Baguette Allein

Rookie mistake, went out half asleep to ride without spreading crotch padding inside bib tights. Unless you lift each leg laterally, as if a dog marking territory, fabric bunches up and causes friction burns. Although not as badly as wearing bluejeans, can get painful, just as does improperly setting tongue of cleats, which should be stretched flat across top of foot. One can brake, dismount and rejigger, but in rush to arrive per brutal rules often just abide along with other bike hassles.

Must you move? Motility is life itself. Even lying in bed, you’re still spinning on earth at nearly 1500 feet per second, 4 times around a baseball diamond, or 5 football fields. Yet many would describe themselves as going nowhere, since they live hand to mouth in a capitalist scrap-scape and watch helplessly as net worth goes south amidst social injustice they can’t escape.

Neolithic humans hardly ever sat, only to eat and sleep. They defecated and urinated while squatting, migrated continually, and walked everywhere. Lean and toned, they lived on average only 35 years, ironically, due mostly to hazards encounters gathering, hunting, and squabbling over resources. Ever since, mankind has been determined to make life easier and safer, though extremes of either negate the other. For the first time since WWII, life expectancy has begun to decline due to what sheeple choose to do, not what nature forces them to.

Americans increasingly stay put, work from home, thereby scan same scenery and skip commute altogether. Otherwise, to avoid footsteps they ride by bus or train, take elevators, escalators, even moving walkways, turn away from exerting self at all costs. Because many jobs require that you sit in place to be productive, companies adopt policies that make you stand and stretch once an hour to head off health debt. Manufacturers mitigate excessive hand-offs and motion waste. Motorists stuff mouths at drive-through troughs, and transact business at bank kiosks an arm’s length away. Seated delivery drivers grab up and hand off parcels from portal to portal. Drones and robots will be next, followed by on-site replicators so nothing need be moved except billions of buckets of rubbish onto landfill summits. Logistics limit warfare so set priorities.

Websites let you shop by computer ap and credit card. Increasingly deserted retail malls are only for the electronically deprived or inept, nobody worth mingling with, or whoever wants to inspect quality or readiness before buying, for example, baked freshness. Drive-in theaters weren’t easy enough. Netflix now means you don’t have to get out of your electric wheelchair or leave home to experience vicariously others jumping, risking life and limb, running from dangers you’ll never encounter fixated on an oversized monitor or tethered to a virtual reality headset, unless you shop for food at a crowded supermarket. A bloated weak information slave, you’ll likely live on life support into your 70's or until by design age triggers social security entitlements.

Flight delayed? You get to sit for hours while listening to murmurs of remote conversations, rumble of people movers, and totally unintelligible public service announcements. Perhaps you’ll stand alone in a line, or walk a bit between gates or parking lots. Maybe you expected to be thousands of miles across continent already, but plane assigned hasn’t yet arrived, and departure won’t occur for hours more. Occasionally someone drifts near dropping fragments of convo out of context seemingly formed of emojis, internet acronyms, and text shortcuts. You’re conditioned to ignore placidly or too embarrassed to connect meaningfully with strangers. Society doesn’t allow you to emote, interact, or move away, only ignore and stay as if un chien sur en laisse under some dog trainner's finger snap incapable of challenging masters.

Exercise deficit has become such a broad pandemic states and towns spend up to $1 million per mile installing linear parks, recreational biking and walking paths, which too few use, mostly chain smokers, dog walkers, and teen gangs barred from everywhere else, yet skip striped roadside lanes that cost almost nothing. Deeds done and kickbacks pocketed, nothing more will be spent maintaining and patrolling, since both would cost a trifling percent and represent unwanted labor. Meanwhile majority medicates itself on food carbs and illicit, over-the-counter, or prescribed drugs when not really sick to overcome minor bother or mortal ennui of employing out-of-shape chassis made arthritic for lack of acts considered aerobic.

