The Joys of BB: Part XII Faster Pussycat Kill, Kill!

So we were cruising along at 17 m.p.h. and I was chatting with the labor union representative and Yale grad about the South African Communist Party (SACP) and wondering if we had dropped the Dutch girl who had been an Olympic diver and now studied African development at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and the communist asks me...

You wanna join our team?

How did I feel about racing with Team The Bike Rack? I have ridden with Squadra Coppi, Whole Wheel Velo Club, with guys from Capitol Hill, with National Capital Velo Club, with riders from Artemis and Potomac Peddlers.

No one from these teams disagreed with me on Bush's PEPFAR policy (as the Dutch, diving, SAIS student did) or outlined the nuances of the Powell doctrine (as Jonathon, a Swede and SAIS student did), or fixed my cheapo spare tire kit for me because my fingers were too cold (as the owner of The Bike Rack, who I call in my head "Gay Lance Armstrong" did).

Riding with The Bike Rack was easier, sure. This will be their first year of racing. I've ridden their Sunday "no drop" rides, which are leisurely paced. They don't have any Category 1 or 2 riders. None have 3% body fat. The best had the kind of muscular legs only overweight riders can build. The rest were like the communist and me--uninspiring physically. None were major league a-holes.

Gay Lance Armstrong, part owner, helped addicts and druggies for over ten years before opening his bike shop last year. He can ride, too--he's dropped me at will. He rides a sweet custom Seven Titanium with SRAM Red; the guy's a bike geek. His website stated yesterday, but not today, that The Bike Rack is "gay-owned."

I love the idea of riding for a gay-sponsored team. I don't know if that is discriminatory or what. I like the idea of a guy--a really decent, nice guy--who devoted fifteen years of his young life to helping down-and-outers saying, "I'VE DONE ENOUGH GOOD!" and getting all full of rage on his bike and kicking ass and scattering the capitalist over-the-top heteros. I like the idea of Gay Lance Armstrong. I like the idea of being Gay Lance Armstrong's (very hetero) George Hincapie.

G.L. Armstrong, at left

I turned to the communist.

I'm in.

The Joys of BB: XI Happiness is a Warm Bar

A book came out recently called "Against Happiness."



I wondered, when I first examined the title: what kind of person would write such a book?

Existentialists no longer mope about cafes, so I doubted he was a philosopher. Perhaps a mental health professional? No, happiness is their golden goose.

None too surprisingly, a professor of literature (Eric G. Wilson, called Manic G, by his homies) wrote the book--more precisely, a professor of Romantic literature. What a depressing field of study. Wordsworth running through the Lake District chasing his sister. Coleridge cut off in the middle of "Kubla Khan" the world's most artistically productive opium trip, by an insurance salesman. The collapse of the French Revolution in 1789 and the subsequent interruption of the Tour de France for a few years.

Guess which Eric G. Wilson doesn't like happiness




















Happiness is a word--like crankset, nipple wrench and lube--with various connotations. Ambrose Bierce, in his "Devil's Dictionary" defines happiness as "An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." Plato's eudamonia has been translated as happiness, but is expresses the notion of possession or control by good spirits. The Beatles said happiness is "a warm gun."

Happiness is related to happenstance and the fortuitous intervention of chance or fate. Oedipus, after happenstance has ruined him, warns us to "count no man happy until that day he goes down into the grave." The old limerick states:

See the happy idiot
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were an idiot.
My God! Perhaps I am.

Happiness is a state of mind. Ignorance is bliss (i.e., happiness). Happiness is sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

The connotations of happiness suggest confusion and disagreement about it. The place to start is not by disavowing happiness, but by agreeing that there is something we all desire, and then trying to define it.

We all want happiness, we just may not know precisely what me mean when we say that. Perhaps if G-Manic had titled his book "Defining Happiness," I could condescend to read it, but as it is, I think I'll ride my bike instead.

The Joys of BB X: Squirrel in a Fork on Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-- Robert Frost

Broken plastic plates and bits of food covered the sidewalks in Dupont last night. I helped a woman back to her feet and helped her brush off refried beans and salsa from her jacket. I was waiting for my bus. People fell or nearly fell up and down O Street and staggered from signpost to parking meter, and slid on all fours.

Bodies upending, feet flying, torsos smacking the pavement--I paid attention. I know that, if I race this summer, I am likely to do this at least once. I am likely to go over my handlebars, under wheels, break my collarbone, or lose my skin. Cyclists do a girly thing (shave their legs) for a very manly reason (when the road shreds off their skin, hair gets stuck in the rash and makes it more difficult to bandage). You know how nurses shave patients before surgery? Cyclists shave themselves anticipating surgery. That is sobering.

I thought about that especially when a cyclist zipped by, in the dark, on a thin sheet of ice. I would have bike commuted myself, except my knee's a little gimpy. Glad I didn't. Commuting, especially after ice storms, is even more dangerous than racing.

