Sublime Mobility!

I’ve owned seven cars. I lived in Manhattan for eight years so I’ve owned fewer than if I didn’t. It is the one place you can live, truly, without an automobile in this country.

I am about to go pick up my fourth bicycle. Well, since I’ve become an adult. The number would have been three except the third one I owned got stolen within a few months.

A bicycle is a sublime machine of personal mobility. Now that I have an office outside the home only a few miles away, I will ride this bike to work and back. I will do the regular “exercise” rides two or three times a week (anywhere from 15-30 miles each outing) that have been one of my better habits since 198o, when I purchased my first bike and used to do three or four laps around Central Park in the early evenings. Now I do the same thing in Forest Park here in St. Louis.

There’s just something about the interaction between human and machine, the periodicity of the pedals, the alloy construction that makes them so lightweight these days, the flexibility of the quick-release brakes and tires and adjustable seats. I wonder if a machine so perfectly suited for the way humans ought to live has ever been invented?

I should also be thankful that I am still alive to buy a fourth bike. It isn’t the safest mode of travel. Especially out in the suburbs and rural areas. The other day, when I made one of the last rides on my venerable old bike (see ya, old buddy!), I could feel the anger, frustration, and weariness of commuters in their cars rising from the pavement more than the heat will in the dead of summer. I sense that people in cars resent people on bikes that much more during rush hour.

Once, out the middle of southern Illinois where my in-laws live, an 18-wheeler driver blew his goddamn horn right as he was approaching near an Interstate entrance. I wobbled and almost fell off from the shock of it. I gave him the finger. Do you know, he slammed on his brakes, idled his rig, jumped out of his cab, and rushed me? I just stood there. He told me I had no business being on a major highway. I told him he had no reason to blow his horn other than to fuck with my head. Strangely, we came to some acceptance of each other by the end of the encounter.

A month ago, I really did almost get killed, about to fly through a major city intersection catching the walk sign, when a lady driving a hunk of an SUV pressed the gas pedal to make a right turn. I wrecked but my bike and my body were okay. The lady’s accomplice jumps out of the car and screams from the door, “Slow the fuck down! Slow the fuck down!” I calmly looked at him and said, “Pal, you see that walk sign? I have the right of way.” He continued stringing epitaphs together while I got myself together to proceed. Unfortunately, while his delivery wasn’t exactly courteous, his message was correct. I need to slow down.

But I love bikes. I love to ride. I love to be external to the artificial, atmospheric, antiseptic bubble we live our lives these days.