Pleas to shape up come from insurers who hope to roll back payouts, owners of gyms and health spas who get tired of looking at misshapen examples on streets, and whoever else finds flab repulsive or unprofitable. You have every right to hate yourself and ignore them all. It’s probable too much exercise is just as bad as none, since you can damage bones, joints, muscles, organs and skin with any strenuous regimen. Long distance runners face more heart attacks and strokes than cycling randonneurs, though both should be wary of potentially fatal heatstroke and hyponatremia, a blood sodium level below 120 mEq/L, signaled by disturbed balance, lack of focus, and nausea before seizures lead to coma.

Doctors say low impact muscle reps, especially cycling along gentle terrain of converted rail trails, control diabetes, desensitize patients, manage their mood, and reduce cardiovascular risks about as well as medication. Extended sunlight, fresh air, and gross motor activities aid oxygen uptake and deter Vitamin D deficiency. Or you can hide indoors and pop expensive pills. Doctors also claim stress and worry are as bad as high fat diets. Satiated busybodies should have less to say than suffering bastards, but seems today reverse holds sway. Bicyclists find frequent relaxation, life balance, and rancor ignored by officials who could easily remedy. If you ride to bakery by bike, you can probably enjoy that baguette a bit with each meal without guilt. Pity those who can’t take advantage of this simple conveyance upon ribbons of roads that usher all who otherwise slog through gridlock and shouldn’t be indulging in such goodies. Conversely, white lines edge space and provide slippery pavement that hastens cycling scorchers to goals.

Decades of own research and 15,000 hours of direct experience confirm that bicycling is 2000% safer than driving. It’s in the physics. Bicyclists collectively average only 11 mph; at that rate they can collide with almost anything and ride away with no more than a bruise, dent or scrape. Motorists double, even quadruple on roads that flow traffic faster. Steel cages surrounded by glass colliding at 25 mph or more will break bones, cause brain trauma, severely lacerate, or worse. Vehicles occupy entire lane, so crash plenty. Bicyclists instead hang near road edge, smartly don helmets, so sporadically succumb to risks. Have fallen and resumed en route, was nudged but never lost balance, witnessed cyclist accidents but never needed to call for rescue, but you can go too fast on a bike. Peloton racers often exceed 100 mph on mountain descents, yet since 1894 only about one hundred and fifty racers globally have died pursuing such extremes. In contrast every day thirty-two hundred motorists die in crashes. Shouldn’t mess with motoring’s crushing momentum unless stupid or suicidal. NASCAR remains popular among redneck racists, rude misogynists, Trump apologists, and total idiots, who’ve repeatedly proven they have no grey matter worth preserving for sake of species.

You can clearly identify intolerable scenarios and terrible situations, but trying to eliminate or overcome all of them isn't possible. Too many causes to count, or factors to calculate, to arrange things the way you'd like. Thus morality and philosophy came about, as ways to handle distress emotionally at least. Some committee might study to exclusion of more immediate concerns. A consensus requires mutual understanding, but communication relies on shared perspective. Your location on life's arc isn't likely to correspond with anyone else's, even others born on same day, and view from a saddle varies from behind a dashboard enclosed in a rolling car. Labann aged better than own kin, watches obits for contemporaries and coworkers who've fallen by wayside, and wonders who'll be next when not analyzing trends or bargaining details with deities and demons.

At a campus campaign stop Bern Grinders mentioned raising wages to a $15 minimum, a topic with which students can relate, and what comes from living hand to mouth. If you can't afford to fill or fix your car, you might lose your job and wind up on a bread or dole line instead of achieving your potential as a hero. Sounds sensible until you consider that many millions gainfully employed don't own cars, live in cities with busses, subways and taxis subsidized by taxes, or ride bicycles instead. Then again, why allow such cruelty on company's part to lay off loyal staff upon some stupid commuting snafu? Decent ones permit flexibility in arrive and leave hours. Some may gripe, "Nanny state," or groan over "gummint" getting too intimate, usually those who brought on oversight to begin with by causing injuries, losses and troubles. Agencies exist to expound fairness and surround careless, so they're cordoned off for mutual safety, not to hound them about their recklessness. They also draw lines around corpses of victims of crime or mayhem to investigate causes. Between dying and thriving where does anyone draw the line?

