, encouraging apathetic to cast theirs, keeping ballots honest and open to all, and working proactively ahead of each primary will give democracy a chance, help freedoms advance, keep checks in balance, and protect justice parlance. Civil liberties have been eroding worldwide during this century; for example, an estimated 50 million slaves today have no voice and possess zero rights.
During pandemic, films entertained better than propaganda, made quarantine tolerable, and mitigated desperation, though suicide rates are still rising. Attractive and clever actors in roles preserved on film make better friends than coworkers. They don’t ask for a favor or bother you later. In person interaction is slowly being supplanted by arguably safer virtual delusion devoid of infectious proximity and socially transmitted diseases.
