Chanson Neuvaine

A bike can be your best friend, extension of soul, or prie dieu kneeler on which to supplicate blessings. Novenas consist of prayers repeated, often sung for nine days or more, usually toward favorable happenings. All songs beseech attention, not necessarily divine intervention, yet forever exhort some spiritual connection. Can't forget that catchy tunes now owe a whole lot to Gospel Plow long before and sacred hymns of yore. Never look back. Pedal onward.

Angus and Julia Stone, Main Street, Angus and Julia Stone, self, 2014. “My bones are aching for yours. You rode me on your bicycle down Main Street… Held me as though I'd never leave. You rode me on your bicycle down Main Street.”

Ariana Grande featuring Nicki Manaj, Side to Side, Dangerous Woman, Republic Records, 2016. “This the new style with the fresh type of flow: Wrist icicle, ride d*ck bicycle. Come true, yo, get you this type of blow. If you wanna menage, I got a tricycle.”

Ben Weaver, Split Ends, Mirepoix and Smoke, Bloodshot Records, 2010. An environmental sensitive and Minneapolis native, Ben tours between engagements by bicycle and writes poems and songs inspired by his journeys. While most lyrics don’t specify bicycles, riding intensely informs his reflections. Fellow Bloodshot artist and Chicago wrench tech Al Scorch credits local bike advocates for launching his music career, and similarly bike commutes to gigs, though unlikely to live up to surname while lugging gear.

Blonde Redhead (Amedeo and Simone Pace) wrote score of The Commentator, a new Brendt Barbur documentary that trails Paris Roubaix race coverage by legendary announcer Jørgen Leth set for debut this month.

Darryl Worley, Nothin To Lose [c&w], Here and Now, 903 Music, 2006. “Gasoline prices are higher than ever. They line up to buy 'cause they hate going slow. Someday I might learn to ride a bicycle, but I ain’t got no place to go… I used to spend all my time making money, much in the fashion of my dear old dad. He could have taught me to ride a bicycle. Now I bet he wishes he had.”

Fetty Wap, Go Hard Boyz [hop hop], single, self, 2016. “Bikes up, guns down… bought a Banshee [brand name bicycle]... Riding all day, and all night… We believe in bicycles, don’t believe in helmets… Bam! Bam!”

Fossils, Bicycle Chor [“Bicycle Thief”, Indian], Fossils 2, self, 2004. Founders of the Bengali underground rock scene, Fossils derived named from feeling crushed by early disapproval.

K’coneil, Bicycle, Love/Lust, Gedion Soldiers Entertainment, 2016.

(Adrianna) Krikl & (Viviane) Be, Bicycle, Odds & Ends, self, 2016. “I hop on my bicycle and ride, anywhere… Cruising downhill nice and slow, ‘cause I don’t got nowhere I need to go, spinning wheels… All I want to do is have some fun. I like to ride my bicycle… Grab your 10-speed, because it’s about to get hot.”

Monkey Majik, Bicycle, Time, Avex Entertainment, 2008. "Don’t wanna fall on my head. Don’t wanna botch up my chain… The whole notion of balance and gravity, my chin wasn’t up. Where was I headin’? I’m closin’ in on a fire hydrant, disaster’s waitin’. Ain’t goin’ far, I get up, I get up, don’t give up. I reassemble it all. I found out, you’ll do it if you wanna do it.”

Nahid Afrin, Loraalir Uraajaan [Assamese-Indian pop], Chor (The Bicycle) soundtrack, Terakota Records, 2015. Tune scores trailer for a new film in Assamese language about innocence of children who share a bicycle until it's stolen.

Stoffer & Maskinen, Vi to Er Smeltet Sammen ["The two of us have melted into one", Danish], Stoffer & Maskinen, A:larm Music, 2008. Anchors soundtrack of 2014 feature film Copenhagen in which an adult bicyclist visiting city meets an adorable teen waitress [still image above]. While a peripheral mention for being in a bike movie, its lyrics speak directly to wheel obsession in a sort of Flann O’Brien, Third Policeman way. “We are melted into one. We can no longer separate… You are my pulse, heavily throbbing, that makes my blood circulate with every beat of every second. You'll follow the rhythm of my heart around. You are the centre of gravity of my thoughts, my lightness when I feel heavy. And, if I float for no reason, you'll pound the rhythm of my heart around… all alone and without a day, cause we will never go back.”