“I leave after breakfast, full tummy. Tying up my laces, kiss your pretty face, and I'll be on my way. Putting on my shades, and give you another wave, bye-bye, it's getting late. Do I look too cool? On my bicycle, on my bicycle, yeah, I’m sorry I rule.” Filous, Bicycle, single (twee pop), Ultra Rec., 2019

Joy Regain

Bike Month begins with May Breakfasts and promises of group rides full of new camaraderie and velorution’s cheer, but generally grinds to an inglorious coda with a blank stare, no resolutions near, and tweaks in gear to prepare for shift from sweater weather to sweatier wedge of year.

Cut losses, scorch earth, sever ties, take hits, walk away: All viable options versus relentless distress. Those who want what you've dearly gained may torment you into giving it away through their persistence. It's how religions and states stay entrenched seemingly forever. Unlike thieves who want it right now, they'll tax and tithe you over time into nonexistence.

Acquisitions don’t amplify self. Conquests don't create heroes. Only a witless consumer cares about collectibles. Museums are full of mediocre examples of masters. Sometimes one's original masterwork or perfect example is what's really worth preserving, the rest disposable maquettes, sketches, or studies. Staffs display only top 25% of what's owned alongside temporary exhibits of special items they've been loaned. Otherwise, attendees would be few, events postponed.

Taine described ancient sculptures as battle victims in time ravaged fields of severed heads, limbs and torsos. Modern curators display surviving fragments, so contemporary critics tend to characterize output as focused on busts and heads alone, which, of course, is completely false. Full figured original sculptures were too hard to move, thus steal, so pieces, faces and hands, were often hacked off and shoved into bags for tourists to buy. Nowadays thieves park vehicles in vicinity, part nonferrous objects and plaques from bases, slip away furtively, and smelt into untraceable, valuable scrap. Historical artifacts get destroyed or mysteriously disappear for momentary gratifications, though culture doesn't incontrovertibly feed bullies' bellies.

What do you value? Many would say money, but what an amorphous commodity that shrinks, smells and stretches worse than a woolen jersey. Art today means concerts, ephemera, films, graphics, intangibles not at all collectible, just accursed intersections in time-space continuum. People have closets full of tee shirts, today’s sandwich boards advertising one enjoyable encounter or hip happenstance after another. Many simply do without, as if art appreciation wasn't a life requisite. Depression results, but nobody cares or wants to be saddled with chores of dealing with yours. Feel of steel cranked beneath your heel might improve mood and make deal more vital and zeal more real.

What do you know? Information gatherers guard facts for own use against rivals, regard intellectual property as their primary asset. Market analysts and stock brokers say all sorts of stuff to convince you to act in their best interests, not yours. Then there’s Potsherd Dump’s nonstop disinformation stump and unconscionable reliance on Ailesflux’s harassment thump aimed at spreading doubts and triggering fears that divide nation and dominate electorate. Transparency and truth take a beating every day citizens don't insist upon them. But an economy set back on track 8 years ago will be claimed as a triumph by a megalomaniac who’s done nothing at all but exploit outcome. Polls support this betrayal as long as books show black and prices don't rise at gas pump before next election, although at least half are aware leaders will always stack deck against them, so swallow Prozac lest they crash their Cadillac because of a panic attack.

A reasonable barrier to truth comes from business regulations resulting in policies that block releasing personal data, through many scofflaws bristle at any notion of restriction or want to use bits of your history against you out of greed, malice or spite. Who doesn’t prefer privacy over full disclosure? From facts factions fashion weapons. Whoever you grant power and privilege to ought to be completely transparent and totally trustworthy, yet a billionaire in office redacts every official document lest some tiny detail impacts next dirty deal he transacts. Why stick your nose into his finances?

