Sunlit “Un”plain

“If we can stand up to [tyranny], all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.” UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Parliament on June 18, 1940, at beginning of World War II, 5 years before a global alliance and his mobilization of the English language managed to achieve victory and defeat Nazi Axis aggression. Upland is today a cheap Chinese bike brand, while America’s high ground reputation is history, per authoritarian plan, some say beyond salvation.

Whoever “they” are, likely some legacy group on fringe with pronoun cringe, they designated May as National Bike Month. Rode a routine 35 mile loop on Ride a Bike Day, the 3rd. Bike to Work Week will be the 11th to 17th with Bike to Work Day on 17th.

Having had too few winter outings and noting a delayed crocus bloom, went on first ride of Spring later than usual following a record 3 foot blizzard that made region’s streets too narrow and slick for a month. Anticipating first “century week” of the year, did manage several rides with miles in double digits, yet shy of the five 20 milers required. Not surprisingly, one gets seriously out of shape when unable to ride for so long. Meanwhile, SoCal has seen record heat, °F in triple digits, raising fears of dry heat causing another devastating out-of-control wildfire. Global warming hints of winter convenience, but instead manifests in catastrophic betrayals, severe conditions, strong winds, and weather swings which discourage jaunts outdoors.

Why “com”plain about routine exertion? Why “ex”plain how exploration and perspiration benefit body and mind? When you curiously dive into dreaded details you discover what brazen statements don’t disclose, informative connections that unpack how to exploit data for mutual fun and profit. Bias toward what topics one will address or cover does not in any way mean such reporting is unreliable, rather promises a narrow but precise take. However, ignoring major influences misinforms and oversimplifies. Parties and passivity swirl down foreclosure and forfeiture sewers. To approach enlightenment and reach utopian uplands you need “un”plain perspectives seen above upstanding crests, but is that wise?

Mike Magnuson, Bike Tribes: A Field Guide to North American Cyclists (Rhodale Press, 2012, 200 pp.) - Heft on Wheels author previously cited tries to sort through stereotypes, though fully aware that bicycling is egalitarian and inclusive of all individuals of every stripe except certain fascist overlords, petroleum pedophiles, and their sycophant toadies.

Era of awkward incompetents groping for acceptance is over. A narcissist apprentice host with cancelation level ratings now lords on a golden throne above cosmetic mutant minions raiding treasury. What does that tell you? Dug in like a tick in bosom of fascist society, you probably can get by knowing little as long as you fein contempt for knowledge and look attractive. Ugly people actually have to be skilled, smart, and useful, since they bear all the weight and do all the work. So, get dental or plastic surgery, go on a diet, and tone muscle at gym, then run for a cabinet appointment or public office, instead of practice, read, study, then take a thankless position that doesn’t compensate you for what you’re worth.

Climate vagaries aren’t the only obstacles to bicycling potentialities. Edicts elicit excuses not to ride, as if you needed more among myriad others. Theorists pontificate rules expecting bicyclists to bow to their authority, such as scrutinizing road ahead for where you’ll be after 12 seconds elapse, or spinning as cadence during 75% of pedaling, versus sprinting for less than 25%, to build racing stamina. What's the hurry?

“There’s lots of value in riding a bicycle. But you cannot expect that bicycle travel is going to take the place of very much of the automotive travel being made.“ Damn you, John Forester. No “effective cycling” exists for anyone but weenie cultists. His book of 800 pp. based on listserv opinions dismisses average bicyclists going a grand average of a mere 12 mph. Exchanged harsh words with him on majority’s inability to compete with 25+ mph motorized traffic. His MAMIL manifesto capitulating to automotive paradigm set back bicycling’s acceptance on streets and surge of building dedicated accommodations by decades. Do agree about taking lanes, but shifting over to let passers by only makes safe sense when infrastructure allows. Thank you Not Just Bikes (Jason Slaughter) for again debunking his bullpucky, as has B&C for decades. Best described as stubborn obsession, once you make a case you feel you have to defend it.

Am also ambivalent over few new woonerven, traffic controlled streets, supposedly improving safety of cycling and walking. Bump-outs actually intermittently force bicyclists into travel lanes, whereas a continuous breakdown lane stretching completely through intersections avoids bike-car collisions and helps maintain predictable lines of travel for both. Recently installed Dynamic Speed Monitoring Displays, intended to deter motorists from going over posted limits, have been found to cause distractions and encourage violations. While operators tend to conform with feedback in short term, effectiveness wanes without active policing, and scofflaws seem triggered to see how fast they can go. They also shame bicyclists to push harder to hurry past at higher speeds.

Any traffic enforcement that doesn’t suspend licenses of repeat offenders fails to protect compliant majority. Acts of avenging violators shouldn’t involve punishing law abiders. Slime slips through your fingers despite state’s desire to control carnage through passive deterrents. It’s a lesson about squeezing so hard that entire population becomes infuriated and goes rogue.

There’s seldom been a better time for riding an e-bike, except perhaps during pandemic, given highest ever national average gas price of $4.50/gallon for political reasons totally arbitrary and unnecessary. Beats even Dubya Bush’s recession years. Californian retailers are posting prices over $9.00 wondering what they’ll do with pumps that can’t exceed $9.99. Boycott Big Oil by biking!

If you’re going to wage a war that closes shipping lanes for a flotilla of oil tankers, at least give a sensible explanation, not try to evade prosecution for this War Powers Act violation by bobbing and dodging. Also pinpoint targets that will neutralize retaliatory infrastructure, e.g., airports, diesel and nuclear refineries, missile bases, or military camps, not civilian bridges, electric plants, reservoirs, and school full of teen girls. One ought to strategize based on careful consideration, central intelligence, and constituent interests, not drunken whims, sinister agendas, or swaggering bloodlust. Perhaps it’s less stressful to find gentle expressions of bicycling culture.

To begin most projects on Magnolia Network’s home improvement series Maine Cabin Masters, contractor Chase Morrill, his sister Ashley, and her husband Ryan take different forms of transportation to evaluate remote work sites. Given Maine is deemed “Vacationland” dotted with 6,000 lakes and ponds, often that involves fun modalities, e.g., ATVs, canoes, e-scooters, horseback, jet skis, kayaks, microbus, sailboats, snowmobiles, and so forth. “Two Bathrooms, No Bedrooms” (Season 6, Episode 10, 2021) has boss on a bicycle racing married couple on a tandem. Bikes likewise figure in “I Get by With a Little Help from Froggy Friends (Season 8, Episode 8, 2023). Ordinarily, builders arrive in panel vans and pickup trucks.

[Left] Deadhead cyclist Ryan Eldridge, Cabin Master

Will Trent “You’re Not That Person Anymore”(Daniel T. Thomsen and Liz Heldens dirs., Season 4, Episode 6, 2025) sees supporting characters Angela Polaski (Erika Christensen) and Seth McDale (Scott Foley) recalling how they met by crashing into each other on bicycles. She’s now pregnant with his child, and they are getting married on same spot witnessed by random randonneur Marvin. Having exchanged vows, a posse of fellow bicyclists with elaborate night lights send them off on a honeymoon. Was one of this quirky crime drama’s more popular episodes.

Expedition Unknown (Season 16, Episode 5, 2025) has host Josh Gates pursuing a legendary lost shipwreck that 40 years ago inspired adventure feature Goonies (Richard Donner, dir., 1985). Josh mimics film’s teen protagonists by riding a banana bike around Astoria, Oregon, the shooting location for many of movie’s scenes.

Burglar Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) enters 4 dozen fast food franchises by breaking through ceilings in criminal biopic Roofman (Derek Cianfrance, dir., 2025). Sentenced practically for life, this divorced dad and ex-vet escapes prison and holes up in a nearby North Carolina Toys ”R” Us. Hidden by day behind bike display, he spends his time eating store’s candy, exercising after hours among aisles, and expertly observing store employees per his military recon experience. Under alias John Zorn he even dates one, single mom Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst), visiting her at church and home by riding a juvenile store bike. No stranger to bicycling, Tatum later shared a sentimental photo from film’s set, explaining it was a scene where his character gives his daughter the bike she always wanted after pawning stolen video games.

