Define Bargain

Having studied anatomy and psychology with a notion to graduate medical school and practice psychopathology, chuckle to know a “trick cyclist” can sometimes be just a gibe for a “psychiatrist”. But fancy riding and treating crazies both invite bruises and worries. Stuck within a brainwashing regime where sanewashing every inane executive act occurs daily, analysis of abnormal behavior occupies way too much of everyone’s time. Didn't sign up for no-choice diktats, postmaster fraud, or ridiculous extortions. There are enough grievances worthy of resistances including connectivity fee hikes, planned obsolescences, and product shrink-flation amidst historic dollar inflation and federal debt at $50 trillion. That's 5 followed by 13 zeroes, which is 12 times what IRS collects annually, while government budget exceeds entire amount, so never pays down debt you owe. Last hurrah for Labor Day, because your dutiful efforts dug deeper holes for yourselves, while sweetheart deals develop ever fewer jobs.

While riding AMONG, not impeding, traffic (bicyclists and pedestrians are integral to overall flow), was twice zoomed by both an “Abuisick” SUV guarded by its aggressive triple shields, and a brutal land cruiser with state plates driven by a soccer mom with kids, which doesn’t much sound like an administrative function for which taxpayers should have to pick up tab. This leapfrog scenario happens as a result of traffic lights, which repeatedly halt motorists with bicyclists catching up, though on uncontrolled stretches operators typically escape into distance.

Scofflaws are hereby placed on notice that bad driving, including pinching off cyclists, could invite a personal retaliation or traffic citation. Cyclists memorize license plates, and might later find that car parked. Why risk deep scratches or flat tires that could become costly damages, time killers, or tows? Why should hundreds of millions put up with a few hundred oppressors causing so many woes? Insurance premium increases do and should target repeat offenders. One is always responsible for own conduct, but that goes both ways.

“Cyclosporter” parasite promoter prez T-wrecks has always had a reptilian lust for taut athletes or teen queens. Turd's bankruptcies and jealousies incited Tour de Trump, staged only twice with no chance of competing against storied Tour de France, year's most attended sporting event in the world for over a century. Pageant involvement was plagued with molestation complaints. New York Times (behind its paywall, so no link) recently reported his absolute animus against bicyclists, pedestrians, and women through transportation measures that will purge as many of them as possible. His executive fiats violate constitution and numerous federal laws passed by representative legislators on behalf of public, just another reason to despise, impeach, and imprison his diapered butt. Only acts of congress allow changes to earmarked grants or home rules. Such reports go practically unnoticed by anyone, especially bike advocacy nonprofits, who rely on chances that government TIP grants will continue, thus entice charitable donors; otherwise it’s game over.

USDOT’s Sworn Doofus rescinded $100’s of millions in active Biden grants, shifted to car-centric infrastructure planning, and started scrubbing bicycle specific safety regulations from agency standards and websites. What are administration’s lies that try to to disguise these illegal acts? “Bike paths and road diets are ‘hostile to cars’, while bike presence impedes traffic flow, increases road congestion, and reduces vehicle capacity.” Sounds ignorant or insane, no? Should have divulged real reasons: Huge windfalls for already heavily subsidized Big Oil and redoubled kickbacks for a crime family forever on a greedy grift netting billions each term. They’ve already begun to claw back grants, condition funding upon agreeing to strip bike accommodations from approved transit redesigns, and remove existing cycling infrastructure where it occupies space previously used by motorists, although some of these efforts face legal challenges in court from concerned groups, local leaders, and municipal officials, whose job it is to assess, implement, and strategize based on resident demands in compliance with Code of Federal Regulations. New York City already secured court orders against their targeted attempts there. Also too late here; Build Back Better repaved 100 miles of bike paths, good for 2 decades or whenever democracy returns.

Local councils who undid unsustainable traffic planning scored incalculable benefits for everyone in a dozen major cities, as Tom Babin testified last spring. They have the receipts: Better air quality, fewer accidents, less crime, life saving mental and physical boosts, lowered costs, multilateral flow relief, and renewed small business profits. Petroleum exhaust is a primary air spoiler contributing to COPD and heart disease, nation’s #1 killer. Automotive convenience confined in fumes is an obscene and shameful bargain at best, really an inimical but unrecognized danger that has killed more people than warfare over last 100 years.