Funny about phrases, such as, “Mind your own business,” which appeal to majority as commonsense advice agreed mutually. What leaders do affects you personally, amplifies across entire world, is your business, whereas what you do influences nobody but own family, friends or neighbors. Should be that policy protects personal privacy not public service of people in power. But in today’s burgeoning bizarro reality just about everything becomes its diametric opposite. Goals, targets and temptations society dangles as starry spangles peg you to servile roles feeding black holes forbidden to peak in their keyholes.

You’ve got your own life to live, places to go, people to meet once forecast permits. And ya' tailor joy through every diatribe-less dalliance among cyclists you admire in allegiance with those who confer awards upon such an outstanding achiever. Accomplishments and relationships offer all the pleasures life allows, not stockpiles of empty miles and ill-gotten percentiles. Find freedom, forge forward, forget rest, form best, and pedal onward.

"Sittin' down by my window, honey, lookin' out at the rain... Now baby, this can't be in vain. Hope there's someone who can tell me why love is just like a ball and chain." - Janis Joplin

Fame from Taine

One wonders why some people persist in fruitless pursuits, particularly radio/television personalities Aunty Culture and Shorn Sanctity. Sure, it’s mostly the money, millions for spouting conservative narrative aimed at managing every aspect of your life. Often they’re already nazis driven to dominate, shored up by minority patronizing, personal moralizing, and reality programming. Wise to ignore, or laugh off. Wiser still to analyze their meanness of spirit and comprehend how it divides to conquer. When you choose such a road to perdition, ride gets bumpy and swarm you’ve wronged inevitably turn warm against you. No excuse of, “Done for your betterment,” justifies urging hate crimes against holders of harmless differences in opinions, including religions, in a free society.

In ancient times leaders would take emissaries of enemies seriously, when totally incensed, throw them into a bottomless pit or toss into cages with hungry beasts for sport. Reasonable people struggle with the burdens of fairness, proof, and sense of guilt for commissions, omissions, and indecisions. Not so these discreditable egomaniacs with a sole purpose: Evil. The more you join their fight and lash out unreasonably, the richer and safer you make them feel, and worse off both they’ll and you’ll be. MAGA fattens egos and feeds maggots. Because it’s so much harder to make compromises and meld productively, they’d rather take easy route, talk against community, thin the herd rather than herd cats beyond their control, and wind up on top of a miserably diminished pile suited to their ignorance and impotence.

Smart people see how everyone doing well eases own success, not sharing crumbs with slaves and stashing hoards, which instead devalues wealth and shoots self in foot. Sets a terrible precedent, too, this model of self worth based on capital secured, never enough. Promotes all sorts of crime. Conquistadors stole from indigenous cultures, pirates stole from them, and sea sank both their vessels for today's treasure seekers until state steps in and takes it away for billionaires to confiscate and politicians to misappropriate. This vicious circle ends when you decide so and say no.

Managers promise less friction, more smoothness. Without friction, wheels just spin and progress can’t begin. Adverbs cause friction in sentences. Certain authors hate them, but they qualify and quantify verbs, and reveal areas of gray that betray lies of absolutes and extremes, mostly. Science wants to be definitive, since nature heaps alternatives, disasters, and exceptions with inexhaustible superfluity on best designed plans and schemes. As soon as you’ve concluded your analysis bottom falls out of box you’ve locked it all in. Gravity and hooks catch and dump everything into ocean’s depths.

These facts in mind, can you say conservatism serves any purpose whatsoever? At minimum, nonstop nature of their message raises questions about its purpose. Does remain a reminder of the nadir to which civilization can sink without lawful cooperation and successful community. Gives a context to why corruption, depression, suicide, and widespread injustice prevail. Explains why such essential elements to a whole society as art and science went down toilet replaced by pointless greed and thoughtless inequality. Should public allow airwaves to be blasted with its propaganda and every discussion rounded to include? You’ll notice lately a lot more time bought on PBS for conservatives to toss in 2 cents that tries to persuade liberally minded to relax and relent sensible arguments that skewer its petty insecurities and underlying deceit. Savvy people don’t surrender freedoms and rights so readily.

