Faster than you think

Commuting by bike is understandably a risky business, mainly because of the number of cars that compete to use the highways. Bike lanes would solve part of this problem, but the ones in our town appear in such random places that they are as likely to discourage cyclists as not. They mysteriously appear for a few blocks then just as mysteriously disappear without any evidence of urban planning or design. Without bike lanes on major roads, part of the risks of cycling can be averted by using back roads that typically do not have a high volume of traffic during rush hours. For me this means going about a mile out of the way if I decide to ride my bike to work.

Even so in terms of the averages, I get to work faster than you think. In an urban area the estimated speed of public transportation is about 10 mph. For a car it’s estimated to be about twice that. I’ve read that it is closer to 25 mph. So if we go by the averages and calculate how long it takes for me to drive the 10 miles to work, that would be 24 minutes, which is just about right. Since there is no public transportation in our town that would get me from my home to work, this option is out. Commuting by bicycle takes me about 45 minutes to go the 11 miles that allows me to stay off the dangerous four lane highways. This works out to about 14.5 mph. So on the one hand it is obviously slower than a car, but on the other hand it is faster than public transportation would be, if we had public transportation.

Suppose now that you like to exercise, which if you’re even thinking about riding your bike to work would not be out of the question. You might, for example, exercise by riding your bike for an hour, or by going to the gym and riding an exercise bike for 45 minutes to an hour. So if you drive to work, drive home, and ride your bike for an hour to exercise that adds up to about an hour and fifty minutes. On the other hand, if you rode your bike to work and home, that’s an hour of riding your bike for exercise and thirty minutes for commuting back and forth to work. Notice now that you also have twenty minutes left over that you can spend however you want. Though you’re going to say it’s a non sequitur, I’ll draw the conclusion anyway and argue that it applies to anyone who exercises and drives a car to work. By riding your bike you cut your commute time almost in half.

For an average commute of 10 to 12 miles the averages don’t lie: public transportation – 10 mph, car – 25 mph, bike – 44 mph.

Who let the dogs out?

Usually nobody. On the rural roads that cyclists enjoy traveling it’s not uncommon for there to be dogs along the way. Some of them are penned up, but most roam freely, guarding their fiefdom from potential intruders and unwary riders. I don’t know any of the lyrics to the song “Who let the dogs out?” but the catchy, rhythmic refrain almost always comes into my head when I see one or more dogs running toward me.

After the initial approach their behavior varies from dog to dog. Some, probably most, bark furiously to let me know that I’m on someone else’s ground here. These dogs are guarding their territory and stop as soon as they reach its edge. Others run alongside the bike barking enthusiastically, to urge me on I suppose. These dogs will actually chase quite a bit farther than what is clearly their territory, maybe for the sheer joy of running and making noise. Both the guard dogs and the chase dogs make their presence known well ahead of time. Another variety though occasionally startles me. These are the stealth dogs. They move in quietly and don’t bark at all until they are right at your bike.

The stealth dogs may seem like the motorists who get just off the rear wheel of the bike then honk their horn, but I'm not so sure. The motorists, I suppose, are trying to surprise you and make you jump. A dangerous game of "Psych, made you flinch!" An automobile because of its weight makes enough noise that you can hear it coming from a significant distance, which means the horn isn’t a surprise it’s just an annoyance. The unpredictable creature behind the wheel, who seems to defy categorization, makes a car significantly more frightening than any dog.

The stealth dogs, on the other hand, the really quiet ones, can be right up next to you and bark before you’ve heard anything else at all. I have never had the impression that these dogs are ever trying to surprise, hurt, or bite. Stealth is just their style of engagement.

Although I’m sure cyclists get bitten by dogs occasionally, what I worry about most is having a dog get in front of me. Hitting the dog would mean a sure accident that would probably hurt both the dog and rider. As long as a dog is beside me or behind me I feel safe. The only time I actually made contact with a dog occurred early in the morning before daylight. The dog in question was a stealth dog, and shortly after I heard his paws on the ground just behind me, I felt him make contact with the rear wheel of my bike. He let out a short yelp and ran off as I corrected my bike miraculously without falling. He obviously had been unable to see the wheel in the dark and had accidentally gotten too close.