Wax, Two Wheels [hip hop], single, Island Def Jam Music, 2011. “I'm just riding through the valley on my bicycle, just pedalin’, pedalin’, pedalin’, pedalin’, pedalin' along… I’m gonna sing, oh yeah, oh-my-my, ‘I don't give a f*ck about a DUI.' You can take away my license, but you can't take away my pride. I'm a keep drinking until the day I die. Two wheels is the way I ride.”

Y.N.RichKids, My Bike, single, 2013. A gang of Minneapolis ragazzi recorded this def hip hop jam. "Ok, I'm back on my bike. I don't need a car; these two wheels gon' take me far… I'm ridin' around real slow, and 'u' already know that I'm fresh to death on my bicycle. And you should 'prolly' know, that I can do it with no hands. I'm the man.”

Update: As is always, no sooner than a list is released, other entries magically appear. Carlos Vives and Shakira, La Bicicleta [Columbian in Spanish], single, 2016. [Shakira] "Your way is not complicated on a bicycle that takes you everywhere… Take me, take me on your bicycle. Hear me, Carlos, take me on your bicycle. I want to travel around together…” In official video, both Columbian superstars ride dangerously against traffic and neither wears a helmet. Doesn't much matter after Shakira shakes.

Tour Submontane

Before Tour de France commences along coasts and pursues alps, couldn’t resist a quick look through Bike Snob’s latest book, The Ultimate Bicycle Owner’s Manual (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishing, May, 2016, 240 pp.). Unlike earlier offerings, author Eben Weiss has honed and toned his humor for an insightful exposé of condoned aspects of contemporary bikedom with practical ink for urban boredom. Not one to dodge a dare, he dives right into controversy and expects your conditioned outrage. He does, however, provide concise answers to the nagging questions of fear and inconvenience that deter two thirds of nation who don’t ride, though he’d make a better stand up comedian with whom you’d want to someday share a beer and steer toward sincere.

Ultimate it’s not, instead an abridged compendium of hundreds of books covering identical subjects in greater depth. Resembles an Edwin Abbot x-y spin in flatland that crests no peaks and possesses no z in spaceland. Can hardly find any point with which to get nose out of joint. Bold and captivating chapters concern the future and your rights as a bicyclist. “The automobile did its best to figuratively and literally kill the bicycle. It failed.” B&C has been reporting details of B-icycling C-ulture for decades over thousands of pages and still honking uphill. Worrisome on immediate horizon are self-driving cars, which might impose onus for road safety back onto bicyclists. Worry, however, wastes imagination. Those who assess motoring’s costs seldom mention mining tons of among planet's rarest metals, palladium and platinum, for catalytic converters. Filthy Big Oil rightly bears brunt of global disgust, but surely aren’t the only bad actors enabling automotive lust.

Disagree about swapping front tire onto back out of sheer impracticality. Two remounts? Tiresome. Besides, always replace used tubes with new; tire levers abrade whatever they touch. Front tires can take on sidewall cuts and splits from unseen potholes and stones, from which your quick reflexes protect rear, so wear can be different but no less traumatic. You could carefully inspect, lay aside, and once you have a pair, mount onto your wheelset spare, nice to have on hand when at doormat ready for combat and inconveniently find a flat.

Almost any advice you glean therein will be tainted with bicycling’s ambivalent dilemma: Why be vulnerable or endure suffering when so many transportation temptations surround? Because it’s a common misconception that cars, SUVs and trucks are easier and safer. Earning price of ticket takes far longer than just biking wherever you want to go. Owning a private passenger vehicle is more expensive than taking a buss or taxi. Waiting for rides and walking it necessitates waste time. Speed compounds risk. Bicycling’s average pace of 13 mph makes ideal progress as it mitigates danger. Bikes take you from dawn to destination, harbor to home, portal to portal. Its two undeniable downsides are how fragile you become on a long run and unpleasant landscapes through which you must pass without access to bridges, highways or rail corridors. Sticks you in the thick of it. Cycling otherwise resembles most forms of mobility, practically a land kayak or terrain plane unless you think you're nobility. Everyone, either directly or indirectly, benefits from bike use: children gaining confidence on safe routes to schools, motorists bypassing additional traffic snarl, parents who stay fit for their families, poor who can’t afford private vehicles, rescue squads clear to respond, and those thereby saved.