Resembles cycling competitions that pit self and teams against rivals in field. There will always be some anatomical superior, who may have an off day and let you win. What does it prove? That all your intense training was not a total waste? Bike commuters do notice when lapses in conditioning occur, result in harder climbs and minutes lost into wind, though neither matters much, since time averages out over number of trips. Always arrive earlier than expected anyway, as is the case with most things, especially the unexpected.

While worthwhile destinations seem distant, tragedy will forever hurry toward you however well you prepare. No upside to inviting calamity by supporting collide avowed by some reactionary. Labann doesn’t expect you to heed, get paid to warn, hope for a payday, or look for recognition, though still can’t be trusted. Why persist, indeed?

Takes enormous repeated effort to restore balance and resurrect equality which all need. When you do, you share fate of natural historian and revolutionary critic Hippolyte Taine (1828 – 1893), who influenced Émile Zola and other famous French authors, but despite precise commentary and scientific approach got disavowed roundly as simultaneously too conservative and too liberal. Made him incorruptible, therefore intolerable. Finding truth forever condemns the finder and favors fortunate exploiter.

“There are causes [race, milieu and moment] for ambition, courage, truth, just as there are for digestion, muscular movement, animal heat. Vice and virtue are products, like vitriol and sugar... I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.” Hippolyte Taine

Was Lois Lane?

As much as you’d like to believe you live in an insular world among those whom you allow access and your own mind, you’re no island unto yourself. Reports of external origin rattling around your cranium trigger neural responses, so you inflict pain upon self despite instinctual pleasure principle. Your “committee of me” will forever be beset by plurality, in the sense, rule by dominant minority. Whatever coalition follows through gains status and gets to tell those they’ve divided what to do, whether or not you want to. It’s how a bajillion inexplicable laws began, each framed against you and for them.

You can never behave freely by your own design, even if that would best serve your interests, or resign to get off grid entirely. Might as well amass facts, report issues, and shame blameworthy. Messages to forgive self and seek comforts in consumerism hold appeal, though only happiness you’ll ever possess comes from helping those who have less. Grabbers and harassers later regret transgressions once plurality comes full circle. You can’t outrun evil you do forever. Desires among those you deprive drive a desperate divide from which you can’t hide.

Don’t expect Clark Kent or Lois Lane to settle score; step up yourself or suffer losses. Heroic alien and maverick scout, neither met dealings so corrupt that journalism itself lost clout. Lois was never taken seriously, even as a fictional character, too slow to recognize Clark was Superman in disguise. Neither will you be, despite jumping through hoops of logic online like a nazi corgi until you break free. Must have patience, neither succumb to fatigue nor try to match blitzkrieg of agitprop traitors, drug dealers, tax collectors, and weather tormentors through April Fool’s, Albert's Bicycle, Fees Due, and Frost Free Days.

Late liberal activist/actress Margot Kidder (1948 - 2018) played Lady Liberty on a bike much later than Lois Lane (1978) opposite crippled rider Christopher Reeve, both victims of Superman Curse along with humorless übermensch originator Friedrich Nietzsche, who died of syphilis in 1900.

Don't know what the mean planetary biological speed per capita might be. Can’t imagine it was ever estimated. Algae, bacteria, fungi, plant life forms, single celled organisms, and viruses only coast along with medium, don’t individually propel themselves, or simply stay put, but when factored in would astronomically slow rate overall, since they account for largest biomass on planet. Oceans account for 80% of life on Earth. Amoeba, certain bugs, paramecium, and the like move very slowly. Entomologists estimate 10 quadrillion individual insects, many ants and beetles, though numbers and species are disappearing at an alarming rate. Inchworms and snails seem speedy versus an average thus derived.

By the time you move up food chain to birds, lizards, and vertebrates excluding humans, you get bursts up to 70 mph (cheetah) on land, and 150 mph (peregrine falcon) in aerial dive. Despite this range, 0 to 150 mph, averaged among a quintillion organisms, mean probably wouldn’t exceed one inch per hour, about 0.0000158 mph.