In post production, Project Hail Mary (dirs. Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, 2026) is, like football term it evokes, a desperate last ditch effort to save game. In this case, it means an environmentally conscious bicyclist and former science professor Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) being shanghaied to save totality of humankind from a dying sun. He awakes alone, crew’s sole survivor, on an interstellar flight to Tau Ceti system on a mission to study what’s also killing that sun. Audience are conditioned to think of space adventures as heroic venues, but someone must step up to save planet’s few remaining democracies if you expect opportunities to tackle other existential threats.

Rom-com feature film Solo Mio (Charles and Daniel Kinnane, dirs., 2026) depicts jilted fiancé Matt (Kevin James, Hitch, Mall Cop, Pixels) left at the altar. He continues his prepaid honeymoon in Italy wifeless, While riding alone on an Ecosmo 20F07W fold-up tandem bicycle, he instead finds adventure and love when coffee barista Gia (Nicole Grimaudo) joins him on rides.

Law & Order “Never Say Goodbye” (Fred Berner, dir., Season 25, Episode 12, 2026), follows bike commuter Mark Turner (Chamblee Ferguson), an FAA inspector, who’s gunned down on Hudson Bikeway heading home on his last day of a 37-year career keeping those plying skies safe. It’s up to Maroun (Odelya Halevi) and Price (Hugh Dancy) to ferret out a vengeful bride who converses with her dead husband via artificial intelligence, another reason to suspect awful intent of unlawful AI.

For some reason, single romcom characters are legally permitted to engage in premarital sex for One Night Only (Will Gluck, dir., 2026, slated for August release). Bicyclist Allie (Monica Barbaro) collides with New York restauranteur Owen (Callum Turner) and sparks fly.

Lardi B, Bicycle (parody hip-hop w/ explicit lyrics), single, self, 2024 - plus size and tattoo positive performer declares, “We don't need no gasolini, eco-freindly we go greenie... You can look, but you can’t touch... I want to ride my bicycle right now... wherever the f*ck I like.”

Poli-Urethane

“Father, father, we don't need to escalate. You see, war is not the answer for only love can conquer hate. You know we've got to find a way to bring some lovin' here today. Picket lines and picket signs: Don’t punish me with brutality. Talk to me so you can see, oh, what's going on... Everybody thinks we're wrong; but who are they to judge us simply 'cause our hair is long?” Al Cleveland, Obi Benson, and Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On, What’s Going On, Tamla, 1971 - Protest song inspired by police brutality on Bloody Thursday in Berkeley hit #1 among Billboard R&B singles, made money for Live Aid chartities, and was covered profitably several times.

Bike&Chain exists because of marginalized bicycling culture, and recognizes “Fertilization Administration” has declared war on citizen cyclists, independent women, and public servants, so any program that supports lane designations, reproductive rights, or safety nets is now forfeit unless they unite to fight. Not to justify latest tirades to youths, culture inseparably intertwines with politics, though often authors won’t admit it. Small shop owners as Aaron Johnson of GoGrava must react to de minimis shutdown and new tariffs. Seems politics at its core tries to score through biased polls, deliberate lies, and varnished truths. David Nyberg debates, “Deception appears to be normal... a workday attribute of practical intelligence,” though ethics advise elsewise on sticky evidence. Mucilaginous polyurethane dries into several bike components including apparel cloth, bar tape, helmet inserts, inner tubes, pump gaskets, saddle shells, and such accoutrements. You're not a thane just because you back a baby daddy dictator politically, have assets worth billions, and want to be called a doge or minister; you must get elected first to govern or represent nation's constituents.

Bike Radar compiled a list of Best Cycling Books 2025, and said it’s for “cycling bookworms”; instead, most titles would only appeal to endurance athletes and wannabe racers rather than poli sci majors. Even James Hibbard’s The Art of Cycling (Quercus, 2021, 320 pp.), previously reviewed, has nothing to do with art or culture at all, rather what’s in it mentally for you, though more recently published than bulk of titles they recommend. By assembling citations and specifying contexts you elevate importance of items probably beyond their worth. Not surprisingly, Labann’s noncommercial volumes were again overlooked.

Zachary Mooradian Furness, Put The Fun Between Your Legs! The Politics and Counterculture of the Bicycle "(University of Pittsburg, 2005, 228 pp.) - Peer reviewed doctoral dissertation includes an extensive bibliography and short filmography, and touches upon all historic points of bicycle advocacy. “My analysis is focused upon the politics of cycling in the United States... largely based upon a critique of car culture, and with it, the ideological assumptions that inform our labor practices, consumption habits, uses of technology, and our relationship to our material world... important to analyze because globalization has resulted in the mass exportation of American culture and economics to other parts of the world.” Dicatators hate that, so VOA was just silenced. Must’ve been something in the air, since Bike&Chain also had been written by then.

Treatment equality among bicyclists, motorists, and pedestrians has been federal law since 1990, but same old culture war persists after decades. Federal Highway Administration officialy reaffirmed in 2010, "Because of the benefits they provide, transportation agencies should give the same priority to walking and bicycling as is given to other transportation modes." Federal regulations prohibit planners from impeding bicycling or severing routes bicyclists use during new construction; bridges must accommodate bicycling and walking. Despite long established guidelines, mounting lawsuit losses, and repeated court injunctions, new regime bullies onward, defies constitution, and ignores observance. But such criticism assumes normality and precedents one hopes, not criminality and disobedience from public servants. Charity directors, law enforcers, and school teachers who witness incivility may somethimes turn into misanthropes. Government officials are supposed to work for your reciprocal cooperation and toward your best interests. Seems cabinet of April fools, Mad Hatter, and March Hare rather make millions of resentful antagonists. Better consider what they do, not believe what serial liars say, to those they harm.

Ken Avidor, Bicyclopolis (2017, 98 pp.) - Intricate bike-centric graphic novel 17 years in the making was self published by this Minneapolis based cartoonist, first mentioned in March of 2011 while still being developed. Through a time travel theme, Avidor predicts where demented environmental and political abandonment lead. Amidst a global climate crisis, it’s not the time to shutter NOAA or withdraw from Paris Accord.

DeFranzy, Cycling is Freedom [German pop], single video, self, 2018 - Just so, suffragette, and when they begin to infringe upon basic motility, call it what it is: verboten slavery, vicious repression, or vote suppression. In a democracy, everyone gets a vote, women in majority foremost, unless theonomic ideology of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale comes to pass as a direct consequence of Project 2025. Can’t happen here? Read Genesis 29:29. Already has with sex slaves, toxic bros, and worse offenses upon horizon.

Adonia E. Lugo, PhD, Bicycle / Race: Transportation, Culture & Resistance (Microcosm Publishing, 2018, 192 pp.) - Cultural anthropologist defines “mobility justice”, and discusses racial discrimination and sustainable transport. Gets Labann thinking of how bicycles are stolen and vandalized less often than cars, with a huge black market for catalytic converters, quarter panels, and wheel rims to fulfill. Bicycles don’t suit lazy thieves, who'd rather plunder US Treasury, world's biggest target. "Infrastructure neglect" is just another tactic to funnel funds their way. Senator Booker's filibuster set record straight: American people are in charge.

“In mid-2018, women in Saudi Arabia gained the freedom to ride a bicycle, and the efforts of women’s activists such as Baraah Luhaid played a part in this, as she established Spokes Hub... We often see the bicycle just as a form of transport, but it’s much more than that; it’s a classless item that billions of different people across the globe own.” Zain Hussain, The bicycle: a symbol of unification, Medium magazine, 2019 - So, Saudi women are bestowed this right a century later than Americans and Europeans? Wow!

Ken Avidor, Courier, single video, self, 2019; short animation related to a future dystopia where bicycle couriers have to deliver food to front line battle zones instead of Door Dash, Grubhub or Uber Eats after petroleum paradigm crashed. First in a series where sabotage hero poses as a bicycle courier.