Technical ingenuity has economic, environmental, political and social consequences. Automotive and transportive account for 50% of private businesses, belch pollutants and toxins, cause cancer and cardiovascular disease, consume nonrenewable resources, despoil land and sea, and doom humanity to dystopia. You can recycle most of a bicycle's materials, either rebuild to renew or recover for raw. Its only effects are positive: cleaner air, fewer potholes, improved health, less congestion, more interaction, unless you consider as threats clearer thinking, collaborative equality, and critical analysis. A paradigm shift is inevitable. During transition, people who can will choose bikes, while suckers who can’t or won’t will pay skyrocketing prices, since obsolete technologies must maintain profits to provide alternatives and stay on top while consumers migrate elsewhere. Already happening, battery, hybrid, and hydrogen fuel vehicles are made available only at unnecessarily prohibitive cost, thereby forcing traditional purchases and leaving options open.

Alienation and isolation are what pioneers find when they successfully break new ground. Demand for innovation remains much less than conventional mediocrity. This explains why so many authors pander to ignorance and repeat popular opinions, seldom probe lofty visions or seek unique stances. Interaction occurs below; mountaineers stand alone. Every review elevates authors selected and sentences those overlooked to obscurity. How-to's act as gateways to personal awareness; no one size suits all, especially when a bicyclist measures self. Enough. Back to the century old contest between brilliant breakaways and knotted belligerents.

Leopard’s Bane

In Season 4 (2014), Episode 4, And the Old Bike Yarn, of sitcom Two Broke Girls, Caroline adopts an abandoned bike half woven over by a homeless knitter and plans to use it to deliver cupcakes they’ll bake. Max reveals in shame she doesn’t know how to ride one. An attempt to teach her ends in a crotch injury, which she ices with cold cans of diner soda, as the rest of RICE - Rest, Compression and Elevation - wouldn’t be practical. Premise provides gags full of sexual innuendo, which seems this show’s main purpose. Sex turns the average participant from tool to fool; picture a vulgar medieval jester, and you’ll get the level of intelligence to which sitcom panders, imbecile monarchs and mindless minion.

Ah, summer, high season for touring, when every distance seems nearer, and you take on more than you can handle. Never know how much you’ll suffer even if you’ve done it all before. Bike&Chain mentions pain on every tenth page but never resolves how to cure beyond a hot shower or soak, then long nap in loose wrap with legs elevated, safe recommendations that smother litigations. “Pain and pleasure are equally interesting, for some inseparable.” Suffering pays, but that fact offers little comfort. Turin Brakes conversely called bicycle a “pain killer” in summer rain, but they meant a mood boost not pharmaceutical remedy.

Painters pour pain onto canvas as complaint. Protests go nowhere. If you complain, responses of those who might hear include, in order of likelihood, annoyance, avoidance, bemusement among the blameworthy, kindly advice you can’t apply, race to capitalize, and, rare though superlative, suggestions that actually work validated by vast experience. Bicyclists mostly bawl about bonks, butts, calves, feet, knees, thighs and wrists. How bike is adjusted and equipped effects all. Chamois balm, padded shorts and well worn leather saddles eliminate or lessen posterior discomfort. Bar tape, gloves, and multiple hand positions assist either wrist. Weight loss also helps, since dragging around excess elevates distress, and wool socks deter abrasion.

You’ll undergo fewer aches and pains if you hydrate before, during and following, whether plain water, special sports drinks, or water suspended powders. Nutrient rich diet and sensible exercise regime will gradually harden bone and flesh and increase endurance. Digestion stores glycogen and lipids that legs use as fuel, but water lubricates muscles and metabolizes both. Sneaky sugars don’t last and exacerbate diabetes. Importantly, avoid exceeding your physical limitations, or risk complications. Cocaine during or opioids after defeat any health benefits. No prescription beats prevention. “Pain, after all, can be short circuited by ketamine, mental discipline or morphine drip, but only ethics, nonviolence, and safety awareness work to prevent suffering.” That is to say, don’t engage in road rage, and stay out of harm’s way.

Muscle spasms may be spam bicyclists can’t simply delete. It’s said that potassium insufficiency causes, why many cyclists eat apples and bananas. Arnica montana (aka leopard’s or wolf’s bane) diluted in a gel is one topical remedy that works nearly instantly for a charleyhorse, deep bruise, or severe cramp. Not for internal consumption or where skin is broken, since it’s a poisonous herbal, you must heed adverse reactions or health contraindications and use sparingly. Other liniments don’t work as effectively or quickly. Daub menthol HEET liquid on tender site but likewise don’t get it into eyes or on fingers. Bengay or Icy Hot are for arthritis or discomfort, not spasms. All, however, reputedly reduce inflammation that induces pain, as do aspirin, acetaminophen, and NSAIDs, though use of any can potentially be fatal to some.