Go ahead; delete dedicated bike lanes and designated shoulders. Means 70 million bicyclists must take to travel lanes to which they're fully entitled to use. Three times as many motorists can be assured this will limit speed to a de facto average of 12 mph, except on limited access highways distantly apart from actual destinations. Before you go grab a mug of joe to sip in gridlock as slow cyclists squeeze past on mandatory shoulders comparatively saving dough. This can only get worse as more and more road users adopt acoustic and electric bikes due to idiotic tariffs and sick wars that have driven up fuel prices and emptied strategic oil reserves. The real war is how enemies in office implement policies to traumatize three hundred million Americans, who still have to pay for bombproof limos a small cadre of subjugators use to protect themselves against them, though they’ll be sitting in snarl with all motor passengers unless congress reverses. Next, they’ll ban and confiscate bicycles, as did their 1940's führer. Bicyclists discern and emphasize with discomfort and suffering; greed driven narcissists in cars never care.

Such desires, emotions, trials and tribulations fill a director’s palette. American filmmakers have had a century of freedom to expose cruelty, say and show practically anything, and spend literally trillions to entertain, persuade, and titillate with original and outrageous presentations. This bred both bad and good, but served a wide range of needs including entertaining, imagining, informing, and promoting democracy. Many movies set in years since their introduction after Civil War feature bicycles in crucial roles, as seen in examples below.

Urban documentary 1 Way Up (Amy Mathieson dir., 2014) follows two teens, Quillan Isidore and Tre Whyte, who hope to escape one of London’s toughest gang neighborhoods through the Peckham BMX Club on route to World Championships. Though R rated for explicit language and violence, it smashes ghetto preconceptions and racial stereotypes.

In British historical drama The Choral (Nicholas Hytner, dir., 2025), Ralph Fiennes plays Dr. Henry Guthrie, an uncompromising stand-in for town’s chorus master, who joined armed forces for service overseas in WWI. Set in 1916 in Yorkshire Dales, young men ride bicycles that create a stark contrast between carefree innocence and looming devastation on the Western Front. Bicycles represent pre-war era, while conscription of bicyclists represents realities of war.

Australian plus size positive actress Rebel Wilson on a bicycle with a basket and training wheels rides throughout a Noom weight loss spot, Lose for Keeps (July, 2026), while eschewing persistent food temptations. It's not the first time she's been filmed riding bikes.

French comedy Good Vibes Only (Pour le plaisir, Reem Kherici, dir., 2026) is based upon the true story of Bavarian hobbyist Michael Lenke. Inspired by a medical study on scarcity of orgasms among women, Lenke built in 2014 a prototype air pulse clitoral stimulator using an aquarium pump, plastic tubing, and testing by his wife Brigitte. The Womanizer reached a climax in sex tech, which grew taboo since 1922. By 1970 feminist Irina Dunn had already coined the adage, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” In film, married spouses of 20 years Fanny (Alexandra Lamy) and Thomas (François Cluzet) didn’t know what they were missing until Thomas invents a new toy. They celebrate success with a duo bike ride.

French feature film Le crime du 3e étage [The Crime on the 3rd Floor] (Rémi Bezançon, dir., 2026) is deemed a comedic homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window where François Tarnowski (Gilles Lellouche), a writer of historical crime novels, and lovely partner Colette Courreau (Laetitia Casta), a Hitchcock expert, believe they witness a crime through a "rear window" being committed at a neighbor’s apartment behind theirs. Both bike about collecting evidence.

Also set in Paris, where cyclistes are the rule rather than exception, Hugo (Pascal Bonitzer, dir., 2026) hears Fabrice Luchini (Robert Zucchini) reading passages from his favorite author, Victor Hugo, on stage to packed audiences. His true goal, however, is to reconnect with his estranged daughter as he pedals around The City of Light.

Darkness follows in experimental Italian short Roadkill (Vito Nicoletta, dir., 2026), which displays humanity’s adversarial relationship with natural environment while slowly riding a bicycle past assorted dead creatures terminated without remorse by technological conveniences, such as those preferred by current regime.

