Taxon Diaphane

Certain writings don’t fit well into blog format, i. e., full length books, intense essays, nonfiction narratives, some novellas. Blog readers tolerate 3 paragraphs. Anything longer needs a seamstress to ease stress in its seams, that is, requires edit encapsulation, or wears out its welcome right away. A plethora of words seems as worthless as leaves in a swale, spontaneously transitions from confidently natural to dangerously nugatory, and ushers sand down proverbial hourglass. The elegance of poetry partly derives from its occupying very little space and saying nothing essential to survival. So how do you distribute a dreadful expedition into bad taste? Helps to sort works among appropriate sites.

Labann opened an account on Wattpad Mobile and posted 2 fairly recent, wildly experimental pieces.
 One is an essay entered into an international competition that dared to question the validity of facts in an information age. Other is a nonfiction adventure from 50 years ago with a hard sell based on bugs, drugs, guns, roads, rock&roll, sex and sorrow. Both sound outrageous when so said. Won’t bemoan being able to read on a smartphone. Might consider posting chapters from book if readers give them a look.


World was once quite different. Trees lined narrow lanes before electrical lines mutilated them. Fruiting and ornamental varieties now lack former vigor. Honeysuckle and rambling roses no longer lovingly smother fences. On humid nights diaphanes flickered as they flew lazily around neighborhood shrubbery. Lampyrinae, the huge subfamily to which they belong, was historically used as a garbage taxon to collect any beetle that glows despite diverse morphology. None thrive where defoliation and pollution devastate. Cyclists notice but not motorists except to complain of protein splats on their windshields. Children jailed these so called fireflies in jars before drivers, pesticides and pets decimated. A bug you can see through shows ecological loss through its absence. Nature's May Day warnings tax memory and wax subtle.

Before technology those without sheer access would celebrate wonderful words artfully chosen, but only when confined where they could be conveniently controlled, such as closed forums, dusty libraries, or exclusive museums, likewise fearsome personalities and whatever they produced. All Archimedes asked for was a place to stand to leverage earth in space. Nowadays, media clog emanates from literary smog of wannabes agog. An idea you share might not be accepted and won’t pay for what you need today. Great authors can’t expect their effort to have any effect, even those that comfort. Unsupported, they too will disappear like diaphanes.

Schemes to Maintain

Leave it to The Atlantic to exaggerate the horror: Cyclists riding on sidewalks! Rather than being a problem, it attests to bad infrastructure and dereliction of duty by responsible DOT. Under certain conditions it’s perfectly legal. Ambiguity rules elsewhere, only prohibited in a few states. Federal policies already require equal infrastructure for biking, hiking and motoring. Highways cannot bar cyclists from crossing at reasonable intervals including bridges or riding parallel. Biking routes can’t stop any more than motoring thoroughfares. Boulevards must have shoulders into which drivers can pull over in an emergency, if only to take a cell call or text. Gore areas and shoulders are all cyclists need to coexist with motorists on busy roads, and you need nothing on side streets other than smooth, swept pavement. Formal bike lanes or paths are often unnecessary except where conditions force too much traffic into too little space, but painted stripes are cheap and easy.

Registered drivers complain that they pay for roads and so deserve to drive unencumbered. Nonsense. First, they don’t pay alone: Revenue gets collected from many sources including taxes on $6 billion in bicycle sales every year. Second, cyclists and walkers hardly ever slow motorists unless driving illegally in bike lanes, gutters, or on sidewalks. Third, other/unlicensed drivers threaten everyone, not unmotorized, vulnerable users. If frustrated they are in your way, blame your DOT for not accommodating them separately. Nobody is disrespected and inconvenienced more than cyclists. The Atlantic’s agenda doesn’t address worse hazards. Why don’t they report on bus, SUV or tractor trailer abuse? Commerce declines upon bad news. Schemers construe their own taboos.

Roads are empty most of the time. You can monitor this for yourself by sitting attentively and ticking off passing vehicles. Experts calculate the collective footprint of 214 million cars in America at 760 square miles, smaller than Rhode Island. Somewhat less than two hundred million registered motorists drive on average only 1.7 hours/day. Nation’s 4 million miles of roadways combined with parking spaces occupy an area estimated at 61,000 square miles, bigger than 30 of 50 states including Florida or Georgia, 3/4 the size of all farmed land, a wide swath that would wrap Earth’s equator 156 times. So, moving vehicles take up <1.1% of pavement, leaving 98.9% of roads empty 22.3 hours per day. Nation allots each driver 80 square miles of paved space. Nevertheless, idiots still collide >5 million times per year. Yet many drive their entire lives without the least mishap. Some of this can be explained by everyone wanting to commute through congested areas at the same time. But the more lonesome a road, the more ridiculous the chances drivers will take. Every long straightaway has a suicide curve at which scores have already died without any remediation or even signs. Perhaps they should make such situations safer by providing alternatives. Only <1% of budget goes to bicycling and >99% to motoring with a focus on flowing ever more cars through areas that exclude cycling. This is illegal and lacks any balance whatever. Cyclists consider such points every time they take to roads.

