The High Road: Working Your Way Up

Yesterday was April 20th, which, as everybody knows, marked the 429th anniversary of the day that Sir Francis Drake was knighted for circumcising circumnavigating the Earth. Considerably more obscure is the fact that April 20th (or "4/20") is also a "countercultural" holiday during which the sorts of people who keep Altoids tins and eye drops in knitted purses celebrate the consumption of marijuana (or "Wednesday weed"). Presumably then, at 4:20pm yesterday, nearly every high school student, barista, and aspiring screenwriter in North America was thoroughly "stoned."

Like most "holidays" (either "legitimate" or "underground"), 4/20 strikes me as mostly pointless. Generally, holidays exist so that we can observe and appreciate certain aspects of life, but if you truly appreciate or believe in something it seems to me that you should essentially observe it every day. Furthermore, in the case of a marijuana-themed holiday, basing the whole thing on punctuality (4:20 on 4/20, etc.) seems particularly antithetical to the spirit of the substance. If anything, it seems the holiday should be celebrated a day or two late, and at around 10:30-ish, or, like, whenever. Then again, perhaps the fundamental irony that a bunch of people who generally can't be on time for work collectively abandon it with Swiss precision once a year is the whole point. Still, I maintain that the only thing that's good about holidays (at least the "legitimate" ones) is that you get a day off, and I think that instead of celebrating them on fixed dates we should instead pool all of those hours and institute permanent, year-round three day weekends.

Speaking of being late, last week I received an email from a publicist or marketing person or whatever they're called inviting me to preview a television show on the Travel Channel that featured cycling content. The show is called "Dhani Tackles the Globe," and the premise is that "NFL linebacker and travel enthusiast" Dhani Jones travels enthusiastically and partakes in local sports. In the season premiere, Jones goes to Italy and does the Gran Fondo del Monte Grappa. Here's the so-called "sneak peak:"

Anyway, the episode aired last Monday night and I totally forgot about it, though I did eventually see it and it's pretty much what you'd expect: Jones goes to an Italian bike company and gets a fancy race bike; Jones eats pasta prepared by a sturdily-built Italian woman; Jones gets shelled in the first kilometer of climbing but manages to finish; Jones concludes that cycling is really hard and that Italy is awesome. I wasn't especially bothered by the Mackey-esque nature of the endeavor since that's obviously the premise of the show, and I was glad to see that Jones treated cycling respectfully, though I do wonder what Sir Francis Drake would say if he could see that his legacy is basically an army of magazine writers and cable TV hosts who relentlessly eat and recreate their way around the world and then excrete light entertainment and product placement. (I guess if he were stoned, he'd just say, "Whoah.")

Meanwhile, you may remember that way back in July of 2008, some guy got coldcocked by a New York City police officer while participating in Critical Mass. Well, that police officer is now on trial, and the coldcockee apparently celebrated 4/20 yesterday by telling the court about how he likes to smoke the "Wednesday weed" while he takes his morning constitutional:

Moreover, it seems as though he also killed somebody while driving back in 2001.

Now, I don't know what really happened in that highway crash, and certainly the police officer should be convicted if he's guilty of assault, but it would appear that Christopher Long may not exactly be a paradigm of personal responsibility. Furthermore, he seems to be somewhat at odds with the innocent victim of the "bike cultural" imagination. Again, I don't know the whole story, and as his lawyer points out Long is not on trial, but I do tend to doubt that his participation in Critical Mass was motivated primarily by an intense desire to advance the cause of cycling in New York City. In fact, I doubt that most participants in Critical Mass have this motivation. Really, I think that Critical Mass is mostly something that draws a bunch of adventure-seeking daytrippers to the city in the same way that Grateful Dead concerts used to do. Ultimately, I think what happened on that fateful night in 2008 is that douche met douche--which is ultimately what happens whenever large groups of people assemble, since the odds of douche-on-douche contact increase exponentially.