Avidor Family Singers, My Bike is Freedom, single video, self, 2020 - Short Ken Avidor animation with an original song. Bicycling is the fifth freedom, along with freedoms from tyranny and want, and of religion and speech, all of which are at risk under authoritarian attack.

Max Whittle, Cycling is Freedom, single video, self, 2020
It’s a sentiment that adheres longer than orange facepaint, more like steadfast shellac.

Peter Cox and Till Koglin (editors), The Politics of Cycling Infrastructure: Spaces and (In)Equality (Policy Press, 2020, 261 pp.) - “Physical infrastructure is currently posited as the primary key to unlock cycling’s potential as a primary mode of sustainable transport... Governance mechanisms that provide for and respond to citizen voices... recognize the need for and implement change... Infrastructure is never neutral and always inherently political.” Most articles in this anthology based analyses on European cities. In USA, conservative congressmen aren’t even holding public forums anymore.

Some American mayors brazenly act out their bicycling abhorrence. According to Jody Rosen’s article The Bicycle as a Vehicle of Protest, (The New Yorker, 2020), “N.Y.P.D. has a long history of hostility to cyclists... police have used questionable, sometimes violent tactics to sweep up participants in Critical Mass, the guerrilla group rides that aim to promote cyclists’ rights... Transportation issues are social-justice issues... American bike riders [are] of all races and backgrounds, but... The term ‘invisible riders’ has gained currency among critics who decry the marginalization of black, brown, female, and working-class cyclists by establishment activists.” Bike boom at the time kept reluctant bus riders moving alternatively, minimizing recession effects of pandemic quarantines.

Chris Watson, The Bicycling Guitarist, pedals beyond politically correct into some sort of unbalanced chauvinist rant while playing original tunes, poising himself and his Stratocaster guitar, and riding his 1977 Schwinn Sportabout 10-speed in circles.

The Bicycling Guitarist fea. Chris Watson, Repoman, Elektra’s Room, self, 2020 “Oh, Repoman. He likes my band. So I guess my Schwinn is safe from being repossessed. That means it was possessed more than once. Possessed and depossessed, then repossessed. But, fortunately, fortunately it's an ‘exorcise bike’.” Among a half dozen albums, this oddly appears to be only song that directly references bicycling.

American cycling team gets Trapped Inn (Leah Sturgis, dir., 2024) at a remote European mountain lodge; teammates then start unexpectedly dying. Taps into contagion angst. Peloton protagonists Connor (Matt Rife) and Greg (Robert Palmer Watkins) compete to solve this otherworldly mystery. Horror film genre merely mirrors and woefully understates what's now actually occurring because of DOGE meddling in earned benefits, established services, and foreign aid.

Heartfelt 2024 testimony from Claire Pomykala of Living By Bike declares that bicycling at all is a political act. “Resist capitalist forces and lifestyles that sit, to fight status quo, to reconnect with nature, to recognize our ignorance: bicycling is inherently political... Bicycling is revolution.” Battle hardened Claire has bike-packed from Atlanta to Oz through Europe, learned hands-on loads of lore, and taught self a myriad of truths through living vulnerable to what world provides. New US administration believes it can rescind visas. restrict travel, and strip citizenship from anyone who opposes their goal to control, because laws only apply to you, not them. Bicycling is human, not conservative, liberal, or partisan; all demographics ride except abject invalids and beer swilling, coal-rolling, extreme right, fossil fuel addicted wimps, who may or may not notice X's tweet logo now includes a sieg heil salute despite billions in stockholder losses undermining temporary victory. As in all crime syndicates, fraudulent DOGE forwards same fascist agenda yet insulates felon POTUS from prosecution. Unless you're a multimillionaire, you'll pay more taxes and suffer loss of services.

Montreal, Quebec has enjoyed better bike accommodations since Claire Morissette’s advocacy in 1990’s. Yet after decades many residents still don’t get it. A short Oh The Urbanity! documentary, I Went to an Anti-Bike-Lane Revolt (Patrick Murphy, dir., 2024) shreds local misconceptions about alleged bike issues of ableism, ageism, school safety, and such notions adopted without regard of indisputable evidence to the contrary. Everyone is mistreated, some more than others, though goal is to avoid egregious examples. Bruised egos can be self inflicted, so too close to exercising personal freedoms to cure. Roads mistreat bicyclists who nevertheless ride and tolerate them.

Wes Marshall, PhD, PE, Killed by a Traffic Engineer (Island Press, 2024, 424 pp.) - A professor of civil engineering whistleblower contends that AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) guidelines aren’t wholly based on inclusive safety or sound science. “There wasn’t nearly as much science behind the numbers as the 1,000-page manuals make it seem.” No sh*t! says Labann, who spent decades battling bull and writing manuals. Since 1899 when they began counting vehicle crash fatalities, 4 million Americans have died, many times that globally, more Americans than all military conflicts in which they fought including founding revolution. Best laid plans of Three E’s - Education, Enforcement, and Engineering - are rife with shortcomings among texting, tired, and twisted motorists, planners, and police.

“Asking Americans to sacrifice their beloved cars is not a winning political message, but helping them rediscover something they love more can change the world.” Steven Goodridge, The Conservative Case for Walking and Bicycling, Medium magazine, 2024 - Informative article appends a nice bibliography. Could continue with citations and contexts, but do conclude politics concern cyclists. It's too easy to round out paragraphs with so many asinine, bizarre, criminal, and despicable executive fiats signed daily, then immediately struck down by courts as illegal and unconstitutional. Forever forward, forge past onto next spin session and subsequent post toward velorution.

Petite Madeleine

Celebrated Bike-to-Work Day by parsing paving to revisit "scenes of the crimes", locations Labann once schooled or worked before pandemic decimated placements. What once seemed so important and sustained livelihood surprisingly appeared about as remembered, maybe less outstanding and worse for weather. One can go home and revel in past, but it just steals from present. Memorial Day promotes happy plans for summer and hollow ceremonies without dolor. Lifelong selfless service to society earns no honor.

Remarkable how in Remembrance of Things Past (aka In Search of Lost Time, 1913–1927, seven volumes celebrating center of its centenary) Marcel Proust found truth in a small tea soaked morsel of petite madeleine. Moreover, much has been made of how a galaxy exists in a grain, and Proust’s observations about what you consciously expect to recollect versus what you involuntarily picture again. Has to do with how incredible, indelible or ineffable an impression becomes. Bicyclist/painter/sculptor Marie Nordlinger (upon whom some argue character Albertine was based in part) became a warm light in Marcel’s luminous but truncated life (51 years, d. 1922) during which this asthmatic bisexual perfected the art of reflection, and wrote 20th Century’s most influential novel. “Marie delighted in riding a bicycle, and it was the image of ‘the girl with the bicycle’ that sparked Proust’s conception of Albertine, a character who dominates Remembrance of Things Past,” in particular volume La Fugitive, 1925.

There’s a book inside every doer/reader/thinker/traveler. Some skilled psychologist might decipher why an author focuses on certain facts, not others. Bias and prejudices blind the willfully delusional from seeing reality as it is. Only the most assiduous and perceptive bother to gather and weigh all sides of any argument, and who has any right to expect otherwise? Any miscreant in social media who sees world as losers or victors will kill you over a minor disagreement.

In court, whoever narrates convincingly and succinctly wins. Deep dives and empty filibusters only succeed in blocking congressional resolutions and maintaining status quo; on street, sincere blather scatters audiences. Fame follows decisive, divisive, feckless, and senseless who steal spotlight, ignores selfless servants or true talent. Journalists say they trust the inherent value of truth in an information age, but you can never tell if what they report is reliable. Not as if there are not hundreds of unsolved mysteries: alien invasion, cryptozoology, supernaturalism. Misfortune of suddenly learning the truth drives even normal men mad.