Long rides so increase body heat that all you want to do is cool off. Sweat evaporating from skin is what nature provides as a restorative, further reason for fluid intake. Professional athletes set bedroom thermostats at 65°F and take ice baths. Yet direct chill may trigger vicious contractions, so be careful how you position yourself relative to air conditioner and cool breezes. Sleeping is the best cure, since your autonomic system directs hypothalamus to automatically shed 1 or 2 degrees. Good advice and loose moisture wicking garments ease adversities, possibly persuade riders to attempt full and half centuries, though somewhat gaudy and sweaty skinsuits suffice for shorter jaunts.

You aren’t born with an instructional manual on how a human body operates, only instincts urging curiosity and moderation and senses from which to learn. The only arbiter of whether you are having fun or preparing to compete in next Grand Tour event is you. In peak shape once assumed a challenge comparable to most difficult Tour de France stage. Didn’t regret it, but won't retry. Nevertheless, not letting any teen on a mountain bike pass uncontested, even when nearing end of a hot 50 miler. Dug deep, overtook, and pulled far ahead, while he vanished in rear view mirror. Competing too easily tempts, but maintaining race cadence for prolonged periods maximizes chances for injury and pain.

Aim Reattain

On information overload, nobody today wants to sort through facts, though one must find what’s worthwhile hidden beneath ordinary hype, or get someone else to do it. A Cycle Trades of America 1940 ad proclaimed, “A bicycle is a boy’s birthright,” but motoring scammed most of them out of it during subsequent decades. You’re reduced to armchair cycling when roads no longer support car-less self propelling. Actor Will Smith warned Hollywood hype machine they can no longer cheat audiences into watching bad movies, but if you buy ticket you ought to take the ride, and USA remains sadly gullible as proven, not repudiated, by social media. Besides, who’s to deem any movie bad? Measure isn’t its budget, guilty of both flops and hits despite investments, but how story resonates, which could mean revisiting what’s familiar or taking viewers where they’ve never before been.

Aim depends on what direction you wish to reattain. Bliss can only be achieved by ignoring media totally from onset, too late after decades of education and exposure. Instead of paragraphs or scenes, motionless images may suffice, but, if you explore further, they suggest a plethora of backstories and explanations, and thereby offer empathy in suffering but no solace in silence. As in other art forms, a painting or photograph may incidentally or mainly depict ubiquitous bicycles as an aspect or attraction. Bicycle Fine Art is a New York showcase that offers emerging art but none related to bicycles.

This year, Jules de Balincourt referenced dystopia, exodus and globalization when he studied bicycling in 2 original oil paintings, “As Far As We Could Go West” [shown here] and “Cycledelic Wanderers” [now being shown at Joyride Art Exhibition in Brooklyn]. Both represent reality within abstract landscapes, sort of a mashup of fact and imagination, which has become a popular motif. Nonrepresentational art, unlike representational, perceives what is inwardly observable, not outwardly, thus expands universe of what can be experienced. Landscapes can be less exciting than twisted memories, what you ultimately retain whether factual or fantastic.

Fine Art America lists 10,000 objects labeled bike art including 4,100 paintings, though many relate only to motorcycles or reprints of old masters. Notable original examples among them? Andrew Macara has a handful of oil paintings capturing 20th Century summer light. Arlon Rosenoff attacks bikes of all types with a palette knife for 10 impasto treatments. During the last decade award winning oil painter Colleen Proppé has portrayed several relevant San Francisco scenes. Linda Apple loves lines and shadows in hyperrealist oils. On 28 canvases, Peregrine Roskilly enthused over World Naked Bike Rides held every June to protest Big Oil domination. Ryan Radke has at least 4 postmodern cityscapes patrolled by bicycle, reminiscent of George Stein’s Belle Époque impressionist images of Champs Elysses, which naturally featured bicyclists amidst traffic a century earlier.

Marilyn Dunlap represents Paris romance in a pâtissier's dozen of acrylics. Phyllis Andrews amuses with 26 humorous, meaningful and tidy acrylics on board and canvas. Hers contrast with Carrie Nixon’s, who had [at Procycle 2009] a dynamic, large format acrylic and charcoal on handmade paper [shown left] meant to explore control and lack thereof while cycling fast in winter.