I hope to avoid some accidents by being smart and cautious. For example, not carrying an umbrella while riding:

Most commuters don't worry about road rash or a few rain drops on the head--we worry about complete obliteration. That is, cars. Cars do to cyclists what cyclists do to squirrels, as seen here:
Cyclists ride a path that is perpetually icy, figuratively speaking. We cover ourselves with blinking lights and wear helmets. We ride in packs. We discuss falling techniques. We have separate threads for different injury prevention techniques entitled "Wear your helmet", "Wear your elbow pads!!" where we dispense advice such as

"first DONT EXTEND YOUR HANDS!!! second..... RELAX AND ROLL!!!"

and suggest taking judo to improve falling technique.

Really! Take up a martial art, just to learn how to fall. Would judo have helped the poor squirrel escape getting jammed into some poor guy's fork? Would it have helped the hundreds of cyclists hit this year by drunks and dufuses?

When it comes, I'm sure I'll be surprised. Hopefully, this guy remembered to RELAX AND ROLL:

The J of BB IX: The Mystery of Decency

It used to be that news of genocide, ethnic cleansing, or the NY Yankees got me thinking about the problem of evil. I wondered how a good God allows evil to flourish (and especially concentrate itself in the NY Yankees)? God brought home the groceries of creation, and it was all good stuff, but somehow the dinner of life is bitter and sometimes poisonous.

Now I think about the problem less, perhaps because I doubt we're in the hands of a good God.

I therefore worry less about the problem of evil, at least as a polemical problem (it certainly exists as an annoyance, especially when the Yankees win). Bad things don't happen under the watchful eye of a good God; bad things simply happen because that is the way of the world.

And that causes a problem. A world without either a divinity, or a "God of the Completely Indifferent" (see Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan) must contend with a different problem: the problem of good. That is, how did goodness come to exist in a completely indifferent universe?

I have found some goodness on the plate of life (after I scraped off the broccoli). Can I call it good in any transcendent sense of the word? Or do I merely mean when I say "good" that x is "liked by me"? I merely say, with Macbeth, that "there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so."

The question, then, is which of the two problems--of good and of evil--is more significant?

A nine dollar check. Made me think about this. I won the bid on a Dura Ace crank and, in addition to the price, paid the $9.00 shipping and handling charge. The seller lives up the street from me, and was kind enough to deliver the crank to my door. Though I had not mentioned reimbursement, the seller sent me a check for $9.00.

This was surprising, especially since it was anonymous and will in all probability be without consequences. I would expect this from a lot of people I know, most believers in God, but not someone I don't know.

And here we come to another issue--I prefer to live in a world where people believe in God, where the problem of evil exists. The rules of that world exist in perpetuity and goodness is more than an expression of personal taste. That's appealing.

And, of course, I like $9.00 checks. Most people do, which is why most people believe in a good God, and why, for most people, the problem of evil exists. Such a world, where evil must be explained as an anomoly, is appealing. It assumes a basic goodness in the universe, and this offers immense comfort.

Comforting ideas have a tendency to be wrong, though. That the Cubs will win the World Series. That Barack Obama will revive America. That unicorns exist and yearn to give rides through lands of pixee dust to lonely girls. That I am a unique and beautiful snowflake. That God listens.

Thank goodness, some comforting ideas are actual. That I love my family, and they love me. That a stranger will send me $9.00.

When it is 5:30am and I am twisting my stationary indifferent machine with my indifferent body, and my cadence is 96 rpm, and my heart rate is 165 bpm, and the whine of the trainer is almost as loud as my breath, I pass by God. Maybe he's the God of the Completely Indifferent, or maybe he's just God. He's riding a unicorn, wearing a Yankees jersey and sporting an "Oh Mama, Obama!" button. I thank him for the $9.00.

The J of BB VIII: The Unbearable Lightness of Building

Calvini and Big Troy


My brother Troy, a philosophy professor, likes to talk about economics. I suppose it's relaxing for him, in his line of work, to take a break from rigid designators and such, and to chat instead about Pareto efficiency and inflation, and how it's old people who hate it, mostly, because the thought that a box of Cracker Jacks should cost more than 3 pence disgusts them. And so forth.

Anyhow, Troy has a pet economics theory which he tells to anyone willing to listen because the theory allows him to talk about bicycles. He is, obviously, an amazing person and a wonderful conversationalist, and I'm not just saying that because he's my brother and likes to talk about bicycles.

His theory is simple:

More expensive goods are literally lighter goods; the more developed an economy, the lighter its goods.--Big Troy

So now we get to talk about bicycles. Ah hem.

Bike builders (like me) pay a premium for light parts--parts made of carbon fiber, titanium, scandium, magnesium, and other exotic materials. Big Troy tells me that some crazy philosophers might even go so far as to say that bikes have souls--truly, an exotic and thankfully weightless material.

I had to pay a fair amount for my componenets. I chose SRAM's respectable Force line of components: brakes, shifters, crank, chain, casette, and deraillers.