Speaking of douches, another reader sent me this letter which was printed in the Iowa State Daily:

Using math to prove an inane point is basically an intellectual "douche-clamation point." Moreover, his math is completely wrong, because I checked his numbers and here's the answer I got. What's most irritating though, even more so than his idiotic conclusion that cyclists shouldn't ride in the street because they slow down his pickup truck, is this notion that "bicyclists don’t pay registration or attach license plates; therefore, they don’t have a right to the roads and no accountability for how they use them." This is a hallmark of most moronic anti-cycling screeds.

Factual errors regarding taxes aside, it is only the most stupid sort of person who sees someone doing something and thinks that is the only thing they do. I would wager that many cyclists in Iowa (as in most places) also own motor vehicles which are duly registered and which run on the same gasoline this moron puts in his truck. For some reason, though, people like this seem unable to imagine that anybody on a bicycle does anything other than ride a bicycle. Do they see swimmers and think they only swim? Do they see pilots and think they only fly? Are they unable to make the intellectual leap that human beings are more than just the machine they're operating or the activity they're engaged in at the time? Apparently so. I mean, sure, there are some cyclists who are just non-taxpaying heedless stoners (like that Christopher Long guy), but there are also motorists who are reckless and intoxicated menaces to the roads (like that Christopher Long guy).

It's really this blockheaded inability to recognize the humanity of others that is the root of almost all animosity out there on the roads. In the case of a motorist who has never operated a bicycle as an adult and who is not sufficiently evolved to feel compassion, the result is that he only sees the bicycle and not the human straddling it. (Or, in the case of the recumbent, the bearded human lying on top of it.) The only thing that will change this is a radical overhaul of our motor vehicle licensing policy. Basically, people should be required to travel exclusively by bicycle for at least a year, after which they should be allowed to ride motorcycles for at least another year. Then, once they've gained sufficient experience on both of those vehicles, they should be allowed to legally drive a car--one with a manual transmission, no climate control, no power steering, and no roof. Then, finally, once they've come to the understanding that a car is a powerful machine and not a living room on wheels, they should be allowed to buy and operate that comfy luxury vehicle if they so choose.

Of course, there are plenty of people who will complain and say that this is unfair. Well, tough. For many people, that Lincoln Navigator or 300 horsepower pickup is the first vehicle they operate alone as an adult, and not everybody is equipped to handle that responsibly even if they can afford it (or, more likely, assume the debt that will eventually crush them). If you put someone with no education directly into a college-level class, at the very best he's eventually going to be able to regurgitate a bunch of "facts" he doesn't really understand--just like the "senior in economics" who uses math to explain why you don't deserve to share the road with him. I say if you don't have what it takes to pay your vehicular dues and put in your time on another machine for awhile then you should be forced to get around on something like this, which was forwarded to me by yet another reader:

I guess somebody learned about this whole Aerospoke thing, misinterpreted it, and figured he'd simply cut out the middleman by allowing people to strap them directly to their feet.

Far more awe-inspiring, though, is this "epic" Softride, which was forwarded to me by "Agent Detroit:"



SOFTRIDE Model Snlly MTB Bike 24 Speed - $1500 (Royal Oak Mi)
Date: 2010-04-18, 3:56PM EDT
Reply to: see below

SOFTRIDE Model Snlly MTB Bike 19” FRAME HI-TEC Seat and Handle bar front suspension systems This is a Mountain, Triathlon, and road bike combination all in one, is state of the art technology at its finest. This extremely rare Bicycle features a carbon fiber flex beam that creates a very stable but soft smooth ride along with handle bar suspension that makes this bike second to none in the high performance class. Description 24 speeds Mountain, Triathlon, and Combination road bicycle 19” frame (Comes complete with old man trip travel bag set and many more extras)
phone number 248 548 [deleted] or 248 721 [deleted]



With this bicycle and a pair of those Aerospoke shoes, there is absolutely nothing you'd be unable to do.