On my last ride it was fun to have three dogs chasing me at once, one from each of the varieties into which I divide them: the guard dog who stopped as soon as I passed the property line, the stealth dog who raced up silently then barked a couple of times to let me know she was there, and then the chase dog who followed me barking until he couldn’t go on any longer. On a long ride they were all welcome if brief companions on a beautiful day, a cyclist's best friends.

Cha-ching

No, this is not the sound of a cash register ringing up a sale, although I guess it could be. It is the sound of a bell ringing, a bicycle bell. In America you don’t hear bicycle bells often, or at least I don’t hear them. When I’m walking around my campus I usually can hear the sound of bike tires and feel the person coming up on me from behind.


In Japan, however, it’s common for bike riders to warn you of their presence with a bell. When my wife and son and I were in Kyoto, we regularly heard this sound from the bicyclists who crowded the sidewalks as we walked around the city visiting the famous temples, shrines, and gardens.

The other time I regularly heard bicycle bells was during the long distance brevet in France from Paris to Brest and back to Paris. On the PBP is it a custom to have a bell that you ring as you pass other cyclists who are riding in the event. Not everyone had a bell, but there were enough that I still heard them frequently.

One of the interesting things to me about bells of this sort is that they communicate as signs rather than symbols. A sign is something that happens which indicates something other than itself and can be interpreted. The bells in both of these contexts indicate the presence of a cyclist, the first as a sort of warning and the second as a sort of celebration. Both humans and other animals communicate at the level of signs. But other animals don't use symbols as far as I know. I'm sure this is debatable with respect to dophins and maybe whales.

The difference between a sign and a symbol is that a symbol has a referent. Jeremy Bentham said that “a word is the sign of a thought.” The word “bell” refers to the thing on the bicycle that rings, and it allows me or you or any other person to talk about this thing. With words as signs of thought we communicate about things when the things themselves have come and gone. The words gather our memories together of walks through busy streets or passing fellow cyclists in the rain and darkness. “Cha-ching” on the other hand just calls our attention to a bike coming our way, so that we can move out of the way or celebrate by responding “Allez.”

Memento mori

On a bicycle you are more aware of the dead animals in and alongside the road than when you’re driving a car. On the ride I took in January, I noticed a dead rabbit,fox, possum, and squirrel. The proximity of these corpses in various degrees of decomposition is disturbing for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it is simply the sheer proximity and deadness of the things that is unsettling. Other times it’s the guts spilled out and also the odor depending on what stage of decomposition the body is in.

I remember when Loudon Wainwright III sung what Wikipedia calls a “novelty song” called Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road. It was popular in 1972 so I would have heard it in high school. The narrative of the song relates the story of a skunk trying to cross the highway late at night, falling victim to a speeding station wagon. Wainwright did get the odor part right, observing that “you can feel it in your olafactory.”

The didacts who contribute to Wikipedia gloss “novelty song” as a comical or nonsensical song produced for comical effect, which makes me wonder about the classification of Dead Skunk. (Certainly, one might also wonder about those comical songs that are produced for tragic effect, I suppose.) I remember that at the time I thought Wainwright was edging toward social commentary because he includes a line about “pollution, it’s dead, it’s in the middle and it’s stinkin’ to high heaven” in the song. It seems like there was more genuine concern with pollution and other environmental issues then than now. The concern now with climate change, for example, is real but understandably motivated largely by self-interest.

The philosopher Erazim Kohak also sees the serious side to this issue. In his book The Green Halo he writes about issues in ecological ethics such as pollution and calls attention to the number of dead animals that now litter the roadways. For him these are evidence of the way human beings have encroached on animal habitats. I guess Wainwright does put a humorous face on the problem, placing some of the blame on the unwitting skunk—“Crossin' the highway late last night He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right.” He seems to agree with Kohak that animals in the wild haven’t adapted to the new environment in which a station wagon comes barreling down the road at 60 miles per hour.