Facts made available on Internet is now so numerous you wonder if anyone can make sense of them. Depends greatly upon what question you want answered. If official sources can deceive and pervert with statistics, why can’t Labann entertain and expose follies with them? Situations that kill sustain certain industries, coffin makers, emergency rooms, funeral parlors, insurance companies. Commerce flows and death spirals on nation’s roadways, while cyclists spin and take it all in. Rants majority ignores echo hollowly.

Efflux Riparian

What attracts humans to water? Endless thirst? Despite floods, people pay a premium to live alongside bays, coves, estuaries, lakes, ponds, or rivers, sometimes want burial at sea. Frequent fog and rain cut any sense of posh riparian space. During storms a rising sea is an unseen menace. Droplets of water exhibit cohesion; they are chemically designed to chase and cling. Humans flock and gang together, or insist, even stalk, whenever ignored. Tears sting with salt. Also like seawater, blood dissolves, foams, pulses, perhaps stains, and rushes to intermingle. A body wants to be inside another body, back in a warm, wet sack. At 7 weeks embryos of fish and humans appear identical.

Aquatic craniates are man’s earliest ancestors, evolutionarily speaking, and everybody still has structures related to fins and gills. So, a woman does need a man like a fish needs a bicycle, after all, which is to say a partner for species propagation if not traditional monogamy.

In contemporary Russia, Pussy Riot rejects patriarchy and pretty much has had it with Putin’s repressive politics. Barely adults, they’ve already spent years incarcerated for their dissent, as portrayed in recently screened HBO documentary, A Punk Prayer, directed by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin. Not confined to Eastern Europe, female issues peaked in 2013, a year of gender controversy. Conservative policies that exclusively cater to state religions endlessly result in tentacles of inequality. Yet without prayer and respect world would definitely be poorer, perhaps unlivable. Studies in America report that females get 75-93% as much as males for same jobs. Their view to the top is clear through a prohibitive glass ceiling. Why let an eroding undercurrent poison business, governance and interpersonal relations? Why ignore 50% of the population? Why not listen instead and proactively act? After effluxion over time, any social contract expires.

Routes cyclists take are not quite as fluid, more like taffy; you squish to hurry up, stretch to get in more miles. Firmament will always be fiction. Nothing lasts. Solid ground crumbles, sometimes turns into rushing mud. As a book, Bike&Chain likewise runs all over the place, torn in a thousand directions. Yet there’s an arc and center, even denouement, if no plot or purpose. Who isn’t pushed and tugged all over these days? Writers only mirror events, milieu, what’s happening. You weren’t born onto one side of issues promulgated only to exploit you. Matriarchy or patriarchy? Why not equality? Humanity moves forward united, will fall divided, wouldn’t survive without diversity. Growth and improvement can distance self from persistent deceptions and transitory illusions. To get there you must swim in facts within a school surrounded by sharks, not remain stuck on a shore of suppositions. This was B&C’s departure from fiction.

Agreed, novels have enormous influence, yet legitimize violence, whitewash root causes, and worsen insanity. Criminals and terrorists are inspired by novelists who write details that can be used to harm and maim. Fiction tends to fit into genres, tired plots with only names and places changed, and worship conflict. Instead, life itself resembles long stretches of boredom punctuated by rebellious bursts against inhuman oligarchs, not a scenario that fits neatly into a derivative genre. Devoid of any entertainment distractions, B&C tried to fathom the emotional bottom of interpersonal ethics. Is that even possible? Feel readers would rather be fishing for themselves than getting along by sharing.

Essex Terraplane

Remember running backwater routes in the 1970’s and seeing an “authorized” Hudson dealer, really a junkyard for a defunct brand. Rusting hulks sat and sulked awaiting rare enthusiasts to restore in mirth and terrorize roads with their girth. The Terraplane, an economical (as low as $425 new), fast model introduced in 1919, was lamely advertised, “In the air that's aeroplaning, but on the land, in the traffic, on the hills, hot diggity dog, that’s Terraplaning.” Imagine bicyclists resented sharing byways and terrain with these flightless turkeys, yet aviatrix Amelia Earhart hawked them, bluesman Robert Johnson droned on about them, and robber Dillinger drove one. Private transportation spread and still permits crime sprees. During the 1930’s Depression, Essex merged with and outsold the more profitable Hudson, so they abruptly discontinued production. No wonder Hudson subsequently had to sell out to American Motors, neither of which survived.