Riding at 11.0000000 mph, average among planet’s one billion bicyclists given bad roads and steep hills, you notice rust breasted robins and some flying insects match your speed, pass you outright, and remind it’s time to wash off winter and wax your steel steed. Competing with drivers up to 5 times faster, same creatures become road kill and windshield splat. Without motors, bicyclists go as fast as dogs, horses or other organisms, so move harmlessly amidst nature and stay ecologically safe in contrast.

Your walking gait, a mere 3 mph, makes for an easy target. Bicycling multiplies that between 3 to 11 times, so closer to overall motoring speed of 25 mph, given traffic competition and controls in cities. Racing on empty highways tops out at 60 times faster, though land speed record under highly controlled conditions is currently Mach 1.02, ~763 mph. Aviation lifts off where salt flat limits, then rises beyond Mach 5, where space flight launches up to escape velocity, ~25,000 mph, 7 miles/second, the top speed any human has ever travelled. In practicality, to reach another planet would take at least 10 times that. Solar wind, should you successfully harness it, would do at 1,000,000 mph. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe reached 433,000 mph. Solar power has its uses after all; panels and windmills don’t cause cancer, but petroleum fuels surely do, in fact, its chief cause alongside cars, cigarettes and coal.

One could factor in how Earth rotates at 1,000 mph, shelters all known life as it chases and circles sun at 67,000 mph, a star among vigintillion visible, while Milky Way whizzes along at 515,000 mph dragging our outlying solar system with it. Space makes human speed records sound ridiculously impotent. People ought to recognize deceit and graft as fast as a synapse, but stare through betrayal and treachery on a galactic scale as if it doesn’t do damage daily. What begs acceleration are instances of insight and revelation.

Buzz of engines and hiss of tires threaten violence to bicyclists pedaling slowly in relative silence. Even worse, trucks drag chains, a reckless habit which apparently causes wildfires according to US Forest Service, though probably not as many as flicking lit cigarette butts out car windows. Thoughtless behaviors a root cause, who considers consequences of billions of dollars in lumber lost, carbon released to atmosphere, firefighter deaths, habitat destruction, and species extinctions? Automotive convenience and impatience not only kill, but result in net losses over hours gained. Are you willing to pay big and risk lives just to avoid an earlier start? What’s your hurry?

Nation’s sixty million cyclists ought to unify against automotive plurality. Rude drivers edge pass then squeeze against curb to keep cyclists from passing them, as if saying, “If I can’t go, neither can you.” Race past to sit in next traffic knot, yet worry about having a cyclist ahead? Bicyclists are never in your way, virtually never injure anyone except selves. Just the opposite, motorists are road hogs and sole threat to all other road users. They chose a wide conveyance that creates its own obstacles, unlike shoulder-width cyclists who’ve sacrificed speed for slip through sweet deliverance. Says something about disrespect for code designed to protect, not restrict, bodies who propel self. Instead, pass cars on left, or use sidewalk when necessary. Horsepower corrupts; horse's asses in high performance hot rods, transportation aberrations, have been corrupted absolutely.

Focus is on blame whenever a writer uses “you”. “We” means “I” assume some of your culpability. When blameless, neither “I” nor “we” is appropriate. YOU ought to be harmless, drive right, repent ways, straighten up, take responsibility. All this precludes creeping along in passing lane, speeding past in slowest lane, and weaving across every lane. Road design and traffic flow set a narrow range of low/high limits; violators who endanger everyone drive as if inviolably entitled to sling an iron ton on one's own kamikaze run. Unwelcome automation tries to control such fools who abuse rules.

Society’s plea for political correctness, deeming no one blameless, instead enables offenders and sticks it to law abiders. Policies and regulations that defend right wing posturing yet hold professors and students hostage for imaginary hate speech and possible minority slurs serve conservatives to discredit reporters, restrict individuals, and stifle opposition. Movements can be impeded but not stopped. Speed of change matches how many and much state oppresses.