Just gets worse with horror short Something Might Be Wrong (Eymen Karahan, dir., 2026), filmed on location in Genk, Belgium but with Turkish dialogue throughout. Teenage cyclist Serdar (Muhammed Kiraz) rides his bike through a local forest, then struggles to distinguish between actual reality and his own auditory hallucinations, as he descends into a fragmented nightmare. External danger may also be closer than he thinks. On own recent isolated ride segment, was more aware than ever how appropriate its tagline can be, “Don't roam the trees alone, because you're never alone.” Doesn’t take a priest or psychologist to explain one’s unexpected enthusiasm in encountering an idyllic open meadow along a road surrounded by tangled understory. Can personally attest to having seen where few New Englanders go strange creatures in abandoned corners, e.g., supernatural entities, supposedly extinct Eastern catamounts, and world’s worst mass murderer, mosquitos. Yet fear 47 with nukes more than Iran's theocrat kooks. 

Or maybe they’re aliens from other planets, allegedly posing as nonthreatening species to study humans. That’s one tenet of summer blockbuster Disclosure Day (Steven Spielberg, dir., 2026). Meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) and whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) discover they have paranormal abilities imparted upon them during alien abductions, a truth only they wish to share to the world and worried authorities want to suppress. Of course, they’re involved in a bicycle chase scene that harks back to ET: The Extraterrestrial. Phone home.

Exposing antisocial behaviors, not at all uncommon given 25% of people (esp. crack, meth, and steroid abusers) are aggressively messed up mentally, may have negative effects, such as encouraging more. Tizzy Ent (Michael McWhorter) tries to sort out bicyclist Gary’s allegations against a motorist buzzing by in new Discovery Channel docuseries How to Catch a Dirtbag (Season 1, Episode 3). His frenzied complaint to police lands Gary a citation for disorderly conduct. He could have just reported vehicle’s plate number rather than try vigilante vengeance, though police seldom enforce laws designed to protect bicyclists and tend to favor motorists.

Set for September release, romantic fantasy sequel Practical Magic 2 (Susanne Biers, dir., 2026) revisits the Owens coven 25 years later. Daughter Kylie’s boyfriend, played by Xolo Maridueña, riding a bicycle with a bouquet of flowers gets gravely injured when a motorist slams into him. This tragic event compels her, Gillian (Nicole Kidman), Sally (Sandra Bullock) and their aunties to begin a course of action to rid family of its longstanding love curse. In part 1, Sally's beloved husband, while pushing a hand truck with racks of apples across village's main street, gets suddenly distracted by a phalanx of cyclists, then slaughtered by a tractor trailer, thus fulfilling jinx.

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 dryness 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 sometimes 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.

Spilt Champagne

“President he’s got his war; folks don’t know just what it’s for. Nobody gives us rhyme or reason. Have one doubt they call it treason. We’re chicken feathers all without one nut. Goddamn it! Tryin' to make it real compared to what.” - Eddie Harris, Gene McDaniels, and Les McCann, Compared to What, Swiss Movement, Atlantic, 1969... album certified gold and song covered by 270 other performers.

Le Demi-Fond was once a 100 kilometer velodrome event where “the big motor” paced “the stayer”, that is, motorcyclist created a slipstream for drafting bicyclist running huge chainrings to reach speeds up to 124 mph. A popular spectacle from last century, it was inherently dangerous with track competitors and spectators killed and maimed until officially banned in 1994, though something similar is still how bicycle speed records are made on salt flats. Somewhat echoes e-bikes today, which quicken pace so each ride averages 3 to 5 mph faster. Riding bikes used to mean mere spinning; with e-bikes that becomes e-moting, because you frequently have to react in a panic and try to spin faster than motor boost, typically paused at 20 mph, to conserve charge for final segment on tired legs. Although sprayed champagne celebrates podium wins, spilt wine portends disaster. There’s no glory in top speed to which a cyclist strives, just a blur among crowds desperate for fresh air and smidgeon of exercise as Spring season finally arrives.

Level of being admired at zero percentage, aggregator Labann generously marches on never wanting to address attention needy POTUS insanity and wishing current term to be over permanently. Tired of turds dominating words downing out every voter democratically. “Halfway through”, demi-term election might overthrow oligarchy advantage. News used to be idea provoking specifics, not obviously vicious lies, gamely negotiated politics, not gas lit by wise guys. Where’s public outrage upon this perilous stage? Witch hunts describe going after officers doing their jobs who stood in your way when you committed a crime. If you keep misapplying and violating laws, you will be impeached and indicted every time. Whence and whither congressional counterbalance? Court rulings can only compel law abiders; marshals are their sole contempt enforcers if judges take a stance.

