Why isn’t there any music playing in the Looney Bean this morning? Without the droning pop or Christmas tunes I’m left to take in the busy fan-hum of the refrigeration units, the coffee grinder, the juicy weekend gossip of the baristas, and the weather reports from the old-timers at their corner table. None of the […]
Continue reading →I helped an old man with a wobbly cane today carry a television with a built-in VCR out to his car. Funny how a 20-year-old, tubed, thirteen inch television with a VCR seemed older than he in this digital stream we swim in these days. As I walked into the thrift store, I saw him struggling […]
Continue reading →From the point of view of a cyclist, the road is looked at in many ways depending on how you use it. A long ride on a frosty day to a job mundane could be seen one way, while smiling jacket-less on Spring’s first warm, sunny weekend after a long winter could mean another entirely. […]
Continue reading →And then there is the transportation gang, often heard before they’re seen with squeaky chains propelling haggard old bikes, for whom there is no choice…or perhaps the choice is to ride or hoof it, as the bicycle is their sole means of speedy A to B. Maybe they ride to work, maybe they’re unemployed. Maybe they’re homeless, lost their […]
Continue reading →To another group within the group “cycling”, the club riders and racers, the bike is a recreational activity; like hunting, fishing, or…er…umm…Irish road bowling. The problem here is, seeing the bike as a pastime and the paved road a playing field has with it inherent contradictions to the motor-dominated status quo, no? As a recreational […]
Continue reading →You can’t look for a solution without seeing that groupism, with it’s sharp and divisive claws, has torn apart what it means today to ride a bicycle on the American road. For those that do so are split into three main groups as far as I can tell: the commuter class, the club riders and racers, and […]
Continue reading →What I’m asking here is, though the people come and go, can a feeling, a sentiment, or responses linger on? Of course it can, safe in the continuity of a civilization’s ethos. Much like the schoolyard game of telephone, where one child would say a short phrase into another’s ear, then that phrase would get […]
Continue reading →I had the opportunity to go on a ten day meditation retreat several years back. It wasn’t what you think–no cult, no deity worship, no fasting, no saints, no sinners, just a secular exploration of the vast expanse that is this human mind. Ten days, it turned out, without making eye contact, without speaking, without even acknowledging […]
Continue reading →Take the human out of the equation and you might just get something like this: “Where’re you going?” says the bicycle to the car. “Just for a spin up to the lake; why do you ask?” says the car. “You gotta take me with you! I’d give my front brake to know what 85 mph […]
Continue reading →Why do some motorists hate cyclists so? Is it because we slow you down? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Is it because we ride in groups and hog the road? It is a road after all… What about motorcycle clubs? They ride in the road in big groups and hog the road but […]
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