Incompetents think their demands exist in a vacuum, unaffected by rat race of rival requests. For your part, to fulfill duties with efficient skill has never been enough or even sensible. You're supposed to absorb abuse, shut up, suck up, and take no credit. You, lowly serf with eyes averted, ask for nothing, die on cue, and provide those of higher status with a human shield or spare body parts. Whose wet dream do you serve? Go home, eat dinner, police own yard of debris from neighbor's neglected dump, and prepare for another day of indentured drudgery. Neither refuse to give blood nor stop for lunch, because a thousand applicants with no clue want your spot though you’re drained of blood, sweat and tears a lot.

Setting an efficient precedent condemns self to a personal hell, limits chances of help, sanctions them to drive you until burn out, and satisfies their schadenfreude while you sizzle and squirm under undeserved pressure. Your abilities, achievements, client relationships, job training, and track record are meaningless to bosses who possess none. You're a headcount filler, salary liability, short timer, substitute performer until nephew finishes school. When you handle every emergency and impossible deadline, you perturb managers, who set you up to fail and want you to quit once crushed so avoid pittance of unemployment insurance.

Speed - key to a profane trinity including price and quality - meets everyone's baseline but yours. Yet clients must forfeit one, never get all three, so cheap garbage and sloppy pretexts prevail. Haste leads directly to fatalities, injuries, losses, and waste, but who cares as long as profits accrue? Mankind’s future and your wellbeing don't matter. Leaders debate why planes crash and suicides occur, justify expressways and plutocracies, and lavish taxes they collect from you on privileges in which you’ll never participate. Those they hurry, prod and whip get ever further behind until crises climax, heads roll, and innocents get blamed. When camel they rode pell mell dies in center of desert, so will they; small compensation, some might say.

“We can roll all night. Oh, Slow Ride. Take it easy. Slow down, go down, got to get your lovin' one more time. Hold me, roll me, slow ridin' woman, you're so fine... Slow ride, easy.” - Dave Peverett, Foghat, Fool for the City (1975)

Last Dance with Mary Jane

Bike commuters cover serious miles. Hundred-mile weeks provide plenty of time to play with words, plow through ideas, and wonder how many more trips a body nearing eighth decade alive can survive before it just won’t go no mo'. Riding before dawn, Labann feels blessed to do what few care or dare to, but has surely earned right to complain that just past next hill crest or horizon test might be the last dance on bike and chain.

Maillot Jaune (pron. mahjo zhawn), now and then corrupted as Mary Jane, Tour de France’s yellow jersey worn exclusively by individual time leader, viably excuses Labann's preference for reflex yellow as a color to admire and wear. Also highly visible under all conditions, it’s what they paint caution signs, fire trucks, and school busses. Plus it signifies curiosity and fear, enlightenment and peril, races and taboos, yang and yin under the pale primrose sun, yeah, a potent talisman. To survive, you should make it as difficult as possible for motorists to collide with you, use a blazing headlight, blinking Lanterne Rouge, reflecting fields or stripes at night. Or not: Stealthy routes or total avoidance also work. Can share tactics to try, never demand that others must comply. Recreational and sportif cyclists don’t necessarily confront same set of issues that transportational riders do.

Pluralism: Look it up! Pluralism fuels a powerful economic engine from dozens of different approaches, heeds unusual threats, rounds out varied contingencies, and swells revenue for defense, since needs indubitably vary without uniformity. The reason 20th became known as The American Century can be summed up by nation's ability to aid every ally and avoid war on its shore. That was without neutrality, mind you. And to what do you attribute this unprecedented status? Surely not just an ocean obstacle. Some would argue it was a melding of many customs, skills and viewpoints. Since science cannot define every fact, opinions remain highly debatable, even rejectable. Diversity for its own sake is daft; rather assemble exceptional talents to meet unforeseen demands without bias blinders, class distinctions, creed casteism, gender defenders, or racial recriminations. Or else you can give folks a chance and have faith they won’t disappoint. Science says you’ll choose correctly 3:1. Life’s a gamble at best.