Seldom, if ever, endorse or rate books. In fact, you can find something interesting in every one even though otherwise a pedestrian waste of your time. Because humans are social animals, they’re best entertained by congregating en masse and selecting suitable individuals with whom to commune. While books expand potential for embracing many tribe members, multiple barriers and perfidious distribution limit readers. Every year dozens of new titles invoke bicycling, but they usually repeat old tropes. B&C, begun long before latest boom, likes to choose among them to review those with a new take on riding a bike.

Marc Augé, In praise of the bicycle (Reaktion Books, Limited, 2019, 96 pp.), translated from French Éloge de la bicyclette, Editions Payot & Rivages, 2008), is an anthropologist’s extrapolation of current trends into a dynamic tomorrow using bicycles to humanize “non-places”, a term Augé famously coined. “Riding a bike in a way gives us back our child's soul and restores both the ability to play and an awareness of the real. It is thus similar to a sort of refresher (like a booster vaccination), but also to continuing education for learning again about freedom and clarity, and as a result, perhaps, about something that resembles happiness... A return to utopia, a return to what is real — they are the same. Get on your bike to improve everyone's life! Cycling is a humanism.”

Paul Fournel, Need for the Bike, (Pursuit, 2019, 224 pp.), derived from Allan Stoekl’s English translation from French (Bison, 2012) of critically lauded Besoin de vélo (Seuil, 2002, 235 pp.), covers personal insights, joys and pains based on articles Fournel contributed to Rouler magazine from 2006 onward. Latest edition was made cheaper and shorter by deleting original illustrations and publishing as a paperback. Must admit that a daily 3 mile walk as an hour’s constitutional will always be improved if you bike 15 miles instead.

Jorge Zepeda Patterson, The black jersey: a novel (Random House, 2019, 312 pp.) portrays French-Colombian domestique Marc, who belongs to an elite Tour de France team led by American star and best friend Steve, favored to win. Then someone machinates a series of deadly accidents. Marc agrees to help gendarmes investigate, but as suspects disappear, main suspects become Marc and Steve. As the finish line approaches, Marc must decide what he's willing to risk for friendship, justice or podium position. With rampant doping, world’s most prestigious contest is rife with jealousies, mayhem, and sabotage, so why not murder?

Yona Zeldis McDonough, The Bicycle Spy (self, 2020) follows young villager Marcel, who delivers bread from his parents' bakery by bike and hopes one day to race in the Tour de France, suspended since 1940 when German occupation began. Checkpoints and interrogations teach Marcel there are worse things than a canceled race. Marcel wonders whether he can help his friend's family when they come under scrutiny, but it would involve passing along secrets through risky rides. Filthy fascists, Hoover's spies, McCarthy's witch hunters, Nixon's army, Reagan's union busters, and Trump's neocons: Hardly any distinction among these enemies of community.   

Biological researcher and outdoor naturalist Sara Dykman, Bicycling with Butterflies (Workman Publishing, 2020, 280 pp.) became world’s first to bike alongside and study monarch butterflies throughout a complete migration. She assembled a bike from used parts, attached panniers made from recycled buckets, packed bare essentials, and rode alone on a 3 country, 9-month, 10,000 mile roundtrip. Not just about mucking in fens for flutter-by eggs, she shares her passion with ardent stewards, citizen scientists, eager schoolchildren, high-rise tenants, interested farmers, skeptical loungers, and unimpressed officials.

Jools Walker, blogger and Brit bicyclist Lady Velo, mentioned before pandemic for Back in the Frame: How to get back on your bike, whatever life throws at you (Little Brown Book Group, 2019, 368 pp.), followed up with a reedited paperback sounding pleasanter Back in the Frame: Cycling belonging and finding joy on a bike (Sphere, 2021, 384 pp.), her personal memoire of an all-in-one child tricyclist, preteen BMXer, and renewed roadie who has come of age and still likes bikes. Happily, she now finds herself being interviewed by BBC about cycling culture and giving talks at women’s cycling events. Pedaling by wheel, even casually, is a near panacea and potent tonic for arthritis, cardiovascular ailments, depression, isolation and other maladies caused by a sedentary stay-at-home lifestyle. Bikes are also convenient for hanging your emotional baggage from and studying what's really going on.

In June of 2019 author and pastor Neil Tomba mounted a bike in Santa Monica, CA, and a month later arrived in Annapolis, MD. His goal was twice a day to initiate a conversation with strangers and instill hope among them in Jesus’s teachings. How could that go wrong? Due out next month as a result is The Listening Road: One Man's Ride Across America to Start Conversations About God (Thomas Nelson, 2021, 316 pp.). He’s convinced that people ought to spend time listening to one another, despite differences in creed, intelligence, race, or social status. Every troll says the same thing, only it's you paying attention to them along a one-way street.

Anti-doping activist and multiple medalist James Hibbard retired from road cycling, studied postgraduate philosophy, and wrote a meditation on the sport. Just out this June, The Art of Cycling (Quercus, 2021, 320pp.) shares his journey from racing ruthlessly to regaining passion for pedaling, and shows how cycling can shed new light on classic questions of purpose and selfhood. Cycling’s counterintuitive lessons can be applied to most areas of life and do undermine what’s typically thought of as intellectual in a society driven towards abstract, detached, and virtual dehumanization by an obsession with progress. But wasn’t it a slew of innovations with lowly bicycles (still ongoing) that inspired aerospace and automotive arrogance behind global problems? Without bicycles there would never have been a Nazi blitzkrieg. But you can’t blame invention of weapons with their misuse in mass murders.

Escapades on the "D" train

“We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it, and Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it... In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain. And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train... The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place. And Madonna, she still has not showed... We see this empty cage now corrode... while my conscience explodes. The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain. And these Visions of Johanna are now all that remain.“ Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, from album Blonde on Blonde, 1966 vs. "Bicycle (oil on canvas)", Bob Dylan, 2012

Orange Bullet D Sixth Avenue Express once served stricken World Trade Centers en route between Bronx and Brooklyn's Coney Island. Escapades make one think of overreachers and terrorists. Why did Oppenheimer call A-bomb research The Manhattan Project? Because most sites involved were secretly located there, splitting atoms with millions of residents none the wiser. In classic obsessive compulsion he quoted Hindu scripture, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Film of same name (Marshall Brickman, dir., 1989) has smart cyclist Paul Stephens (Christopher Collet) steal plutonium from industrial tycoon John Mathewson (John Lithgow) to expose his company as a covert danger to surrounding community, whereupon he makes his own thermonuclear weapon that inadvertently almost takes out much of The Big Apple. All concerned join as a team to defuse it, while innocents unknowingly dodge instant death. After Sartre, being stranded by existential threats, biological to technological, has become the new “normalcy”.

Earth Day (April 22nd) and Mother’s Day (May 9th) evoke Earth-goddess Gaia offerings, Fugian Granny Mazu pilgrimages, Greek Cybele cult sacrifices, Laetare Sunday when Roman Catholics celebrate Mother Church, mother goddess Rhea rites, ode to a barefoot and biased madonna, Roman Hilaria festival, Semite Asherah adherence, Sun Goddess Amaterasu rituals, Taino Atabey admiration, Taoist Doumu adoration, and worship of queens of heaven Anat, Astarte, Inanna, Hera, Isis, Juno, Mary and Nut. All are tied to blossoming springtime, natural rejuvenation, and respect for life. But you get the feeling that however humans, even Shinto mountain ascetics, venerate them, these goddesses and saints don’t necessarily reciprocate, in fact, would rather wipe species off planet after multiple manmade threats of atmospheric pollution, fossil fumes, industrial toxins, nuclear weapons, ocean garbage, and prophesies of a hard rain delivered by Bob’s nasal twang when poetry used to matter.

B&C is 180° opposed to any anti-intellect, cancel culture, dumb down descent into global ignorance. Labann daily observes, reads, views or writes. Recent research indicates that sitting too close to computer screens and watching too many media streams can cause seizures or worse. Yet scholarly books encourage more of same; at least B&C preaches a balance between pedaling and viewing. Holidays might even inspire a ride if weather doesn't decide otherwise.

