When Walking I Don't Get Angry: Cycling is Different

Slowly healing. 

Today I saw the surgeon who put my arm back together with plates and screws  and considerable skill.  Tomorrow I begin a more sadistic physical therapy with pulleys to get more range of motion from my shattered elbow.

Three times during the visit, the doc said I should ride. I have enough range of motion in my arm to ride.

But during my three-mile walk home from the visit I had another moment of the making the contrast between bicycling and walking as exercise.  More than half the time I ride, someone in a vehicle--most often a plus-sized redneck in a pickup truck--will swerve at me or just pass too close. Occasionally he will yell faggot (women never do these things, only men).  A few times I have been hit with bottles and cans or got a "rollin' coal" cloud of smoke from a diesel pickup.

And I get angry.

Only rarely can I do anything about it. Once more than 15 years ago I got the license plate of a guy who threw tacks in the road because he hated us so much much. 

I have walked in hundreds of miles since surgery and no one has swerved at me, thrown tacks in the road, spit, called me a faggot, or any of the other things that have happened to me only in America and mostly on rural roads. 

So now I am really thinking about how much I want to ride.  I live in a rural area with lots of pickup trucks.  Do I want to return to getting pissed off at the pathetic cowards who think bicyclists don't belong on "their" roads? 

It's a question I never asked before. I love cycling so much that I thought the anger was part of riding. But knowing that I can walk and challenge myself makes the world look different. What is inner peace worth?  I will be asking myself that.

Slow Walk Up My Fastest Descent

S-Curve at the top of Prospect Hill

This afternoon I walked up and down the hill on Prospect Road between Columbia Pike to Marietta Pike in western Lancaster County.  After riding thirty years in 37 countries and descending miles-long hills all over the world, it was on this short, steep descent south toward Columbia Pike that I went the fastest I have ever ridden: 59.5 mph.  

It is the right kind of hill to go fast. Although the hill is short, it is steepest and straight at the bottom.  Other times I have been over 55mph it is always on hills that have a 15% or more grade near the bottom of the hill. Prospect Road is 16% at the steepest point. But the other factor in going 59mph was the S-Curve at the top and the 1980s Bronco that passed me on the way into the turn. 

The big, old Ford SUV has the aerodynamic profile of a brick so when he went past, I pedaled like crazy to stay near him. He had to slow in the second turn so I could stay with him. As we exited the turn, he stomped the gas and pulled away. If he stayed anywhere near the legal speed, I would have to be on the brakes. But he went way over the 35mph speed limit so could get sucked along in his draft. I could hear the spokes sing, so I knew I was flying.

When I stopped, the max speed indicator in my computer said 59.5 mph.  At this point, it looks like a lifetime record.  I have descended miles-long hills in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rockies, the Berkshires, Israel, the Republic of Georgia, and in Macedonia. But length does not matter for max speed, only grade percentage and wind direction--and a good draft. 

Lancaster County, Corn, Corn, Corn

Looking up Prospect Hill

Looking up at the steepest section of the hill, near the bottom

Genocide and Torture: Two Sides of Silence

I am reading a book titled "Silence" by John Biguenet.  The book leads me through the pop culture, history and meaning of silence.  Until March of this year, many of us spent hours in the uninterrupted noise of airports. The only relief from the announcements and crowds is in the airport lounges for business class passengers.  They have silence at a considerable cost.

Some of us seek silence through meditation practice and by inhabiting quiet spaces.  Biguenet tells us the history of silent reading. Then he introduces us to the Unspeakable. 

The Holocaust survivor Theodor Adorno said in 1949 that after the Holocaust no one should write poetry. The Holocaust and other genocides silence millions.  The Armenian Genocide silenced more than million voice. The Holocaust silenced six million. The starvation of millions in Ukraine by Stalin, the Stalinist purges, and millions killed by Mao and Pol Pot followed by slaughter in Rwanda and Yugoslavia forced silence by death.

Biguenet then says torture is the opposite of genocide. A person tortured chooses to be silent. The torture is supposed to break that silence through agony.

Genocide survivors write and speak to give voice to the millions who were silenced. Those who are tortured choose silence at a great cost, possibly at the cost of their lives. 

Both genocide and torture are horrible, but for opposite reasons from the perspective of silence. 

Silence is part of a series of books called Object Lessons. Short books about specific things like Phone Booths, Drones, Silence, The Wheelchair, The High Heel, Traffic and fifty other titles.  My next book is about The Bookshelf.