Dirge Quinzaine

Given current president’s reality show legacy, ever wonder why federal government doesn’t hold survivor competitions to recruit the best and brightest? Think about how America wastes great minds and physical talents with game shows and silly sports instead. Or how so called “Leader of the Free World” surrounds himself with subpar accomplices. They make Labann look like a Full Bright scholar; have at least tested bike headlights on high beam to tell how long they last on a full charge. Could hire Nobel laureates to concoct tests and pledge considerable prizes that contestants would be eager to collect. Once you screen participants and weed out imbeciles, the top ten would all be offered appointments to high level posts, presumably to advise amazingly and pull together effective policy.

Probably wouldn’t work. Whoever you’d most want to engage wouldn’t be interested. Competent performers are already doing something they consider more important. Besides, who could trust that feds weren’t just rounding up their betters for slaughter? Run the other way!

Should an impeachment remove president from office, hence it would be Pence, kindred nonsense. Cynics think chiefs intentionally benefit by comparison to worse veeps. Nation might be loathe to go from frying pan into fire, ride the lame horse for four short years, soothe selves with reassuring clichés, suspect they can’t meanwhile do irreparable damage, but they’d be wrong.

Government never follows commonsense practices. Monoliths stay put. Any change is too late, too little, and works only to preserve itself. If it doesn’t operate responsibly, resolves no issue timely, and taxes vast majority abusively, doesn’t that make authority the average citizen’s enemy? They are forced to depict boogeymen to deflect blame from themselves. Conditions are too good and lives are too precious to waste time on worry. Better to enjoy your journey by going by bike.

People actually believe that if you sort, identify, label, number, an surveil stuff you are behaving rationally and scientifically. But once the reason for doing so gets lost, the rest is merely empty ceremony, practically magical incantations and specious voodoo. You should reach back to origins sometimes to rediscover meaning. Bicycling teaches where pavement came from, who gets to use it foremost, and why motoring, with all its automated comforts, collision avoidance, cruise control, and wireless distractions, lowers everyone’s safety by reducing driver skills.

Presented for your morbid curiosity are 15 likewise baleful bicycling ballads hitherto unmentioned. Wonder about all this bipolar gloom; a couple even outright describe crashing. Bicycling usually improves mood. Quinzaine is to 15 as a dozen is to 12. Could have looked for a few more related songs, maybe bright and cheery ones, but just how many other words rhyme with chain that haven’t already been used as B&C blog titles?

BallBoy, Olympic Cyclist, i hate scotland, C.I.A. Rec., 2000.

Cyriel, Eddy [The Cannibal] Merckx [Belgian, single], Life Records, 1970.

Juan Luis Guerra, El Niágara en Bicicleta [Dominican merengue], Ni Es Lo Mismo Ni Es Igual, Karen, 1999. About an accident on a bicycle, then, atrocious attention patient begging for help gets in a third world hospital, neither the same nor equal, worse than trying to cross Niagara Falls on a bicycle. Song won recognition and sales for its social conscience on crucial issues.

Jenna Lindbo, Head over Handlebars, Jasmine Parade, self, 2012.

Juliette, Un Petit Vélo Rouillé [French, “A Little Rusty Bike”], No Parano, 2010. “A small rusty bike in a squalid creaking takes a tangled path. And pedal in the void it runs on the rim increasingly faded, tracing a nasty wheel, a vicious and vicious circle… This miserable bicycle. Who will have me, heart, broken! There is only you to show how ridiculous it is. All parts, the cycle of black ideas.”

Kelsey Law, Head Over Handlebars, single, self, 2013. Replete with a tragic backstory. Not same song as Lindbo's, though shares identical title.

Kevin Thorsell, Ride My Bike, single, self, 2009. Teen experiment goes awry.

Melody 101, Bicycle Girl, Baked in A Pie, self, 2015. “None of these stories are lies. Bicycle Girl doesn’t lie. Bicycle Girl is gonna rule the world.”

Redbong, Hip Hop Poulidor, Divisés [pour mieux régner], Discograph, 2009. Racer Raymond Poulidor was sadly famous for finishing second so often, particularly to Merckx.

Roméo, Ma Vie, Mes Copains Et Ma Bicyclette, L’Enfant a la Voix D’or, Choice of Music, 2002. “I have my life, my buddies, and then my bicycle… In my room, I alone make the law. And I do not need anyone. It’s my paradise, my America… When you are my age, you need to have some freedom.”

The Pale Fountains, Bicycle Thieves [no cycling lyrics], From Across the Kitchen Table, Virgin, 1985.

The Rosebuds, Death Of An Old Bike, Sand+Silence, Western Vinyl, 2014.

Tom Rosenthal, Bicycle Lane, B-Sides, Tinpot Rec., 2013. “Can you see the colors change? Oh, they’re blurring into shapes. What if you had a thought? It’s time to make the great escape. Yeah, there's no sign of cars; you’re in the bicycle lane.”

