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.

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.

Vélo Humain

With filing deadline postponed by pandemic, Tax Day arrived along with Bike-to-Work Week. Observed by viewing an energy alternative documentary, Planet of the Humans (Jeff Gibbs, dir., 2020), which stares down environmental issues and suggests Earth’s salvation rests in realigning lifestyles. “The path to change comes from awareness... Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide... We must take control of our environmental movement and our future from billionaires and their permanent war on planet earth.” Good luck with that! If COVID taught anything, it’s that people aren’t easily cajoled to act on their own behalf, never mind community’s or planet’s. Following a year of furlough or work from home, drivers’ abilities and attention atrophied, bicycling risks were exacerbated, earnings diminished, and wealth inequality expanded.

Those who profited from technology caused problems, yet they remain convinced there are technological solutions into which they’ve heavily invested. Trying to eliminate fossil fuels and look carbon guiltless, they’ve created industries with equivalent toxic or tragic aftermaths, for example, burning biomass, which clearcuts life-giving forests for fuel, or solar panels, which combine rare earth materials out of devastating strip mines and defy recycling once failed after only a few years of use, even before mine land has been reclaimed. Power companies install innovations to justify rate hikes that they force users to pay. You’d think burning or gasifying garbage might work, or fusion reactors with no radioactive waste, but where’s the profit in it? It’s a complex issue made intractable by greedy capitalists and needy do-nothings.

Funny that Gibbs never mentions bicycling; even student protestors shown had sense to ride to rallies. Average cost of car ownership has risen in 2021 to $9,282/year, thousands more in 1st year, then gradually decreasing to half by 10th as costs, except insurance and maintenance, decline. An average of 13,500 miles are driven annually. This estimates about 70 cents/mile, not taking into account related cancer/crash deaths, shared cleanup costs, what’s consumed to afford this luxury, wars waged, and world destruction. According to industry analysts and confirmed personally, bicycling cost only 4 cents/mile with practically no environmental or geopolitical detriment. Paved roads are not even necessary, if you own an MTB, though do improve pedaling efficiency. Too many Americans prefer death, debt, and Dukes of Hazzard, although once popular NASCAR attendance had already dwindled before personal distancing seemed prudent.

Woke tree-huggers gravitate to new electric and hybrid vehicles and lambaste gas guzzlers, gross polluters, and pub crawlers. An honest statement aligned with nature can be made by riding bicycles and thumbing nose at busses, cars and trains. Beyond just Bike Month and for months at a clip, performing bands including Shake Your Peace, The Ditty Bops, The Ginger Ninjas, and This Bike is a Pipe Bomb used to ride by bikes between gigs all over North America. Bodies congregating and cooperating can even form a human bicycle side show act.

“Focusing on an individual’s carbon footprint is a useful mechanism that diverts attention away from the worldwide impact of global warming. Anti-global-warming PR often means deflecting global warming by re-locating the issue onto side issues. It prefers to blame global warming on individuals rather than corporate behaviour... Such campaigns blame those who highlight the impact of global warming by focusing on the messenger... Forbes magazine once suggested that [climate activist who crossed North Atlantic on a sailboat in winter to speak before UN] Greta Thunberg’s lifestyle may be one reason for global warming.” Norman Simms & Thomas Klikauer, May 20, 2021

Convincing his NYC family, Colin Beavan vowed to be No Impact Man (Justin Schein, dir., 2008) for a year by personally not contributing carbon exhaust from flying or motoring, coffee imbibing, conditioned air, disposable diapers, elevator rides, excess consumption, imported or take out foods, new purchases, paper trash, plastic packaging, refrigeration, subway use, taxi hops, television watching, toilet paper, and water toxins from detergents. For anyone to follow, they’d have to live his at-home author vegetarian lifestyle. For actual zero impact, you must also avoid work that consumes electricity. fuel or materials; compost food and human wastes; only ingest medicines you grow on windowsills; plant trees to offset carbon you exhale; self propel to farms to shop (shipping each menu ingredient averages 1,500 miles); sit at home in the dark; and skip as many meals as possible. Would miss cooked food and hot water. If everyone did only one, world would indeed be better off. But it’s Al Gore hypocrisy all over, profit driven drivel that says, Do as I say, not as I do.” After his Thoreau inspired trial, sole thing that stuck with Beavan was bicycling, since it proved the most economical and effective urban choice.

For 1 minute and 11 seconds in magic realism film 2:22 (Paul Currie, dir., 2017), multimodal commuter Dylan Branson (Michiel Huisman) rides his bike from his business district apartment to Grand Central Station to board a subway to his job as a JFK air traffic controller. As a bicyclist dodging midtown traffic, patterns come naturally to him, a skill that makes him great at what he does. One day at 2:22 PM, he’s suddenly stunned by universe crushing down upon him, and nearly causes an airline crash, which results in his suspension. This gives him days to explore a bizarre relationship with Sarah (Teresa Palmer), a repeating pattern of things that go boom at 2:22 P.M., and series of events based on fates of residents 30 years ago superimposed upon their current lives.