Big Troy, never one to compromise, chose SRAM's top of the line Red groupset. This half pound SRAM Red does not have (that SRAM Force does) cost him a fair amount of money.
Scott Addict Frame and SRAM Red Components


My components sit in a box in my bedroom. I tell myself that six months ago, they were the lightest components available, that Lance never road anything nearly as light as my SRAM Force, that my components weigh half as much as Eddy Merckx's, and probably a third as much the components Coppi road.

But that is hardly the point. The point is that they could be lighter. That all-important half pound that separates Red from Force. It bugs me. That I'll have a little weight just hanging there, serving no function, holding me back.

One cannot be a moral person, a lover of humanity, and be a weight weenie. I am a Peace Corps Volunteer. I have to remind myself this. I love humanity more than the dream of bicycle weightlessness, of travelling on a cushion of pure soul. And yet I can't help but be drawn to the purity of this vision.

There are other, more difficult ways of dropping weight (and inevitably cash). On the table:

Appendix Removal. The appendix is the Federal employee of the body; it weighs at least a pound and doesn't do anything except watch shit flow by. Ridding myself of my worthless appendix would cost me somewhere around $12,485. This is a high cost/per pound ratio; perhaps too high. But this thing looks kind of nasty:
Appendicitis

It probably does something important if it looks nasty.

Lose weight. I can't do much to change myself except lose weight, and that requires a lot of work and not eating. I don't like that, and I lack the discipline.

Buy a lighter bike. So it's back to the bike--what can money buy me? I was drawn to this:
World's Lightest Bike at under 1818 grams (4 lbs)

The frame is made of styrofoam over steel rods.

Looking at the pitiful thing, I'm not sure if it was meant to be ridden. The web site mentions that the wheels are glued together. That's not exactly reassuring.

Part of this building process, I'm coming to realize, requires building me. Or, rather, it's re-building me: stripping off the fat, atrophying unnecessary muscle, and becoming strong in the right places.

Everyone does this generally, I suppose. If there had been bicycles in St. Paul's time, I'm sure he would have used cyclists instead of runners in his "I have run the good race" pep talk. There's something mortifying--in the original sense of the word--about cycling. The flesh is weak, so it must go. That's the purity of bike building.

The J of BB: Part VII Clean Water

The J of BB: VI Power Lines

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
Stephen Vincent Benet (1898 - 1943), Litany for Dictatorships, 1935

Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason, like me, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Africa. Jason wrote a book, Power Lines, about his experiences. Our experiences were similar--so similar that, after I read Power Lines , my own writings about my experience in South Africa seemed derivative. Most of the superficial details of our experiences are identical: our villages were in KaNgwane, a former bantustan; we learned SiSwati from the same language teacher; we went to the same backpackers, shopped in the same stores, and took some of the same vacations.
Jason Carter


He was there a few years before me; I never met him. But everywhere I went, I felt myself to be his shadow. When I went through his village, people ran toward me, only to stop short and turn away disappointed. My language teacher, Lindiwe, once confided in me that I was the best student she had had, aside from Jason.

I must admit that Power Lines is an apt title for a book about South Africa. Mandela's revolution redistributed political power; it also began the process of redistributing electrical power. This distribution was just beginning when Jason Carter was a Volunteer. I saw its further implementation.

The average South African judges the extent of democracy in his country by the proliferation of water taps and power lines in his neighborhood. That my host father, Zephaniah Mbatha, and I sometimes had to drive over a mile to a tap to find water was a violation of his constitutional rights, according to the South African Constitution, in fact.
Babe Mbatha Unloading Water Barrels in Mgobodi, South Africa:

A lesser violation of Mbatha's rights was the erratic power supply. Power came to the village in 2000, causing Mbatha, a shopowner, to scrap his solar panel, which had powered the lights and refrigerators in his shop. He regretted doing so, since the sun, he told me, was a more reliable source of energy than ESKOM.

Now, according to a New York Times article , there are so many new consumers of power that there is an extreme shortage. Rolling blackouts are stalling the economy: mines, industry, and restaurants have been forced to close for periods of the day. The government will likely fail to achieve its goal of reducing its 25% unemployment rate.

So much for power to the people.

Here's a fellow who uses a bicyle to create power.


I've always wondered if we could tackle some of our energy problems by harnessing our bodies. All the power from weightlifters, runners and cyclists dissipates. I cycle for an hour almost every day--could I power my apartment with the energy I create?

According to Los Gatos (the man picture above), I'd have to pedal for six hours just to keep my refrigerator going for 24 hours. Hardly worth it. Los Gatos recommends a Poor Richard approach to power: a watt saved is a watt earned.

Riding a bicycle, unless you are Lance Armstrong, is hardly an act of power. Despite the ubiquity of devices that measure power output on the bicycle--Floyd Landis claims it was his Powertap device, not drugs, that helped him win the Tour de France--a bicycle will never be a Humvee. It does not strike fear into the heart (cyclophobists excepted).

Everyone can ride a bicycle. Riders, unlike drivers, are not hidden behind steel and glass. Riders tend to group together. Cycling is a team sport. Honor. Dignity. Integrity. Banana hammocks.