Violet Road, Bicycle [Norwegian in English], In Town To Get You, Sony Music, 2016.

Will Stroet, Le Boogie à Vélo [French Canadian], Dans Ma Jardin, [self], 2009.

To spread some cheer in this xenophobic holiday preseason, close with a quote from a non-bicycling ditty, “So if you’re up there somewhere Santa, please don’t bring me another bike… but there’s something kind of special that I want most of all. I Want an Alien for Christmas.” - Fountains of Wayne

Bang Cinquain

Indicting GM ranks among this blog’s most controversial, divisive, and provocative pronouncements. Nobody noticed. Encouragement? Reaction? Symphony of crickets? Artists and writers thrive on direct input. There’s plenty of peripheral material through network news and social media, but practically none that merits mention without personal motivation. One picks facts to make points. Just being surrounded by daily tumult can inspire another output. But what incites meaningful action? Why go by bike instead of car during unsettled weather? Too bothered to constantly check forecasts, one might forfeit progress, forget feeling better, ignore muscle tone, or lose interest altogether. Then sun rises, and urge to splurge arises.

Bike commutes represent just one of many ride options, but one that steadily recurs. You can instead form trains, go together in groups, recreate elsewhere alone, submit to fund raisers, take short neighborhood spins, or tour across country or state borders. Once you involve others, you limit number of trips. Commute routes need to start flat and short; otherwise you wouldn’t arrive on time. Returns can be lengthened to take in hills and scenery. As autumnal equinox passes, daylight at commute hours disappears. Shift from saving to standard time opens a short window to ride again without lights, though soon you must recharge them or replace batteries. You may attempt sunlit midday trips year round in most localities. Winter commutes tend to be entirely in darkness, which discourages all but the dauntless. Some attend indoor spin classes to deter later ineffectiveness.

Was once excited, ready and suited for a winter bicycle commute on a new route. Parked truck in a high traffic lot and rolled bike onto a quiet side street into cauldron pot blackness. Held headlight button for prescribed few seconds and lit as expected. After about a mile it popped. Walked back blind to where streetlights were and wended carefully back to vehicle to resume by motor. Among worst cycling disappointments ever, never got a chance to repeat that loop, which included a new bridge bike lane and rolling country terrain. Have been caught in rain and snow, laid low in hail and lightning, proceeded with caution in fog and on ice, but was never otherwise so utterly forced to retreat. Must always be wary of failure, especially by bike, since it might entail consequences you won’t like.

Can dwell on tragic finality, the curse that befalls all who empathize, or get distracted by comic absurdity as do those who rationalize. Wisdom finds a stance astride. Eyes on the prize don't preclude being blindsided. Need your head on a swivel to identify, react to, and rule out threats while you keep what's important in focus and try to learn what's profitable. You won’t discover it in a casino playing Wheel-O-Rama trying to match five figures across.

“Money talks, bullsh*t walks,” by which they mean people who can pay get treated royally while rest are derided ignominiously. Tempted to rephrase, "Wealth motors, poverty bikes," but bicycling spans all classes, and slogans, however false, seem less so if they rhyme, as if the extra effort of using fancy language legitimizes. No political speech writer or pulpit homily moralizer would ever be deprived of a rhyming dictionary. Apt phrases rattle inside addled brains, just a parlor trick that makes possible persuading the most apathetic without actual arm wrestling.

Life is mostly about getting, going, spending and sleeping. Leaves little chance to be brave. Choosing to go by bike only exposes you to different dangers than motoring. An automotive shell may seem like armor, but because of small footprint bicyclists avoid collisions altogether. Better never to collide.

All humans were born with a fear button. Politicians and pontificators specialize in pushing it to release fight or flight hormones. If you don’t respond, you’re left to assess doubts, misgivings, or regrets. Traced fork of failure back to a blur of pork on a spork. Yet middle aged flab once was a sign of affluent endurance not gross ugliness. Thereby survived stretches of lean and plenty without sheltering the blameworthy. A Labann cinquain, “Election Day”, exposes roots of evil times:

Bandits
brazen, sneaky
blood sucking politicians
murder more than mosquitos
poverty

Its meter resembles how some Congressmen bilked public of trillions, a bit at first, then bam bam, then bam bam bam, increasing from annually to quarterly until one incessant bang. Pettiness wants to deprive the powerless, steal a meal, stash as cash. Fear of future want compels such compulsion. Cinquain, an American Imagist poetic form based on Japanese haiku, is direct with an economy of words for short attention spans. Upon volumes of details taxpayers grew numb. Does anybody know who got away with treachery or remember who got indicted? While it disappoints and seems disrespectful, when nobody listens you can at least expect mobs won’t react wrongly. In Las Vegas, terrorists who do lash out heinously. Blame it on biased conservative media, who have already instigated next attack, always suborn treason, and arguably validate psychos. Aren’t all of these crimes?