Oregonian Jenny Armitage has at least 15 watercolors of bicycles and bicyclists in European cities, though she depicts 3 times as many musical instruments, which do possess similar lines and shapes. Australian Shirley Peters recently celebrated Tour de France pelaton in a series of 35 watercolors.

Antonio Grambone produced several evocative photographs with urban themes. Sports photographer Bob Christopher snapped 55 action shots and racer portraits. Odd Jeppesen’s contemporary collection tightly focuses on dismembered components in every season.

Moral Moraine

If personal morals fall by the wayside - like a glacial moraine of powdered rock and rolled boulders that bicyclists, geologists, and property owners are prone to ponder - what hope is there for an ethical society? Communities abandon homeless and hungry, religious congregations scatter, motorists run down the vulnerable, and scribblers who promote greed succeed. Virtue used to be its own reward. Morals are self defined. Ethics allow individuals to follow own codes of conduct, not merely submit to self exploitation, stone wall isolation, and unexamined convention. Neither can you force yours on others, only suggest that activism, altruism, intelligence and tolerance are in their own interests. Today’s leaders and successful followers work overtime as examples of what not to do, so you have your work cut out for you. Your only audience spends all its time avoiding harm by blindly toiling in a sandy ant farm.

Worry that kindness might lead to overpopulation. Earth can hardly support 7.4 billion humans, while life expectancy creeps ever closer to 80 years on average. Then remember that insatiable simpletons have more insupportable children than intelligent sophisticates. Education could be a key. Cartesian perspicacity and consequent sagacity lead directly to ZPG. Affairs between homosexuals or with postmenopausal crones produce none. The elderly eat less yet require services, so an aging population represents more opportunities than threats. Vegan food can be grown in hydroponic soilless gardens indoors built safely atop toxic brownfields, thereby quadrupling yields and recapturing forsaken space through government grants. But instead of adopting local, consumers are bullied by policy into buying imported. Transportation generates more jobs than any other sector, but wastes dwindling resources faster than rest combined. With states not proactively addressing groundwater contamination and reservoir strain, a lack of potable water still looms as hugest threat to humanity, though legal mandates to produce at point of use make too much sense.

Chances to earn exist, but you must expect less and manufacture them yourself. Innovative entrepreneurs diversify and thereby strengthen economy. Can’t rely on existing companies, corporations and mills anymore; most are run by multinational conglomerates recording record profits despite foreign threats by exploiting least paid workforces. Because debt-strapped millennials still living with parents produce art and books for free, only a few remarkable professionals have a chance to earn anymore. Quality deteriorates when phenomenal exponents get ground down and give up. It’s no wonder engineering declined and slavery returned. It’s almost too easy to oppress masses when producers ask for nothing and can’t be bothered with marketing. When policies create economic depression, those in deep valleys of despair abide bondage for food and shelter, or grab whatever they can from the craven and weak.

In terms of insect fear films, greedy people and needy sheeple resemble THEM! Giant ants would ruin your picnic. Between self serving reactionaries and starving anarchic revolutionaries, most would elude the latter, favor the former, yet find vast majority resides in the middle fulfilling mankind’s demands. Capitalist icon Adam Smith himself agreed that the rich “spurn the most basic standards of moral conduct”, because their esteem derives not from good deeds but jealousy of those less fortunate. Angry moderates seem to have no say until they speak en masse. Anger and hate are easily comprehended, evoked and exploited. Machiavellian leaders thereby deflect wrath from themselves and pit the poor against the middle.

Nursed on conservative Kool-aid since birth, Cameron Huddleston offers advice on how to get rich. It comes down to change your attitude, don’t hate money, pull yourself up by the bootstraps. All you have to do to join ranks of 1% is make a half million a year! Easy, peasy! “Make efforts to improve your finances because your don’t want to get kicked out of your social group.” But money amassers have no friends, only feckless disciples and vicious rivals who’d rejoice if they fail. Having money or owning property entail becoming a target for every scammer and schemer on planet. Can’t Fox News come up with anything less repulsively self serving? Who buys propaganda and self help books loaded with such malthusian drivel? LaMonte Fowler dispels every myth they use to connive and inveigle. As a nation USA remains world’s bigger producer surpassed only by a combined European GDP. If you likewise included Canada and Mexico, North America would easy surpass economy of every other continent. So? Gave Americans a chance to be the most generous nation on the planet.