American People for nearly a century have long been the bulwark against wanton homicide and a stabilizing influence worldwide. Amagastan dupes don’t inherit this reputation. Christian Nationalists say, “Be charitable to yourself first,” in other words, stuff your pockets at someone else’s expense, even to where others perish or suffer for your greed and predation. They don’t know recipes for stone soups. Homeless beggar Christ amassed no coinage as a carpenter and fisherman, performed miracles and served strangers for free, for which he was crucified and interred penniless in donated linen and tomb by way of example on how to live divinely. To opposite extreme, Mango Mussolini is marching an army of mercs and orcs out of his lair, Mordor Lago, to murder mankind, spill blood, and wreak havoc. Slashing cybercrime mob surveillants, law enforcement agents, inspector general operatives, and national security staff leaves both them and you less protected against megalomaniacal psychopaths who’d burn planet and torture infants for a laugh.

Ruining how agencies run creates dissatisfaction meant to pave way to privatization, falsely reputed to improve efficiency. Taxpayers, which excludes many billionaires who evade paying, have invested literally hundreds of trillions in buildings, equipment, infrastructure, and workforce training. Consider post office with facilities and vehicles (Bezos drools), or military with jets, munitions, tanks, vessels, and weapons (Dumbo tools). Social Security (nobody’s fools) has $3 trillion in a trust fund you amassed. Fort Knox stores your tons of gold treasure, increased in value to $300 billion, enough to reduce public debt if liquidated. Unelected villains want to hand it all over to cronies to exploit for profit, leave citizens impoverished, raise service costs, and rob you blind. You’re already paying millions to El Salvador to inter a few hundred deportees not even indicted while stateside prisons remain full of convicted perps. Tariffs have nothing to do with encouraging domestic production; champagne only comes from France, as do thousands of other goods impossible to copy and only made abroad. It’s all a reality show for the cluelessly gung-ho, not sensible policy for vast majority.

Administrative decisions of late have been met with abject horror among three quarters of population. Not one campaign promise has been fulfilled, and vile edicts are being carried out despite federal court injunctions against. Conservative congress decided to cede their power as a coequal branch of government and let Felon 47 do his damnedest to destroy democracy, exploit war power act to deport without due process and stay in office, and target potential domestic enemies including political opponents and press reporters. How can half of supposed representatives support such unconstitutional injustice? Cowardly congressmen listened to advice not to answer questions or conduct forums. That’s admissible evidence of their violating oaths of office to stand for constituents. A quick fix would be to recall them individually from state to state, which would reverse curse of a slight GOP majority. Investigative journalists hold public officials accountable and shine a light on acts unlawful; otherwise, democracy dies in darkness.

When SCOTUS ruled in favor of Citizens United, it enabled billionaires to buy congressional seats among both major parties, call shots as they please, and determine all policies. Before oligarchs seized control, government had sustained many popular participant programs - Affordable Care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Supplemental Nutrition - that a succession of Republicans since Reagan wanted to crush and divert funds from held accounts into hands of the richest few. Temptation to smash and steal was just too strong for self indulgent legislators and their stink tank lunatics. Brian Tyler Cohen argues, “This feels like betrayal... We are desperate for fighters... If this crop of elected officials won’t, then people are going to elect new ones who will.”

Make great again for whom? Criminal kleptocrats, crypto schemers, goon squads, greedy oligarchs, privatizing congresspeople, shrewd whores, storm troopers, white supremacists, and yes men. Everyone else will be banished, deported, or targeted. Better watch your back and pack a go-bag when you have to escape, especially congressionally appointed judges forced to follow constitution who block autocratic playbook, or dissidents and opponents to unitary executive rule. “You don’t impeach judges who issues orders you don’t like... Debate makes this country great,” said senior senator Bernie Sanders. Unless as slaves, there’ll be no quarter for Asians, Blacks, Indians, Latinos, seniors, or women. Sorry, MAGA-mob, you were literally sold a big perverse joke and a pig in a poke. Have to have faith they’ve miscalculated effects of mistreating military veterans and public servants, two groups who own lion’s share of nation’s war tactics and weapons expertise. Would not want to take on these patriots in any fight, especially ones that threaten their families.