Today's Americans are dissatisfied with how government is run, which engages in billion-dollar-a-day wars that cause widespread civilian suffering, favors rich, and reneges on agreements, entitlements, and promises. Three branches are made up of five hundred and forty-six members, with token exceptions, wealthy white males. One can trace all recent domestic terrorism directly back to attitudes that leaders leak, Fox agitprop, and Trump on stump. Arrogance and avarice made apparent, such enemies recklessly make more enemies for you. Meanwhile, they demand heightened internal security, tightened law enforcement, and whitened brain bleachery. It's exactly how totalitarianism implants itself, by expanding threats and forcing everyone to act or be alike, not better, just enough to ensure fear, manipulation and silence. Must everyone and everything else be eliminated? Inability to deal with variety is a defining symptom of mental instability.

You'd think Christian forbearance would preclude silent acceptance of murder or slavery as a solution. Bible thumpers cite good book - merely a history of an ancient obscure tribe - as a compliance cudgel, though constitution encompasses a wide range from atheists to zealots, thereby requiring separation of religion and state. Extreme right narrative, “We are few, but we have facts, so only we can set state straight,” which then proceeds to pepper hate speech with 5% of science used to conflate 95% self serving opinion, would be laughable, even pitiable, if it didn’t entertain genocide. Worst of all sins is to start a war and justify it under God’s will, as if any human could ever speak authoritatively on behalf of an invisible, omniscient power. Many a crusader defending Christ posthumously slaughtered innocents in diametric disobedience of His teachings. Where were they when He was being crucified by Old Testament's authors?

Confessors divulge whatever best suits them, put a positive spin on shortcomings, stack deck toward their saintly legacies. Who wants to be remembered as a boot licker, corporate chump, money grubber, servile stooge, system minion, or total loser? You're a rebel Jedi warrior, but only in your own delusional mind if you've consistently dismissed doing heroic deeds against evil empires that would qualify as outstanding. By living long, you’re largely a detriment, unless you've restored more than you ruined. Most can’t even claim carbon neutrality, never mind net contributions or improvements. Consider species extinctions, desert wastelands, habitat destructions, toxic fields, and water pollution for which only humans can be blamed. How many really exceptional individuals will it take to overcome adverse effects of seven billion incompetents who instead preen an appearance or stand by stupidly?

Despite courts, who supposedly serve public's best interests alone, no small group or sole individual should presume to judge what others do. All one has ever been allowed is to act responsibly: Do no harm, refuse no one in need. Few ever meet this minimum requisite. Since no two bodies occupy same place at same time, everyone experiences own life and follows different paths. This can be both good and too bad. Empathy is a supremely important virtue, one neither readily acquired from privilege nor valued by most until a lack of any personally affects them. Without, freedom and justice aren’t possible in a nation with highest percentage of population incarcerated. Leaders and media shouldn’t be inciting hate crimes unless prepared themselves to die or do time. Public’s has a duty to prosecute offenders and remediate mess.

It occurs to Labann on mornings when he passes state’s prison that being able to bike about will forever beat staring out from behind bars or staying in bedridden. Then, again, from bicycling there’s an aftermath of forbidden murmurs and foxtrot twitches from dodging pavement impediments any bicyclist must bear.

Is every crutch now legal - booze, guns, motor vehicles, narcotics, prostitution, weed - at the cost of core freedoms - from tyranny and want, unafraid to present another perspective, unashamed to reason aloud, unmolested by religious bigotry? Amidst political imbalance and war of words destined for worse, there’s plenty to resolve, but does this effort require you? Who slept though only to awake and find hard fought rights eroded beyond recovery? Can never stop. To maintain your way of life, you must make it as difficult as possible for any apathetic imbeciles or April Fool to rule.

"Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain. I feel summer creepin' in and I'm tired of this town again. Well, I don't know, but I've been told, ‘You never slow down, you never grow old.’“ - Thomas Earl Petty (1993)