David Byrne

I saw David Byrne on a bicycle the other day.

Actually I saw a white-haired man with a slightly bird-shaped haircut.

“He looked like David Byrne.”

“It probably was him,” my husband said.

After he performed here in concert last summer, he blogged about riding his bicycle on the trails.

Those of you who know how strongly I feel about bicycling–it is not only fun, it is a life-style–will understand why I like David Byrne.  I loved Byrne in the Talking Heads, and he is even better as a solo artist, but it is Byrne, author of The Bicycling Diaries, who has won my musical loyalty.

In an op/ed piece for The New York Times, “This Is How We Ride” (May 26, 2012), he wrote:

I’ve used a bike to get around New York for decades. There’s an exhilaration you get from self-propelled transportation — skateboarding, in-line skating and walking as well as biking; New York has good public transportation, but you just don’t get the kind of rush I’m talking about on a bus or subway train. I got hooked on biking because it’s a pleasure, not because biking lowers my carbon footprint, improves my health or brings me into contact with different parts of the city and new adventures. But it does all these things, too — and sometimes makes us a little self-satisfied for it; still, the reward is emotional gratification, which trumps reason, as it often does.

On my bicycle at age four. Watch out for Super-Environmentalist!

It is spring and we’re biking again.  I love the breeze in my hair, seeing the trees and gardens close-up, hearing the birds, and feeling part of the scene.  I like the  effect on my blood pressure (very, very low, to my doctor’s astonishment) and general health.  (Even if you’re overweight, bicycling, an easy sport, will improve your health.)   Three seasons of the year, I bicycle for transportation.  If there’s not snow, I ride in winter.

I got my first bicycle at the age of four and have cycled ever since.

Bicycling is more energy-efficient (really, you can’t get more energy-efficient) than driving and it is cheap.  I paid $500 for a bicycle in 2003.  I have had to replace the seat and pedals, but otherwise it’s still going strong.

I ride about 1,500 miles a year. Our city has bike lanes, bike trails, and a bike-share program (a rental bike program by which you can ride very cheaply from station to station downtown).

Many cars, alas, do not like to share the road with bicyclists.  One year a mad driver, possibly drunk, stopped his car downtown and yelled at my husband and me to get off the road:  it was Sunday and we three were the only people on a four-lane street.  Once I was pelted with a Coke can and another time with apples by passengers in a car.  I could have written down the car license, but let’s just say I preferred to live.

Horrifyingly, in accidents where a driver kills a bicyclist, the sympathy is often with the driver.

Not always, though.  Last year, when a 58-year-old bicyclist, Gerald Williams, was killed in a tragic hit-and-run accident in Lenox, Iowa, people were outraged when the killer, 33-year-old Jessica May Brown, was not charged with manslaughter.  She claimed later, after she was caught, that she thought she’d hit a deer.

Williams’ wife, who was out of town, had reported him missing when she couldn’t contact him. Twenty-four hours later, searchers found Williams dead in a ditch.

Brown had to pay a $500 fine for failure to stop at an assured clear distance, with a statutory surcharge of $175 and court costs of $60.

It sounds like manslaughter to us.

So ride (right) on, bicyclists!  But watch out for cars.  Some drivers hate bicyclists, runners, and pedestrians.

And here are the Red Hot Chili Peppers singing “The Bicycle Song.”  As they say, “How could I forget to mention the bicycle is a good invention?”

Comic Victorian illustration.

Do you ever ask yourself, Why don’t I say No?

I am very proud of my friend Janet, who finally said no to the Tartarean six-day cross-state bicycle ride she had absent-mindedly agreed to go on with her boyfriend.   She got rained and hailed on first, and it might have been better to say no before the ride, but she isn’t a masochist.

There are elements of Janet in me.  Most of my life I have gone on long bike rides because that’s what my husband does.

I love to ride my bicycle.  I don’t necessarily love to ride it 40 miles.

Yesterday was tough.  A 40-mile bike ride.  I had no idea I was going 40 miles.  That was his idea.  If I’d known I was riding 40 miles, I would have stopped at 30.

First, it was cold.