Voter remorse? “I been a bad, bad, bad man... Remember the time when I eat you up? Yeah, I was a lie that you can't give up. If I was to cheat, oh no, would you see right through me? ...How you like me now? How you like me now?” The Heavy, The House That Dirt Built, Counter, 2009

To whom do you turn? Liam Turner (Robert Timothy Smith) ineptly scribbles a dyslexic Dear Santa (Bobby Farrelly, dir., 2024) letter to North Pole, but transposes characters and winds up with a visit from Dear Satan (Jack Black) from North Lope, who offers him 3 wishes for his soul. Black’s character turns out to be a demon on probation, not Prince of Darkness himself. In another such switcheroo, you got a convicted serial con man instead of a Leader of the Free World. “Slow down, Lance Armstrong,” says school crossing guard (Cate Freedman) to nemesis teacher Mr. Charles (P. J. Byrne), whose midlife crisis has him riding a racing bicycle about town on Christmas Day. They agree to go together for Chinese food, though he rethinks asking her to sit on his back rack, so they stroll instead.

Not all romances conclude happily ever after. In favorably received Netflix series One Day (Luke Snellin, dir., 2024), Episode 13, Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) and Emma Morley (Ambika Mod) are an engaged couple in 2000, 14 years after they met in Edinburgh at their graduation ball. Having crossed paths for years, they are now planning their wedding. Dexter looks to open a café. Emma’s is about to publish her fourth novel. After a spat, she leaves Dexter an apology note, saying she still loves him and that she'll be five minutes late for their realty appointment to view a honeymoon house. On a rainy Saturday, Saint Swithin's Day, a careless motorist knocks Emma off her bicycle, and, despite wearing a helmet, she dies; foul weather must follow each day for next 40, according to folklore and screenplay.

Bicycling culture among contemporary Navajo Nation is the subject of documentary In The Dirt (T. C. Johnstone, dir., 2023) in conjunction with New Mexico non-profit Silver Stallion, where youth learn bicycle handling, mechanical repair, personal empowerment, and specialty coffee skills.

Dick Wolf’s scripted drama Law&Order: SVU, Season 16, Episode 4, Holden’s Manifesto (Jean de Segonzac, dir., 2014), portrays bike messenger and ignorable incel Holden March (John Karna, shown), who avenges his narcissist ego by murdering women he’s convinced wronged him by ignoring his awkward advances. Detective Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) and Sergeant Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) have to ferret out and take down this serial slayer. Story is based on real life case Elliot Rodger's Retribution resulting in Isla Vista Killings of same year. Over 25 years, program has won 46 awards including 6 Primetime Emmys.

Pivotal scene in blockbuster musical Wicked (John M. Chu, dir., 2024) has fondling Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) and Prince Fiyero Tigelaar (Jonathan Bailey) by bicycles spiriting off a lion cub in a basket that Oz (Jeff Goldblum) wants to cage along with all other animals. Harks back to original when Ms. Gulch put Toto in her basket. Creature mistreatment sets her on course to becoming Wicked Witch of the West. Though cut off to be continued before story concludes, this Wizard of Oz prequel was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won 2.

Big budget sci-fi bomb The Electric State (Russo Brothers, dirs., 2025), beside being among the most expensive movies ever made, takes on dystopian interface between artificial and human intelligence, but wastes many acting talents. Foster teen Michelle Greene (Millie Bobby Brown, Stranger Things. shown) channels previous role while battling evil tech CEO Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), bicycling about to muster a posse, and bringing back her comatose genius brother during a civil war instigated for profit in data memories. If not for bad character development and weak plot, you’d think audiences would identify with made-in-China “Tesler” boycott backstory, and react to EV insult reversal as hypocritical irony. Not masochistic enough to enjoy fiction so close to current events?

Blaine or Blane?

Likewise, Rene and Riley can be either female or male names, but blaine means lean and blane means curiously yellow, summoning a slew of references including para-cycling World Championship and World Record Holder Blaine Hunt and indomitable spirit of late Swedish bicycling actress Lena Nyman. Any individual can sexually identify as either or neither with pride and without your permission. All have a right to choice in lifestyle matters... effeminate adverbs, nuance of nouns, pit of gender pronouns be damned. Homosexuality was legalized in catholic majority cycling crazed France during 18th Century. Ancient cultures included and other creatures still behave bisexually. Major contributors to culture and science throughout history were gay. Bible Old Testament disapproved in passing, so it’s been around forever, not a recent liberal invention. 