Culture on Two Wheels: The Bicycle in Literature and Film, literary criticism compiled by Jeremy Withers and Daniel P. Shea (University of Nebraska Press, 2016, 376 pp.), includes Nanci J. Adler’s insightful essay The Existential Cyclist: Bicycles and Personal Responsibility in Simone de Beauvoir’s Blood of Others, among dozens directly related to bicycling culture. Elsewhere, Adler explains how bicycles evolved into antifascist armament:
“Existential, absurdist and postmodern philosophers and writers of the era... questioned pre-war cultural values and the meaning of existence. Bicycles continue to appear in novels as transformative vehicles, but they no longer play the straightforward role as vehicles of liberation from the constraints of cultural mores, gender restrictions or social hierarchies. Bicycles often continue to be symbols of freedom, happiness and love, but they lose their irrefutable power to transform characters in permanently positive ways... Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Blood of Others, Luigi Bartolini’s Bicycle Thieves, Samuel Beckett’s Molloy and L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, reflect bicycles as beloved articles, useful vehicles, and potentially positive transformative machines, yet they are unable to overcome the disquieting times; bicyclists are no longer destined for eternal happiness... [for Beauvoir] the bicycle is used to differentiate the hardships of the French from the relative affluence of the Nazis... The bicycle machine, in previous decades a symbol of modernity and personal freedom, takes on a more solemn role as a machine of the French Resistance.” Nanci J. Adler, The Bicycle in Western Literature: Transformations on Two Wheels, 2012

“The bicycle was still there, brand new, with its pale-blue frame and its plated handlebars which sparkled against the dull stone of the wall. It was so lissome, so slender, that even when not in use it seemed to cut through the air. Hélène had never seen such an elegant bicycle. ‘’I’ll repaint it dark green, it’ll be even more beautiful,’ she thought.” Simone de Beauvoir, The Blood of Others, 1945, which explores themes of freedom and responsibility, as B&C continues to.

You know Nazis by what they do: Berate, boss, command, demand, denigrate, force, grab, hate, lie, and lots of people die or suffer. The opposite is whoever calmly encourages, leaves be, merely suggests, offers help, shares wealth, and tolerates differences. Everyone has opinions which guide personal code. Nazis will kill if you don’t meekly submit to their sick will. Nazis are divisive, greedy and stupid, because intelligent people know that they do better when everyone does well. Nazis scream continually, irrelevantly of current situation, and unintelligibly. People who tell you facts and truths never change their story and seldom repeat themselves. Let-live losers sort through details to suggest stuff worthy of your time above ground.

Father and Daughter (Michael Dudok de Wit, dir., 2000) poignantly captures a person’s grief over loss and longing to be reunited. After father abandons daughter during their bicycling outing, she spends entire life revisiting spot on a Dutch dike, where throughout each character rides on a bike. Deservedly won BAFTA award and Oscar for best animated short.

Police sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) races his Bronco past a Big Apple bicyclist running errands to site of World Trade Center (Oliver Stone, dir., 2006) disaster, where he'll wind up trapped under rubble with fellow officer Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) for trying to evacuate towers and save lives 20 years ago this September. Bottom line: This jihadist suicide salvo against an international commodity exchange was sheer ignorance that targeted democratic freedoms, more muslims and people of color from 87 different nations than America, and system of commerce that feeds world. It purported to use technology to strike against technology, but turned out a vicious attack upon humanity itself. And never forget, Bush and conservatives tried to exploit this holocaust by describing it as a "test of our will" to continue pursuing illegal wars for sake of greedy swells, while it's never been clear who was really responsible. With no help from GOP, decent citizens, firemen, and police answered the call to duty.

An Irish fisherman named Syracuse (Colin Farrell) trawls up a foreign woman (Alicja Bachleda-Curuś) in his net. Astonished she’s not drowned, he asks her name, Ondine (Neil Jordan, dir., 2009). Syracuse, whom townsfolk call Circus, is a divorced recovering alcoholic who has visiting privileges but not custody of his daughter Annie (Alison Barry), whose kidneys are failing. After dialysis in her wheelchair she stalks dad and stumbles onto fact he’s hiding this mysterious beauty. Annie imagines Ondine is a selkie, a mythical chimera seal turned human. Mean kids on bikes take her wheelchair and taunt her for being different, but she’s wise beyond her tender age, because love conquers all.

In post-apocalyptic Montana, bounty hunter Gage (Gina Carano) hunts criminals who refuse to give up fossil fuel vehicles, considered the worst of offenses, and infiltrates Jackson’s (Ryan Robbins) belcher crew for both offered reward and personal vengeance. Jackson captures pilgrims to mine silver, a crucial commodity for ubiquitous masks that filter otherwise unbreathable toxic smog on a Scorched Earth (Peter Howitt, dir., 2014). Bicyclists escort pilgrims, but also get scorched. Those who ride horses fare better; how ponies breath isn’t explained.

Television sitcom Mom (Season 2, Episode 22) Fun Girl Stuff and Eternal Salvation (James Widdoes, dir., 2014) has mom Bonnie Plunkett (Allison Janney) by bicycle chasing daughter Christy (Anna Faris) from flop to flop after she moves out to avoid their toxic interaction that threatens both their relapses into substance abuse.

Fathers and Daughters (Gabriele Muccino, dir., 2015) has novelist Jake Davis (Russel Crowe) tell his daughter Katie (Kylie Rogers as child, Amanda Seyfried as adult), “Daddy sold a book today... That means you can have any toy on the planet.” She replies, “I want a bike! Pink with a basket and bells and streamers dangling from the handlebars...” So he buys her one and teaches her to ride in the park. Later they ride together on her birthday. Rest of film documents Katie’s traumas over tear jerker childhood: car crash, custody battle, fatal seizure, parents’ untimely deaths, separation anxiety, shadow of fame, and trust issues.

Microbe & Gasoline (Michel Gondry, dir., 2015) are nicknames bullies call school chums Daniel the artist (Ange Dargent) and Théo the grease monkey (Theophile Baquet), respectively. Theo rides around school on a bicycle tricked out with a sound system of his own design. Daniel’s caring but depressive mom Marie-Thérèse (Audrey Tautou, Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) and Theo’s dying and needy mom (Janna Bittnerova) give their adolescents cause to try crossing France in an inventive vehicle that can, with the flip of a lever, appear as a tiny house. Being underage, they can neither get driver licenses or register a motor vehicle, so stop when police happen by and transform to stationary. Theo regrets his mother’s death during his jaunt and returns to attend funeral.

Midsomer Murders, Breaking the Chain (Season 18, Episode 3, 2016), has DCI Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) investigating homicide of pro cyclist Greg Eddon (Jack Staddon), who just won local leg and was leading tour. Plot thickens when it's disclosed that 5 years earlier Judith Oliver was accidentally run over by a motor vehicle while leading tourists along a side road supposedly blocked off for bike racing. Then rival Aiden McCordell is struck on the head with a chain whip, and his lungs were pumped with a high-pressure air compressor, rupturing them. Police finally act to save dad McCordell thereby ending the killing spree.

The Philadelphia Bicycle Vignette Story (Bryan Oliver Green, dir., 2017) is a socially scathing surreal series of short skits on title city around 2009. Marcus Borton plays the cyclist. Charlie Day and Rob “Mac” McElhenney of sitcom It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia (Season 13, Episode 5) keep up their unfunny putdowns of pedaling on a pair of stolen BMXs. Again, bullies are kids on bikes.

Adam Sandler is back to biking in latest film Hubie Halloween (Steven Brill, dir., 2020), where his character, town idiot Hubie DuBois, tries to save citizens of Salem from real skullduggery hidden behind holiday festivities.

SciFi thriller Songbird (Adam Mason, dir., 2021) set in near future speculates billions will die from highly contagious airborne variant COVID-23. Protagonist is a bicycle messenger, who is immune, so able to roam freely except through check points. Haven’t seen, but suspect poor ratings and weak returns are more due to people’s frustration with pandemic and suspicion over situational exploitation and theater attendance. Sure, it’s no Twelve Monkeys, in which Terry Gilliam totally predicted this predicament 25 years ago, but willing to give it 90 minutes after seeing hundreds of low budget turkeys that may have been worse.