Who is more repulsive: a casino billionaire who built an empire on bad habits and human misery or the mindless minion with whom his mean message resonates? Monarchists, oligarchs, theocrats, tyrants, and wealth hoarders on top pitch the empty promise of conservatism nonstop. When you have nothing but a rational mind to think things through, equal distribution and liberal communion sound better. Billionaires become a barrier, make your life miserable, slow flow of resources. Amassed wealth impedes everyone else’s ability to earn, survive even. They give none away, the only reason to amass in the first place. Buffett and Gates each vowed to direct billions, some fraction of net worth, toward problems for which they can’t claim blame. Why not punish, squeeze or tax those actually responsible? Banks don’t let your deposits work for you anymore, instead make risky loans in order to wipe out investors in small businesses that inevitably fail, costing jobs and property. Worth doesn't disappear, just slips into hidden pockets. Laugh at anyone whose line is, “Give it to me and I will ensure those in need receive.” What’s wrong with meeting own needs and salting away a bit for family’s future? Worked for millennia. Oh, yeah, ego. Lording affluently over others means everyone must value owning excess as you do, the national obsession and only patriotism. Accordingly, lives are wasted, souls are bought and sold, and taxes are misappropriated. Gives award winning luster to such revolutionary hacks as Mr Robot and V. They are the mirage of, “Just hang on a bit longer, some hero is bound to arise.” You personally decide and realize the future by what you allow, consume, fund, support, and work toward.

After too many rejection letters to count, Labann labors toward the day when this zero sum game ends. Then just one will have it all, money will cease to mean anything, and playing field will again level. Banks will have long since collapsed, insurance houses closed, nonprofits ended, and Wall Street tumbled like Jericho, thus doing humanity a favor. A barter economy will prevail among survivalists. Wealth has never been an honorable goal, rather an unused tool to promote ethics. They give no prizes for being biggest borrower or having highest net worth, though all awards are skewed to those whose work made millions for the already too rich. Achieving, earning, and saving are supposed to permit individuals to seek out hardships and share as desired, not gatekeepers and third parties, who only decrease dividends, hinder turnover, and maneuver profits into own pockets. They act more like rotten parasites than trusted advisors.

Instead of admiring huge stockpiles how about redistributing them to doers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and visionaries? To assuage guilt, Federico Pistono and Rutger Bergman would give everyone alive a base stipend. Welfare? You can’t build fortunes without it. What else can you call business bailouts, farm subsidies intended to keep groceries scarce and prices high, and, worst of all, tax breaks for highest earners and one percenters? By policy, money flows everywhere except towards the dwindling middle class, because they intentionally want to cripple those who’ll fight to hang onto home and land ownerships and voter rights, though it’s said that if voting mattered it wouldn’t be allowed. SNAP and TANF enslave recipients, who have to first divest themselves of property to qualify, while benefits have fallen by 20%. Could you live on $5/day, that is, $7,300 for the typical family of four on relief? In all but 3 states that doesn’t cover shelter, never mind food, no free ride. Neither can the average $27,000 per year household with two minimum wage workers, only $10,000 above FPL, get by. Giving $500/month would not overcome poverty, the #1 health hazard and root of most crime; feds currently draw line at $11,600/year, so it would barely get you half way. But tax free and unconditional grants would stimulate economy and work out for homeless wretches.

Battle can be defined simply: Better versus worse. Decent people want everyone to succeed and survive, but not at their expense or initiative. Otherwise, problems become difficult to remedy, prisons get filled, and tax burdens escalate. Businesses are busy getting leaner by cutting their number one expense, salaries. Too many bellies vie for resources to avoid someone going hungry. Rats who run sly networks promote disparity where deprivation, famine and pestilence visit majority. How society treats constituents was never their intended content. How a caged gorilla had to be shot to protect a three-year-old child is, with debaters condemning or supporting action taken, thereby devaluating human life. Issues of substance don’t entertain masses, so news media lose focus, neglect detriments of wealth, and report nothing that affects your livelihood.

Nobody sane would disagree that gravity attracts. But act and write with gravity and you’ll attract nobody. Bicyclists weigh heft every time they pedal uphill. You’d do better to heed the ever present hum of chaos with which most people can identify. But if that’s all you can do with freedom, for which forebears died and soldiers put their life on the line every day, why invest countless lives and trillions of tax dollars on such an unsatisfactory option? If you comprehend chaos, you may find your angel amidst mayhem. You'll earn no pass for being kind, just the opposite. Decency attracts opportunists, punks, sadists, and thieves who'd cruelly use you. The more you care for others, the more heartache you'll embrace, thus growing stronger to face ever more emotional challenges, quite a bit to contemplate on your next long bike outing.