Private crimes and public behaviors do warrant scrutiny, especially among those who falsify records to hoodwink voters about amoral acts while promising cult followers to rob opponents, queers, transgenders, and women of their basic rights. Ways laws are enforced, indictments processed, and sentences given are infrequent and random; GOP is not hiring police or prosecutors, instead increasing tax cuts that would pay for both. Their Plan 2025 would reduce LGBTQIA+ to a subhuman species by recognizing only hetero gender from birth, among a series of nazi mandates excluding and persecuting everyone except white Trump loyalists.

Rebellious beatnik counterculture? Don’t confuse mid-1960’s protesters with flower power hippies, though some did cross over. Hippies hated violence visited upon vulnerable individuals, so banded together as a bulwark against brutality. Being apolitical, they evaded authorities, whose main interest was and will always be seizing power, which those disaffected didn’t threaten, and loathed personal responsibilities by dropping out and suspending resistance. Valuing freedom, kindness and peace blinded them to consequences of empty promises and false prophets. Without 20 million drifting parasites (one quarter of voter turnout nationally at the time) begging for scraps, drowning in drugs, forgiving political corruption, and retreating from confrontation, minority rule by cruel plutocrats never would have emerged from the cesspool of nation’s worst depravity and horror, cavernous greed hidden behind evangelical conservatism. Can’t dominate, enslave, or oppress without both mind control and unimaginable wealth.

As previously cited, some say MAGA slogan was lifted from a 1929 Mussolini speech, “...fellow citizens who are working to make America great,” but that would require study into history, something cult would rather purge than read. Melania since let it slip that Don directly plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech. Nevertheless, it’s really a law firm acronym that stands for Mammon, Abaddon, Grimoire & Astaroth, the demons who represent respectively temptations, mischief, powers, and false accusations. Indeed, it’s among those spiritually minded that evil incarnate casts his vile net; deplorable and willing transgressors are already legion.

RINOs are all in for Trump, a sociopath convicted of fraud and rape, further accused of espionage, extortion, money laundering, racketeering, and tax evasion; he only got into office because enough independents bought this babbling celebrity and his biased bullpucky. Depending upon when and who you ask, only 25% of voters affiliate with GOP, 33% affiliate with Democrats, while 36% are independents, fools who stand aloof without any representation, then feel neglected and get angry through their own fault. You get the service you pay for, which, in their case, is none. If you didn’t thrive on whatever Washington delivered over last 20 years before Biden, blame Boehner, Bush, GOP, McConnell, and Trump, since they either controlled presidency or senate throughout, thus instigated all these discredited and disreputable policies, and Independents for their lack of organized opposition.

Liberals demand democracy now; lowbrow conservatives own the franchise on hypocrisy. Wow! Americans aren’t free to do whatever they want, only what’s legal and responsible. Majority wants to preserve constitutional rights and pursue happiness. Conservatives want freedoms to commit crimes with impunity, enslave or imprison everyone else accusing them of what they do themselves. MAGA describes itself as anti-fascist, anti-regulation, Christian righteous, constitution preserving, law abiding, national patriotic, pro-life, public inclusive, and radically progressive when it’s exactly the opposite: criminal, false, homophobic, misogynistic, noninclusive, racist, reactionary, selfish, unconstitutional, and xenophobic. Few immigrants are as purely rotten as home grown offenders. Fox and Newsmax went mental when Obama saluted with a coffee cup in same hand and wore a tan suit; now they are doing damage control over their candidate’s civil and criminal convictions acting as if that’s no scandal at all. Double standards this bizarre and blatant just can’t be borne, though much has already been discussed as a source of entertainment rather than extreme threat beyond reckoning, because nobody can stand considering so serious a topic.

Americans don’t need jingoism and populism, humping Old Glory and repeating hollow slogans, nor self styled patriots who rebel without cause based on false flags from seditionist media. Politicians who feed upon fear and pride and promise results that only congress can deliver are big liars and fat phonies unworthy of your vote, one of citizens’ few controls over government. Unhappy with how things are? Be heard through a ballot for candidates free of fraud convictions, not hucksters likely lying to you.

Labann learned a lot, but no one mind can encompass all facts; takes humankind as a whole and scientific consensus. However, majority lacks the necessary foresight and willpower to forge forward. After plenty of analysis yielded useful insight, next steps should have been planning ahead and taking action. But folks rather ask a family member or friend on how to decide instead of applying logic, laboriously remembering, studying anew, and thinking through.

