Stretching is cycling’s finest non-mechanical component. The more I stretch the finer my ride. Never saw myself in a Yoga Class. After one class I was all in. Hot Yoga is rejuvenating. I felt ten years earlier following that first class. My lungs manipulated more oxygen. Aches and pains accumulating since childhood vanished. Hot Yoga is the best 90-minute healing workout on the planet. I met the game of squash just down the road.
Discovered the squash game one October when forced to the treadmill in blizzard snows while preparing for a run thru New York’s five boroughs. The Squash Pro introduced herself out of the blue. Stuck a racquet in my hand. Years of tennis behind me squash odd a first. Picking up the rhythms and geometric synergies I was addicted to solo-squash in twenty minutes. Squash with two people is more about picking up the ball. Solo-squash never stops. Ninety minutes of live Pearl Jam and solo-squash. A revolutionary fitness experience for me. The aerobic factor, comingling a slow-motion dance of reaching, stretching, lunging all blending into a graceful mind-game of stamina, geometry, music and a tiny rubber ball. If racquet sports are of interest check it out. It’s a serious three dimensional workout experience.
Ran that marathon smoother then prior efforts. Returned home playing solo-squash everyday till spring. Not running a step since November. In April encountered an old favorite. A fifteen mile loop. Twelve minutes vanished. Solo-squash and hot-yoga were the keys to this effortless run. Squash embellishes cycling as well making you stronger in ways you won’t imagine without playing the game. Keeping in mind yoga studios are easier to find then squash courts and cycling is everywhere for free.
Hot Yoga and squash unbudgeable today yet the benefits follow my life’s cycle. A treadmill previously despised and a blizzard exposed too me these flexible fitness options. PS: A treadmill will make your running faster and stronger.
If you enjoy life and cycling as you know it get out and enjoy every moment you have for there won’t be many more as you know it. As a significant number of US continue to intentionally unmoor ourselves from reality human extinction looms large. American’s ignore everything that matters in life starting with life.
We have killed everyone who stood for peace and human kindness to date in this country. We believe Oswald killed Kennedy. Anyone who’s seen one episode of Law and Order knows the Oswald story is shit on a stick. The Warren Commission report might as well have been written on toilet paper. I love the zig zagging bullet story and the 1963 photo-shop Life Magazine cover. Essentially we believe everything we are feed to believe. We have been zombified by capitalism. How else do we explain the extinction of all humanities accumulated facts?
We have developed a country of greed driven, self-involved willingly brain-bleached morons. American exceptionalism is fueled on selective-ignorance. In a few hundred years we have destroyed the entire planet and continue ignoring this fact. Deny it all you like. We allowed capitalist to lead us down the road of infinite growth. The infinite growth of selective-ignorance.
If you don’t enjoy what’s left of nature today, you’ll miss it even more tomorrow. Colorado skies will fill with smoke again this summer. Excessive UV and ozone off the charts as the new normal. Safest to ride before and after sunlight most of last summer. Essentially the entire planet was on fire last summer. The truth is humanity is going backwards. White men have essentially had control of this planet since day one and white men destroyed the entire planet primarily spearheaded by the American Exceptionalism plaguing US since about 1492.
Not American’s yet but profoundly white with ignorance and willing to kill everyone and everything in their path to lay claim to what many today ignorantly call Our Country. We kill mothers and babies with drones like clock-work everyday with our hard earned tax dollars and never concern ourselves with this collusion in these taxpayer sanctioned murders. Like it or not if you pay taxes in America you are a war criminal. I know it’s so easy to pretend otherwise. Did the Rockies will today?
Capitalisms Is Blinding US.
If there’s money in it American’s will walk around with their heads up their asses. This is how you amass more money then you need with your head and soul up your ass. Ain’t that America. You and Me. Ain’t that America. Something too see? Little pink houses full of morons. For Gods sake capitalism just did a hostile takeover of religion as the faithful are reborn to a new level of selective-ignorance Zeus couldn’t understand.
Yes I do love it here on this planet. So much so I always speak the truth in an effort to wake US from this selective state of complete fucking stupidity. Capitalistic American Greed and the selective-ignorance fueling it will destroy all of humanity soon. We just don’t seem to give a shit about each other anymore. Pathetic we are with our American Exceptionalism.
We are exceptionally ignorant with our ignorance today, taking ignorance to an exceptionally ignorant level of ignorance where ignorance is engrained in our every thought making US even more ignorant then we thought possible on this new found quest for even greater ignorance. If you think about it it’s easy to ignore all this.
Banks, lawyers and a wife picked my bones of all materialism twenty years ago. I looked to my bicycle and never looked back. Ride a bicycle as much as possible if you know what’s good for you. The futures uncertain and the end is always near you might as well enjoy every ride you can with the time we have left.
With this level of accelerating selective-ignorance the shit will hit the fan in the blink of your eye. Almost like a drone-strike on your home from a capitalist invader selling democracy with a free bomb. Yes in the blink of some child’s eye.
The truth hurts and the more we ignore the pain of our truth the more we torture each other. The America Ass-Light of Exceptionalism is brighter then ever yet we seem too prefer the darkening shelter of ignorance.
Keep in mind. I’m not a philosopher; I just play one on a bicycle. If your looking for clarity in a blurry world ride a bicycle as much as possible. Cycling will rejuvenate everything that is you. Cycling will free you in ways you and only you will discover on your bicycle.