When Katja Şekerci (Diane Kruger) leaves her Kurdish husband and son at his office, she cautions a woman who’s leaving a brand new bike out front in Hamburg’s Turkish quarter that she ought to lock it up. In the Fade, aka Aus dem Nichts (Out of Nowhere, Fatih Akin, dir., 2017, German with subtitles) tells Katja’s story in the aftermath of this Neo-Nazi bike bomb, loosely based on events of 2004 Cologne. When courts are unable to convict couple responsible despite her testimony, Katja hunts down these terrorists.

Blood Road (Nicholas Schrunk, dir., 2017) tracks endurance mountain biker Rebecca Rusch and native guide Huyen Nguyen who pedaled 1,200 miles of Ho Chi Minh Trail to reach crash site and resting place of Rebecca's dad, a U.S. Air Force F-4 pilot who was killed when shot down over Laos 5 decades earlier during Viet Nam War. This documentary was nominated for or won a slew of film festival awards, though critics groaned that her emotional closure mattered more than permanent damage Nixon’s carpet bombing did in locations she visited. To their credit, filmmakers teamed with Nobel Laureate NGO nonprofit Mines Advisory Group to help de-mine along border and save innocent lives. Sick conservative tactics during 1960's made a lifelong impression on Labann.

Return to Earth (Colin Jones, Darren McCullough, Darcy Wittenburg, dirs., 2019) presents a joint Shimano and Trek vision of big air over Moab single track and Oahu volcanic moguls featuring star MTB riders.

In Brit rom-com Finding Your Feet (Richard Loncraine, dir., 2018), Lady Sandra Abbott (Imelda Staunton, known as draconian Hogwarts headmistress Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) takes umbrage at husband’s secret sex affair. She decamps to sister Bif’s (Celia Imrie) housing project flat. Bif admonishes her, “It’s one thing being scared of dying, Sondra. It’s a whole different matter being scared of living.” She begins to drop her defenses and open herself to new experiences, like riding a London Boris Bike.

Ami-Ami, aka (Girl)Friend (Victor Saint Macary, dir., 2018) has Vincent (William Lebghil) move in with best friend Nefeli (Margot Bancilhon) and swear off romantic love. Then Vincent meets Julie, which he fears will complicate his open lifestyle with Nefeli riding Vélib' bikes daily around Paris along with ninety-thousand other residents and visitors.

While getting fresh air and sunshine in great outdoors at Rim of the World (Joseph McGinty Nichol, dir., 2019) camp, four awkward kids band together against an invasion of dinosaur space aliens. They’re getting around fine by BMX, but when they receive a key that could save world, they trade bikes for a GTO to traverse last 70 miles to JPL in Pasadena.

Entrepreneur stooge pair Manu (Grégoire Ludig) and Jean-Gab (David Marsais), previously mentioned as stars of La folle histoire de Max et Léon, team again to pull a heist in sun drenched South of France. After stealing a car, they discover a fly the size of a dog in its trunk. Instead of releasing it sensibly, they insanely decide to forego heist and train “Dominique” to rob banks, like a drone with Mandibles (Quentin Dupieux, dir., 2020), thereby hoping to become comparatively rich. Mayhem and mistaken identity find them shacking up with zany villainess Agnes (Adèle Exarchopoulos), where Manu races off on a unicorn lemon squeezer.

The Half of It (Alice Wu, dir., 2020) portrays enterprising teen cyclist Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), who writes essays for other high school students. Lovestruck jock Paul Munsky (Daniel Diemer) approaches her to write a letter from him to lovely Aster Flores (Alexxis Lemire). Ellie doesn't expect to become his friend, or to fall for Aster. Sure, the girl geek rides a bike; maybe she knows more than all her peers.

PBS documentary Blood Sugar Rising (David Alvarado, dir., 2020) asks, “Why isn’t there a war on diabetes?” Nearly 450 million humans, including 35 million Americans (10%), diagnosed with either Type I (5% of total) and Type II diabetes (95%) face crippling strokes, extremity amputations, fatal seizures, heart attacks, and organ transplants at a collective cost of $350 billion per year. Alvarado covers blood monitoring, dietary changes, and expensive operations, but neglects root causes in sedentary lifestyles enabled by automotive convenience and other seated activities supplanting self propulsion. Ask yourself, “Why aren’t more people going everywhere by bike?”

Hallmark whodunit A Beautiful Place to Die: A Martha's Vineyard Mystery (Mark Jean, dir., 2020) depicts detective Jeff Jackson (Jesse Metcalfe), who was forced into early retirement after taking a bullet in his spine, returned to bike infested island life, that is, until a body washes up and his crime solving creed is challenged. MVPD neglects to compensate him after risking paralysis by battling suspects and solving case. 

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.”