Neither diligent study nor rote repetition leads to omniscience, only direct revelation. Prophecy comes from dreams and meditations that expose subliminal input from a cornucopia of connections and decades of experiences stewed in unconscious undercurrents. Why not read more nonfiction? But deep text dives into conflicting data will always be intolerably uncomfortable for vast majority. Anyone clever can access all sorts of amusing tidbits and audience reactions to late night comedy sketches. Rather than of staying up to watch them live, studying while sober makes more sense. Bicycling and thinking require a reasonable night’s sleep.

Pointed out transportation alternatives for decades. Now millions of newbies have discovered bicycling for themselves and repeated same discoveries. Once reposted bike authors and their titles when few were to be found; now there are just too many to recount. Commercial websites do a better job than a casual blog at recommending more. Quod Erat Demonstrandum (abbreviated as Q.E.D.) is a Latin phrase that means literally "that which was to be demonstrated.” In normal English, this means, "Thus it is proven.” Mike drop!

Recently passed NBA hall-of-famer Bill Walton and Bjarne Rostaing, Bill Walton’s Total Book of Bicycling (Bantam, 1985, 367 pp.) enthusiastically covers bicycle types, cycling apparel, equipment maintenance, long history, physical fitness, racing lore, safety precautions, and touring strategies.

Daniel Shea and Jeremy Withers, Culture on Two Wheels: The Bicycle in Literature and Film (University of Nebraska Press, 2016, 376 pp.) collects 16 relevant essays.

Frank Angelo Cavaluzzi, Standing Cyclist: Flirting with Wisdom, One Breath, One Mile at a Time (ThirtyThree45 Media Group; 2016, 296 pp.)

Gestalten [editors] and Martijn Doolaard, One Year on a Bike: From Amsterdam to Singapore (Gestalten, 2017, 368 pp.)

Gestalten [editors] and Martijn Doolaard, Two Years On A Bike: From Vancouver to Patagonia (Gestalten, 2021. 416 pp.)

Gestalten [editors], Velo City (Gestalten, 2016, 256 pp.)

Eighty years after D-Day, facts have emerged on the role of bicycling resistance preparing for an Allied Invasion to free Europe from Nazi tyranny, as covered by “vélosophe" Guillaume Martin’s books and podcast through Radiofrance.

Guillaume Martin, Socrates by bike (Grasset, 2020)
Guillaume Martin, The company of the peloton. Philosophy of the individual in the group (Grasset, 2021)

Martin’s source bibliography includes:
Bernard Chambaz, Little philosophy of cycling, Flammarion, coll (Flammarion, 2019, 130 pp.)
Bernard Andrieu, International Vocabulary of Sports Philosophy, 2 volumes (L’Harmattan, 2015)
Philippe Hassler, Louison (theatre, 2021, 1 hour)


Jody Rosen, Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle (Crown, 2022, 417 pp.): “The bicycle in the nineteenth century was a marvel; in today’s formulation, it is moral. It was enchanted; now it’s enlightened. Bicycles are great - but, more to the point, bicycles are good... the bicycle’s relationship to progressivism and radicalism is grounded in history... Hitler’s first acts upon assuming power, in 1933, was to smash Germany’s cycling union... confiscated bicycles from the local populations. To a repressive regime... the bicycle was a menace, a device that could be used by dissenters to sneak up and speed off, to organize and mobilize and elude.”

Ole Wagner and Shonquis Moreno, edited by Robert Klanten and Sven Ehmann, Velo: Bicycle Culture and Design (Gestalten, 2010, 235 pp.)

Paul Smethurst, The Bicycle: Towards a Global History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 208 pp.)

Stephen Fabes, Signs of Life: A Doctor's Journey to the Ends Of The Earth (Pegasus Books, 2020, 408 pp.); physician Fabes gave up a practice to tour world by bicycle, then discovered how medical histories don’t exceed life stories.

Sven Ehmann, Velo - 2nd Gear and Velo - 3rd Gear, Bicycle Culture and Style (Gestalten, 2013 and 2016, 256 pp. each)

Tree Abraham, Cyclettes (The Unnamed Press, 2022, 224 pp.) offers a millennial’s first take on freedom and stillness in motion.

“The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets,” opined essayist, journalist, novelist and poet Christopher Morley (d. 1957), long before automotive paradigm and urban rap trampled such sentiments.

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.