Have you ever had to dash into a store and buy jeans because you were wearing bicycling shorts and it is still freezing at midday?  Do you find anything in your size?   Do you end up with a choice between jeans that fit too snugly and jeans that are a little big in the waist but otherwise fit well?  So I went with the bigger jeans. (Little did I know.)

Bundled up in jeans and a sweatshirt, I was still shivering.

The first twenty miles were easy.  Downhill.  Woods, bluffs, corn fields, and farms.

I  enjoyed the scenery, but would have enjoyed it more at a slower pace. There are two kinds of bicyclists:  serious and casual.  The serious bicyclists are intent on mileage and hardly turn their heads to admire the scenery.  The casual bicyclists ride more slowly and stop to look at, or even photograph, the green spaces, and listen to the hot-weather bugs and birds.   I tried to keep my husband in sight, but I lost him after a while.  Where was he?  Where was the town?  Had I made a wrong turn?

Then something happened with the jeans.  They seemed to be falling down, down…  I am a big woman, but the jeans were growing, and it wasn’t because I was shrinking.  I hitched them up and yanked my sweatshirt down.  Because I was sitting on a bike, I could kind of keep them up.

Finally I found the town, but I wasn’t absolutely sure where my husband was.  I took a couple of turns around downtown, hitching up my jeans frequently, and  found him sitting on a rock in front of the Visitors Center.

Then we had to find a snack.

After 90 minutes of moderate riding, you need glucose to refuel your muscles.  In small towns, it’s hard to find the right food.  We are not morning people, and the cafes close early.  There are usually convenience stores:  Kum and Go, Git ‘n’ Go, and Casey’s.

The available food at convenience stores–cookies, ice cream sandwiches, and candy –does not renew my energy very well.   When I was younger, anything was fine.   I probably need healthy snacks now.

There are city cookies and small town cookies.

In the city you can get a big, delicious oatmeal cookie that is almost healthy.  It is made of flour, oatmeal, butter, sugar, and eggs.  It will taste good, and you’ll feel energetic afterwards.  Sort of.

The small-town cookies at the convenience store are made of flour, corn syrup, and chemicals.  You don’t want to eat those.  They will make you sick.

So there you are.  Sitting on the cement with your cookie, potato chips, or Slurpee from the convenience store.

Here is my resolve:  to bring my own good food on the next bike ride.  Dried fruit, bagels, and possibly sandwiches, if I can find a little cooler or something that fits in my pannier.

I also intend to ride more slowly and listen to the birds.

I also intend to wear jeans that fit me next time.

This excerpt from a poem by Linda Gregg says what I want to say.

I will never give up long.
I will let my hair stay long.
The rain proclaims these trees,
the trees tell of the sun.
Let birds, let birds.
Let leaf be passion.
Let jaw, let teeth, let tongue be
between us.  Let joy.
–From  “Let Bird” by Linda Gregg

Back on the bike.

We got back on our bicycles.

We rode 38 miles today, 20 in the rain.

We sang rain songs.

“If the rain comes they run and hide their heads/They might as well be dead if the rain comes.” (The Beatles)

We aren’t dead.

We made up our own lyrics.

All the bicyclists disappeared.

We found the depot in a small town.

We kept going.

We stopped here to get out of the rain.

We stopped at the Mars Dairy Bar.

We ordered milkshakes.

Only one size.

$3.89.

We shared.

He wanted to get going because of the rain.

I said, “It’s not so bad.”

I was wrong.

We left the dairy bar and rode through the town.

We got on the trail.

It rained harder.

We were in the country.

There was no shelter.

A soapy water appeared strangely on my sandals and my toes turned brown.

Our hair was wet and our glasses were wet.

An ink stain spread on my favorite shirt.

My sweatshirt weighed five pounds with rain.

We got to a small town and I didn’t feel I could go on.

I huddled under a pine tree.

I sat on a wet bench.

My husband stood.

He said he could ride to the car and come back for me.

“I’ll keep going.”

We rode on.

I felt genuinely sick.

I’m genuinely tough.

We got home.

Hot baths and scrambled eggs.

I read nothing today.

Off to read.