Starz original series Men in Kilts: A Roadtrip with Sam and Graham (Episode 106, 2021) have title pair touring native Scotland by air, land and sea, partly by bicycles, to which one grumbles, “I cannot believe that this was your idea of a good time.” 

Non Sequitur Hain

Unless a long view across a fenced hain or hallowed vista encourages corporal penance, climbing hardly seems worth hours of bodily pain and perils of speedy descents. Rather save strength to further distance. Years ago used to attempt double metric century rides for up to 8 hours. Things change as time passes; now slam hard for only 3 while distancing from disease by steering clear of cities. But where’s the fun in sequestering self? Tottering on a pandemic precipice one contemplates shifting priorities.

Same can be said about living with blinker blinders, ear plugs, and mask muzzles. If you don’t make what matters to you understood in no uncertain terms, you’ll be forsaken and mistreated. Likewise, if you accept blindly non sequiturs foisted upon you instead of assessing intelligently what’s been done and said, you suffer same old torments senselessly. Hear, see and speak surely. Be proud that over 150 million Americans, a record 66% of those eligible, braved contagion and ignored propaganda to cast a vote in 2020 election, but, ironically, timid mail-in ballots decided results.

Incumbent immediately attacked states where he was ahead on election day because he feared what might show up among absentee ballots also cast in record numbers. Commanding a lockstep small cadre, GOP never does as well when disenfranchised independents side with Democrats and results swell. The more disgusting the candidates, the better GOP does while gloating in their self fulfilling prophecies. Over eighty million Americans struck a genuine blow against tyranny by chipping in a half billion in donations >$20, designating Uncle Joe and Aunt Kam, and deposing a dictatorial narcissistic sociopath and national embarrassment with his fake facts, fake news, fake presidency, and soon fake broadcast network to continue his relentless attack against civil rights, democracy, inclusion, race, tolerance and women. Speaks volumes about incumbent when his supporters protested at polling places armed with assault rifles and intimidation tactics. Why wasn’t National Guard called in to protect count volunteers?

Fact that Earl Blumenauer is being considered as USDOT Director promises consideration for bicyclists, who recognize him as the sort who bikes to White House when summoned and secured Bicycle Commuter Bill. Maybe more of country will begin to resemble Portland, Oregon, which he represents in Congress. But a GOP Senate would probably block his appointment. Constructing bike paths is not enough; full bike infrastructure alongside motorways minimally meets existing guidelines. Blumenauer must’ve read Carlton Reid’s Bike Boom: The Unexpected Resurgence of Cycling (Island Books, 2017, 272 pp.). Like many observers, Forbes transportation editor Reid details contrasts in bicycling’s acceptance between Americans and Europeans. In answer, each European lives in a former city state, a compressed urban center commutable by bicycle surrounded by rural riding miles in which to recreate. Americans are spread from cities to farms across suburbia and vast plains accessible on cheap fuel prices and high taxation that built unsustainable roads as some sort of privileged welfare to construction bosses rife with graft and kickbacks. Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Dublin, London and Paris have many flat narrow lanes. Similar places in USA, such as Boston or New York City's boroughs, tend to have greater ridership than vast expanse of less populated continent, though biking also boomed in Bloomington, Minneapolis, Portland, Providence and Seattle, whose mayors are enlightened to alternatives. Distance and terrain impact bicyclists more than motorists, as well as economic class, given average cost of car ownership verges on $9,000/year, beyond reach of minimum wage workers even though some used beater can provide sketchy service for less. While roadnet incentivizes Americans, their perception of safety remains lower than Europeans.

After campaigning door to door, contributing for decades, and engaging in activism, Labann owes no one and watches from sidelines. In certain states voting is symbolic, since you can be assured of outcome beforehand. Sometimes all you do is neutralize opinion and normalize perception. Yet 2020's election cycle has been called bitterly divisive. Wonder why? Neither party ever makes promises or serves public, too busy padding own pockets and securing spots at sloppy trough. Either you’ll be abidin’ Biden until some humble hero rises to serve the common good, or stay stuck in a system too broken to set straight again. No country has meant more to entire world with class upgrade, fair trade, and foreign aid, but leadership is never made in the shade.

Labann’s strategy for only posting several paragraphs a handful of times each season, rather than repeatedly on some punitive schedule, provides for quality messages when they'll do least harm and most good. Plus essays give insights into their composition, as if metadata. Literary art appreciation isn't part of any advanced curriculum or social prerequisite. Critics, when not discussing prurient fictional plots, tout convincing nonfictional arguments, neither of which Labann indulges in, just explanations of all sides of any issue with no simple resolution, which precisely describes reality. A wide range of responses should always be expected in life as well as in movies, though baker’s dozen that follow seem tangled in today’s headlines.

German language masterwork of Hitler’s last 12 days, Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, dir., 2004) stirred recent controversy when a BP technician used a meme from movie to describe poorly conducted labor negotiations, which cost him his job. Courts overturned that decision. History seems to be in a time loop. Beset Berliners are bicycling around bomb craters scurrying for shelter, while Hitler (Bruno Ganz) is blaming and sacking staff members for his own failures, His secretary, Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara), who narrates story, sneaks Peter, a Nazi youth street fighter decorated by Adolf himself, past a Soviet blockade and steals a bike so they can escape.

Diana (Uma Thurman, Kill Bill) still has PTSD decades after a terrorist teen shoots up her public high school. Otherwise, The Life Before Her Eyes (Vadim Perelman, dir., 2008) as an adult seems pretty good. College professor husband Paul (Brett Cullen) bikes to classes and daughter Emma (Gabrielle Brennan) attends parochial school. Together they enjoy a mostly pleasant life in a gardened home in an upscale neighborhood. Oops, it’s all a dream. Dee as a teen (Evan Rachel Wood) in good conscience can’t let her bestie confidante Maureen (Eva Amurri) choose to die to save her, an existential ordeal many face on a daily basis, while few appreciate sacrifices made.

Sad schoolmarm Anna (Christina Ricci) crashes her car after a spat with fiancé Paul (Justin Long), and winds up on an embalmer’s slab. Is she dead? She has several conversations with mortician Eliot (Liam Neeson). Line is blurred between actual life and After Life (Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, dir., 2009). Either Eliot is a serial Kevorkian hastening unwilling victims out of their corporeal skin or sympathetic listener uncannily helping souls to make this transition. On the other hand, Anna’s student Jack (Chandler Canterbury), who Eliot takes under his wing, is an obvious fan of death. While biking by his favorite haunt, Eliot’s funeral home, he sees Anna upright, and warns Paul only to incite panic. Later Jack buries a hen chick alive, flagging his nascent sociopathy. Solution to sparing pain is not terminating life. Every heartbeat is another second vibrant with potential.

Scumbag grifters Alan (Jake Sandvig) and Ben (Jason Ritter) steal bicycles from a school yard for fun and support themselves in a house with an in-law apartment by felonious means, such as boosting cars and snatching purses. Alan’s sister Melanie (Rebecca Hall), a stalwart waitress at Waffle House, disapproves. Just because they were born with a A Bag of Hammers (Brian Crano, dir., 2012), they figure they can scam everyone in Fresno. They rent apartment to short tempered single mom Lynette (Carrie Preston), who’s so depressed she can’t feed son Kelsey (again, Chandler Canterbury, nominated for a Young Artist Award), and desperate, she kills herself. Suddenly Alan and Ben are faced with a choice between freeloading amorally and taking responsibility for Kelsey. In a Bike&Chain moment, they man up for once. Critics hated Crano’s first feature dramedy, but its message of less broken helping like needy is heartwarming compared to gratuitous violence that so often passes as entertainment.