To be honest I think the animals could probably fend for themselves if drivers would simply slow down without swerving one way or the other. That is, don’t try to miss the animal and don’t try to kill it. At relatively slow speeds of 20 to 30 miles per hour the squirrels in my neighborhood manage just fine. I guess you might need to purposely avoid a possum though if its response is to remain motionless. I’ve heard of bikers who have hit squirrels, but I haven’t ever come close. Once a deer bounded across the highway in front of me at night. It was close enough to scare me but I have to assume it knew that it was in no danger of being hit.

Scholars used to keep a skull on their desks to remind themselves of the fragility of life and the constant presence of mortality. The animals along the back roads that cyclists tend to travel serve similarly as their memento mori.

Ice, Sun, and River

The bike was already sliding around and I had instinctively righted it before I realized that the blackened spot on the road was a thin veneer of ice. The high today was going to be around 60 degrees but this morning at 7:30 it was still around 38. At the bottom of a hill where cold air would accumulate and be hidden from the sun, the temperature would seem to drop even lower. Still I was surprised to hit a spot of ice and grateful that I hadn’t fallen. It could only get warmer.

This was the first of the monthly long bike rides I planned to take this year. I would like to do more than one a month. But at a minimum I was aiming at 12. A long ride might normally be 100 miles or more. The Ultramarathon Cycling Association (UMCA) has a year rounder program (http://www.ultracycling.com/standings/umc.html) that gives out an award for every rider who completes at least one long ride a month during the calendar year, the Larry Schwarz award. Last year I qualified with total mileage of 1628 miles. RUSA – Randonneurs USA is another cycling organization that offers a similar award to cyclists who complete a 200km (or longer) randonneuring event in each of 12 consecutive months (http://www.rusa.org/award_r12.html).

This year I would like to get the RUSA award, but it's certainly ok if I don't. The basic difference is one of how the rides are organized. UMCA allows a rider to do a personal ride with fairly minimal restrictions. A personal ride can occur anywhere as long as it is documented with receipts or the equivalent at the beginning, the end, and at least every 35 miles in between. Although the distances are about the same the randonneuring award is more difficult because the rides are ones that have been approved by RUSA. There are two types of rides that are approved, brevets and permanents. The brevets are organized rides or 200K, 300K, 400K, 600K, 1000K, and 1200K, that are scheduled during the year on particular dates at definite locations. Each cyclist is issued a verification card for the ride and at definite places during the ride, controls, has the card validated by a person at the control.

Permanents can be ridden any time but the rider must coordinate the date and time of the ride with the organizer. Like a brevet, a permanent has controls at which the ride gets a card validated and possibly a receipt to verify having stopped at the control. There may also be information questions about things at the control to confirm that the rider was there. My first long ride this year as a 211K permanent from Piercetown, SC to Rosman, NC and back. Last year I rode just over 100 miles on January 25 and froze the whole time, so I thought a day with a predicted high of 60 would be ideal for a winter ride.

Aside from the first patch of ice that I hit and nearly crashed on, the ride was fine. The route took me up Caesar’s Head and into North Carolina where the snow from storms in December still covered the ground and the air was predominantly cold. At the farthest point of the trip in Rosman the sun was out and I could believe it was 60, but that was only briefly.

As I entered Rosman from the south, I crossed a bridge over a small river that I had been riding along on and off for the last 5 miles. The small river was the French Broad. I was caught by surprise because the only other times I had seen the river were in places where its size reflected its name. It does begin in Transylvania County in North Carolina where Rosman is located. Growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee and travelling regularly to North Carolina to visit relatives I was familiar with a French Broad river that joins the Holston River in Knoxville to form the Tennessee River. I also vividly remember watching this huge river from the back seat of the car as we drove the road from Newport to Hot Springs. So as I road towards Rosman it didn’t occur to me to connect the lively mountain stream that I followed with the French Broad. I apologize for not taking a camera to provide pictures of the river and other scenic parts of the ride, but I have some pictures I found on the internet that reflect some of the beauty of this spot along the ride.