When I feel so lonesome, you hear me when I moan / Who been drivin' my Terraplane for you since I been gone… Mr. highway man, please don't block the road, 'Cause she's reachin' a cold one hundred and I'm booked and I got to go.—Robert Johnson

A website commenter said you shouldn’t discriminate cyclists from motorists, suggest a them-us dichotomy, since most both drive and pedal intermittently. Makes you consider how autos became popular a century ago. Origins fascinate, although no one thing will ever totally instigate, rather the sum of conditions. It was a no-brainer that a bicycle’s motility and a biplane’s power would merge into motorized cycles, then multi-wheeled versions for the balance challenged. Oil became available as a cheap energy source, instant compared to coal or electricity. Yet it took a celebrity to convince masses to give up cycling. If not for hard hills and heavy loads, motors may never have caught on. Chores and contours of course occur; they cannot be contravened without conflict. Stalwart riders know climbing builds and descending thrills, but who can blame workers trying to earn livings for choosing perceived convenience? One can’t just grovel in fear and hide at home.

There are hundreds of videos on Youtube showing mtb’ers going where no car could ever go, often downhill catching big air. Others present relevant songs.

By London indie rock band Bombay Bicycle Club, The Hill wants to rewind the clock and seal Pandora’s Box...
And, alright, let's go outside, / And rise, rise, rise to the meaning of life. And we're trying but we're all falling out. I want to go back to old times.

Comedian Benny Hill slyly reports on cycle sports...

By Avenger’s composer and Madison native Joel McNeely, Bicycle Ride scores final credits of TV series Dark Angel starring Jessica Alba as a bike messenger. Many miles later, she looks fabulous in that Fantastic Four skin suit. Surprised she hasn’t yet cameoed on The Big Bang Theory having rubbed elbows with Marvel obsessed cast at MTV Movie and People’s Choice Award Shows, though her name was mentioned.

By Noah Drew, This Hill Again describes a notorious night commute after happy hour.

Common Refrain

Browsing and grazing, almost too easily uncovered hitherto unmentioned bits of cycling culture. The Chemical Brothers, Velodrome [edm], single, Universal Music Group, 2012 - This accompanied an animated video played before each velodrome trial at the 2012 Olympics.

Thanks to The Wizard of Oh for collecting the following European bicycling songs among scores more already mentioned in B&C’s appendix or subsequent blogs:
Alex Roeka, De Muur Van Geraardsbergen [Dutch] Wolfshonger, Raaf Rec., 2002. This wall of misery is a cobblestone climb which culminates the Tour of Flanders.

British Sea Power, Lucky Bicycle, Valhalla V.I.P. EP, Rough Trade, 2011.

Immer diese Radfahrer, Lied - Mit dem Rad, Kamerad [German].

Kees Ruiter, Moin Fiets [Dutch folk], Live telecast; video shows a cyclist riding along dikes in the Westfries area of Northwestern Holland.

Les Thugs, Biking [French punk], As Happy As Possible EP, Sub Pop Rec., 2008.

Miranda Eve, The Bicycle Song, single, circa 2012.

Nora Jane Struthers, Bike Ride, Carnival, Blue Pig Music, 2013; video has songstress riding a retro bike throughout.

Robert Long, Vader op een fiets (Dad on a bike) [Dutch], Achter de horizon, EMI, 1986.

Found independently was this trio of older songs:
Antoine, La Troisième Roue De Ton Velo (French), single, 1970.

Jean Narcy, Bravo Eddy [Belgian], Ah! Quelle Histoire, Decca, 1970; about supreme cycling hero Eddy Merckx.

Manuel “Canario” Jimenez, En Bicicleta [Puerto Rican Jibaro] circa 1960 on retrospective album Y Su Cuarteto, Codigo, 2009.

A band in the burgeoning cycling center of London, Me for Queen has an innovative idea for an all-cycling, crowd-funded album called Iron Horse. Now you too can claim blame for adding to this song stampede. Says group's singer Mary Erskine quoted in a Guardian article, "This whole album has come from the time on my bike. You're kind of operating on two different levels: you're going through the motions, you're hyper-alert ... and, at the same time, the rest of your brain is off just free thinking. That's where all my good ideas come from; it's pretty much 99% on the bike." She expresses frustration with motorists and sensations of danger, realizes album won't change the world, but shares her perspective as a cyclist. Same as Bike&Chain. One finished cut, White Bike, is a folk ballad about ghost bikes; proceeds go to a charity that supports victims’ families.