Autumn Wanderer (Nathan Sutton, dir. and star, 2013) has boy Charlie (Sutton) meet girl Nia (Elisha Skorman). But his dream encounter has no future. Charlie knows schizophrenia is inherited, dad has it full blown, and he’s not about to inflict such misery upon someone he cares about. Film is remarkable not only for depicting mental illness with quiet dignity instead of slasher cues, but producing on a bare shoestring with film studio values. However, sociopathies sometimes rise to highest office and trigger atrocities. 

Another timely message, The Quiet Season (Brandon Neubert, dir., 2013), endorses November dusks in a lovely, spot on, 7 minute short that any bike commuter knows so well as brilliant glorious hours among otherwise drab green jaunts. Lisa Neubert rides alone to Great Salt Lake outside Ogden, Utah, and not only composed and performed its music, she wrote and narrated its prose. If only candidates would settle into this interregnum so serenely. For 5 minutes of pure immersion into urban bicycling culture, check out this Bicycle Film Festival montage. Recognize only a few from its dozens of sources.

Alone in Berlin (Vincent Pérez, dir., 2016) has working class couple Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson secretly leaving postcards that denounce Nazi government and urge civil disobedience after they lose their son, who was conscripted into army during WWII. Number of bicyclists shown riding former Reich rivals today’s Paris. Gestapo agent (Daniel Brühl) assigned task of hunting down culprits is beaten by superiors after being stymied for 3 stealthy years. Based on forgotten real heroes Elise and Otto Hampel, who were guillotined for their resolve to oppose tyranny.

Indie black comedy Laundry Day (Randy Mack, dir., 2016) draws lowlifes to a New Orleans dive bar laundromat, Suds and Duds, where a fight breaks out. Film covers each participant’s perspective - corrupt bartender Bart (Billy Slaughter), homeless busker Natalee (Samantha Ann), incompetent dealer Ethan (Dave Davis), and self-destructive musician Dee (Kerry Cahill) - from events leading up to incident, during which each is involved in bicycling, none as humorous as Ethan, who attends a job interview with supplier’s go-between on a pedicycle. When Bart crashes his bike and winds up arriving hours late, havoc has already broken out in bar. Dee wouldn’t have gotten an expensive ticket had she carried her instruments on a bike trailer to sing for tips. Natalee crosses paths with all three while dodging authorities.

Period drama 1945 (Ferenc Török, dir., 2017) deals with aftermath of Nazi Holocaust. Two Jewish survivors, father and son, arrive unexpectedly to a rural Hungarian town. Stationmaster questions them, then rides off on his bike to warn villagers. Folks fear visitors have come to reclaim property they’ve illegally seized and react badly. A wedding is cancelled when groom bolts. Bride burns down bourgeois pharmacy of hateful in-laws. One villager hangs himself out of remorse. The Hermanns just want to repatriate what little remains of their incinerated loved ones - baby shoes, garments, and toys - in the family’s cemetery plot. Stationmaster, busy spying on them upon his bike throughout, passes them as they trudge back to train.

Stranger Things (Matt and Ross Duffer, dirs., 2018) have occurred in Indiana than a 2020 Democratic win. Back in fictional 1980’s in this Sci Fi television series, small fictional town Hawkins harbors a secret DOD paranormal laboratory. When kid named Will goes out at night on his bike and winds up missing, his buddies, Dustin, Lucas and Mike, search for him by bike. They find Eleven, a psychokinetic girl authorities are looking for who can flip a van.

Surviving Blackwood sisters Constance (Alexandra Daddario) and Mary Katherine (Taissa Farmiga) reassure themselves, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Stacie Passon, dir., 2018), after poisoning deaths of their parents go unsolved. Town gave up trying to solve mystery after Constance is acquitted. Ladies in mansion atop hill overlooking village draw intense resentment and suspicions, which they both abide until cousin Charles (Sebastian Stan) shows up and tries to split them up, though his interest is only in what money he can take from their safe. Vicious kids on bikes taunt them, and turn to flee like little girls when confronted. Sisters have no need of telephone or transportation, since they so infrequently leave castle, even after left in ruins by a fire.

The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi, dir., 2019) has vicious art dealer Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger) hiring ambitious critic James Figueras (Claes Bang) to steal a particular masterpiece from enigmatic and reclusive artist Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland). Debney lives in a ramshackle bungalow in a sequestered corner of Cassidy’s magnificent Lake Como estate a short bicycle ride for Figueras. Title might as well been ripped from election headlines.

Recent RA.com ad has a women with rheumatoid arthritis riding a bicycle that disintegrates along a bike path, signaling damage disease does to joints. Stands out among many Giant and Specialized ads in that it’s not about selling wheels on backlog. 

Another unusual spot follows a biking kid, who later becomes a paperboy, then a young man gone a courting on same BMX, while toying with Daisy Bell lyrics suggesting best use of an outgrown bike is donating it to Goodwill, which means it’s a bicycle built for two or more. Time for an adult tandem! Of course, all bikes impact not only buyers but employees who manufacture them when not furloughed, material miners, road builders, taxpayers, shop owners, transportation workers, and whoever else gets involved in supply chain. Skyrizi psoriasis medicine commercial has sufferer mountain biking across dunes.

Pays de Cocagne

Still from feature film trailer Crooklyn (Spike Lee, dir., 1994)

Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom... Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from my home. Sometimes I feel just like I’m almost gone. I got a telephone in my bosom, I can call them up from my heart... when I need my mother, Mother!” - Ritchie Havens

“I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed... Well, I paid all the dues I want to pay. And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce, and all my wealth won't buy me health, so I smoke a pint of tea a day... I knew a man; his brain was so small he couldn't think of nothing at all. Not the same as you and me, he doesn't dig poetry. He’s so unhip that when you say Dylan he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas, whoever he was. The man ain't got no culture... I been mother, father, aunt and uncled... I just discovered somebody's tapped my phone.” Paul Simon, A Simple Desultory Philippic, 1966

America, land of honey, milk, and plenty, as if from medieval myth, once acted as an amusement park, liberty beacon, motherly bosom, preferred destination, residential station, and welcome wagon. For a short while that also included people of all ages, colors, creeds, orientations, and races before conservatives beat civil rights back to antebellum biases and gave citizens the royal shaft. Through personal computing, almost entire planet has become virtual; mobsters and monsters can exploit anyone from elsewhere without costs, rules, taxes or toil. Now that data is more valuable than even crude oil, writers worry that producing content, especially gratis, only gets used against them and for what they never meant it to be. Einstein's abstract insights multiplied mankind's existential plights. AI will kill anyone it views as a threat. Prophets of doom live short lives of misery. Who needs panic porn they spout? But that's what bad leadership brings about.

Publishing bitter attacks, casual observations, fervent emotions, pertinent facts, or radical notions seems foolish, possibly ruinous, when you don’t own a single item you’ve created and shared. You become a marketing target and unit of profitability, or contribute to social dilemma of immersive media. Saying the truth and speaking one's mind should be smart but are not. Fox Network has nothing but programs with dysfunctional families, incompetent coworkers, and interpersonal violence. Within a society that glorifies idiocy, anything that separates you from the herd makes you vulnerable to predators. Bicyclists know this all too well, rather gather with friends or strangers than go solo amidst dangers, though you need no motivation other than your own to take a spin, a slo-mo adventure outdoors. Got to wonder whether staying home is safer given household accident statistics and risks of not visibly standing with others against social injustice.

Data warehouse RIPON secretly stole profiles from Facebook and Twitter for Republicans to spy on potential voters and swing those undecided. Rates right below QAnon agitators who conflate every case of child abuse or sex trafficking to promote reprehensible leaders blustering about it with no intention of interdicting. Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Britanny Kaiser adds that your credit purchases and local movements are used for personality modeling. Current laws totally permit this privacy invasion. Pandemic furloughs and quarantines further provoke cyber crimes, internet scams, and savings hacks. Worse, situation is being used to preach against freedoms, promote conformity, suppress rights, and wrest control. Easy to blame hapless victims for lack of compliance; impossible to hold real culprits culpable and prosecute for justice and reparations.

Psyops represents the latest iteration of illegal behavioral modification used to brainwash American public for conservative domestication. That you don’t believe in how psychology can be used to get you to act against your own interests is just part of their successful programming of you. Motorists pay plenty for convenience and promise of speed, but they get repeatedly cheated by construction, gridlock, and rudeness. Immersion in movies once seemed less nefarious and nobler than indulgence in politics, but both shamelessly use sociological tactics to twist facts and wrest trends to their own advantage.

You’d think with all these surveillance cameras on every pole they could make streets safer for bicycling by noting where motorists buzz or cut off cyclists, form uncrossable queues, refuse to follow traffic controls, stick nose into intersections ignoring boulevard stops, and turn or weave without warning, which, by the way, are all seldom enforced traffic violations. No, these days you are instead advised to isolate yourself from humanity. How does that help you? Social animals only survive through interpersonal contact, what people do for each other, services rendered. After paying dearly to drive motorists are being deprived everything of fascination that might be experienced between origin and pulling in to destination. Distancing has been gaining ground by privileged design since Reagan era. Haves only suffer have-nots to extent they create wealth and do chores. You’re only allowed to survive so they can take what’s yours.

Misery loves company so much those who suffer will infect, injure, maneuver, or otherwise drag down whomever they can, particularly a gullible samaritan. Lately cross to other side of street to avoid contact and maintain distance. Saw man with an intimidating dog, who seemed ready to cross. Rolling closer, realized it was a service dog unwilling to chase a tennis ball and thereby lead blind master into traffic. So deviated to middle and kicked ball to happy pooch. Situations are often not what they appear to be without in-depth study. Tennis ball put all proximate at risk, but what can you do?

To enjoy being in the vicinity of great people you’d have to have fought a good fight yourself, lived in peril, wandered through same battlegrounds. Personally met decorated soldiers, famous authors, a goddess, a Nobel laureate, rock legends, a saint, and several presidents and statesmen. Labann behind handlebars, prisoner to pedals, slave to saddle so far has served over a half century of a life sentence, though somewhat rewarded for good behavior, while Satan took Sin for a spin causing crisis planet's in. Many people would prefer quieter lives, but there’s no perks without risks. Have been beaten, betrayed, crashed into, shot, stabbed, and stressed but survived. Must assume everyone has character flaws, yet insulate oneself against harm they will cause. Brothers in blood can be worst of frauds.

Made mistake of taking a bike path shortcut on a midday weekend. Knots of families with dogs and kids blocked way, so just stopped on left, where cyclists supposed to pass, and waited. Fast trailing cyclist yelled, "On you left," repeatedly. Didn't respond. Once crowd dispersed, spun up quick to 25 mph, caught, and blew by impatient passer, who, despite trying to chase, faded quickly behind to invisible. Peeled off to seal deal. Sometimes you have to send a message that dispels delusions of self superiority. You are not king of all you survey and, at only 16 mph, lord over any bikeway. Real bicyclists don't rely on dedicated paths as race tracks for contests against unsuspecting opponents. Ego isn't served by edging out someone who may be at end of a long tour, just getting back into pedaling, or new to cycling as recreation or sport. Among bicyclists and pedestrians an automotive mentality doesn’t belong. Peloton racing is an exclusive club involving young idiots exploited in a spectacle for advertising. Excluding these few thousand individuals, a billion riders are commuting and recreating, not racing.

Handshakes, once a business mainstay, are taboo. Socially responsible greeting gestures now include a bow, a hand over heart, hello in international sign language (a right handed salute), namaste prayer, a nod, a peace sign, a shrug, or a wave. Bicyclists respect each other with a passing nod or thumb’s up. World Health Organization doesn’t include no touch chest thump, elbow bump, fist pump, or slap rump because all infringe upon personal distance. WHO does give advice on wearing masks over both mouth and nose, not stuck below chin, in hand, off ear, turned inside out for a second wearing, or wherever it does no good. Exterior of mask is contaminated and unfit to be fiddled with on face or touched without immersion wash.

In other words, you are only free to do what is responsible; otherwise you could die from negligence, not much of a choice. Every hour spent bicycling affords another whole day alive if you don't inadvertently die in traffic. Although you might get away with wayward ways, benefits don’t outweigh delays, yet majority don’t appear to care. Stooges united on a bicycle built for three parties rolling downhill into certain chaos, massive stupidity seems to predict an election win for incumbent boob who runs things for billionaire bosses, so they don’t have to reveal their influence. “Fear no disease,” he dares to declare after only he receives cutting edge treatment after denying millions affordable care and two million pandemic deaths. Consider source and take every precaution.

If you take time to think about content before you publish it, you often derive new insights or reconsider accuracy of what you wrote. Debatable and disreputable statements contain adverbs and hyperboles of “always”, “only”, and “we”. Yet there's an overwhelming drive to get ahead, glide with tide, go with flow, let go of control, and make a retraction only if compelled to do so. Blatant lies, bold emphasis, and fake news enrage readers who are already on edge. Behooves a writer to clarify and condense, even when it’s all been said before. Labann excels at annoying. Nothing is so unloved as honest advice on best practices explored over volumes with the exception of simple truths, which nobody can tolerate and likely does wrong if they try to apply. Before and during outings so often remind self about a dozen sensible things to do, feel a reckless urge to delineate them for you:

1. Clean bike frequently; note cracks and dings. Never ride on a cracked frame. Touch up bare paint on steel to avoid rust. Dry, then oil, chain and pedals; wipe off excess. Oil derailleurs and shifters once in a month. Sanitize saddle.

2. Disassemble bike every few years because bottom bracket, calipers and derailleurs can fail, gum up, or stick; reassemble to specified torque ratings. While zooming down hills at 60 mph, you’ll consider it as packing your own parachute and feel more confident.

3. Consult take/wear checklist, since forgetting a cell phone, helmet, house keys, or tools can progress past just annoying into life threatening.

4. Expect - bad motorists; broken, bumpy, crumbled, potholed, sandy, trash strewn pavement; linear cracks that will impede balance; road furniture; sewer caps, slotted grates, and sunken pipe covers. Much of what constitutes bicycling entails avoiding idiot motorists, constantly watching where you’re going, and wending around hazards and obstacles.

5. Flip crank around before leaning into a turn so pedal doesn’t hit curb or scrape pavement. Level pedals over speed bumps. Never lay bike down on derailleur side.

6. Give tires a pressure check before every ride; keep between max and min. Inspect hubs, nipples, rims and spokes. Tires and wheels take the most abuse. Protect spokes from damage while riding, storing, and transporting.

7. Stick to a straight line rather than weave except when avoiding items in #4.

8. Take the lane. Within their rights, bicyclists are entitled to use entire street, squeeze aside only to let faster traffic pass. Drivers must avoid crossing edge lines or gore areas, so, refuges for cyclists. Riding close to curbs, in gutters full of trash, or on sidewalks will result in flats or you might crash; plus motorists might not expect or see you there.

9. Tuck in before a bend in road, so trailing motorists, who momentarily lose sight of you, don’t edge around corner into you. Friendly roads have lanes wide enough for trucks and shoulders wide enough for biking and parking, but it’s up to you to evaluate sight lines.

10. Understanding how #8 and #9 apply, when descending a hill faster than other traffic, use best pavement across lane’s width. Drivers trying to pass can suck it; enabling scofflaws is not the same as impeding law abiders. Likewise, while climbing slowly, pick an unobtrusive line and let them overtake without fuss so they pass sooner.

11. Whenever you see a crooked crucifix or God Makes Cretins logo, anticipate bonehead maneuvers and random aggression. Bus, pickup, SUV and van drivers take up more than their share of travel lane and resent your presence even when off road edge. Despite all advice, do whatever’s necessary for your own safety.

12. Bicycling is supposed to be fun, commune with nature, reduce stress, and take time while pedaling and recuperating, repaid in longer life expectancy. Gives pause for thought about hidden truths, source for over 2,000 pages of Bike&Chain before disappearing into ignominy again.