If we’re to make it through this shit storm of stupidity and ignorance cycling will lead the way. Think about it. It’s not rocket science. Who believes in rocket science anyway?
If your not cycling as part of each day and with few justifications not to ride a bicycle today you’d have to have a screw loose not to be cycling everyday. I had some screws loose for far too long until I got on a bicycle in 2008. It was a smoother transition then imagined. Once carless I had a serious look at the life I was missing out on trapped in that automobile-life. There is nothing auto about an automobile-life. Automobiles pollute your air and bleach your soul.
Today more then any time in human history riding a bicycle is the best form of mental health fitness on this planet. How much have you waisted on mind-drugs and shrinks to date? Most likely the cost of a very nice bicycle, or two. A Bicycle Ride a day keeps the shrinks at bay. Shrinks and doctors have at least one vested interest in your continued perceived issues. You do pay their bills.
Thousands of doctors played a direct role in addicting this country to OxyContin/Heroine so peddling pointless conversations seems almost ethical. I didn’t go to medical school yet I know heroine is extremely addicting. This fact somehow slipped thru the educations of thousands of doctors, countless FDA experts and a slews of ivy league politicians all lost on the back nine at Pebble Beach on the lobbyist nickel. I give our American Drug Cartel. Just Say No!
Doctors should prescribe bicycles instead of heroine. Seriously doctors should start writing prescriptions for bicycles and fresh-fruit and vegetables instead of all those drugs they are paid too push on US. The entire medical industry in the US wants you addicted to illness, any form of illness. The entire bicycle industry on this planet wants you addicted to health, fitness and sanity.
Cycling offers up more freedom and life affirming practical benefits then meets the eye. The more you ride the more you’ll see. See how easy and spectacular life can be on a bicycle. See how good you feel on a bicycle. See how you can’t believe you waited this long to get on a bicycle. See how healthy you get on a bicycle. See how clear headed you become riding a bicycle. See how much you save riding a bicycle. See how efficiently you transact your day and life on a bicycle. See how your life belongs on a bicycle.
Cycling can tighten many of life’s loose-screws. Perhaps screws you didn’t know you had. The unknown loose-screws will screw you. My unknown screws were the ones in need of tightening and only discovered once on a bicycle. Could a bicycle be the answer to your unseen loose-screws?
It’s not rocket science. Ride a bicycle everyday and see for yourself.
Once on a bicycle you will realize someone else has been loosening your screws all along. Essentially modern cycling allows you to live as a modern day hunter-gatherer thriving in a considerably more practical and soul-affirming life. A life with no loose-screws just miles of enlightened fine tuning.
A seriously challenging opportunity has arrived for US all. With corona-virus accelerating the crippling effects of capitalism on the human race by five years as our environment collapses faster then our economy. Both results of our tremendous capacity to selectively ignore what doesn’t directly support our monumentally and selectively ignorant materialism.
The Ride Of Your Life Time.
There’s never been more on the line for humanity. We are facing a pandemic of assorted crisis ignored by far too many of US. It’s clear that continually ignoring reality has caught up with us. Cycling can and will lead US out of this delusional state of American Exceptionalism. Our exceptional ability to selectively ignore our ignorance can not longer be ignored. This dedication to ignorance will kill US without serious change in all our lifestyles. We have and can made a difference when we choose too; collectively. If you like living on this planet do something; anything now to save it. Grab your life by the handle-bars not the hand-rails.
We need this planet plenty more then this planet needs US.
There are so many advantages to cycling I won’t bother listing them. There are no disadvantages to cycling. Cycling is the single most important thing you can do as we face our accelerating extinction resulting from our long lingering subliminal virus of selective-ignorance. Our days of ignoring the reality of reality is biting US on our asses. Unfortunately America has an excessively fat and ignorant ass today. I fear there’s way to much biting to be done before we hit any viable never endings.
If this seems on the negative side, that is the nature of the truth. It always tells the truth, Truth is the purpose of truth in the first place. If a tree falls in the forest with no witness; will the tree eventually cut and stack itself? Depends on what kind of chain-saw a tree can use. How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck? Are wood-chucks made of wood?
If your not riding a bicycle as part of your lifestyle; your missing the life-boat. I assure you life in a car is passing you sitting still. Kilo per kilo the bicycle is huminites finest and most practical conglomeration of ideas. The all encompassing practical benefits of cycling are too extensive to mention. Remember this and do not forget it. There are no disadvantages to cycling. Don’t wait for the wheel to be reinvented while life passes you. Get your ass on a bicycle now. It is the single most effective way to help yourself and humanity while having fun. Remember; there are no disadvantages to cycling.
Electric Bicycles have changed the cycling paradigm. Steroids’ for the Cycling Industry. If you have a commute for work, depending on your sense of adventure electric bicycles have tremendous and growing range of capabilities. I guarantee if you ride a bicycle, electrified or not, to and from work your attitude about work will only chainge for the better. Life in a car is death by stress filled drudgery. A life revolving around cycling? You be the judge! Procrastinate all you want once your on that bike you will never regret it.
When I’m cycling I want for nothing but a more a precise synergistic deployment between natures delicious life affirming oxygen and my will.
OK so we’re agreed. The bicycle is humanities highest achievement and we should have stopped there. The pandemic has put a new light on cycling with the industry and humanity reaping the rewards. I cycled at least twice a day over the last year witnessing the growing societal and cultural diversity in the cyclists I comingle with. It’s a real melting-pot of cultures and personalities in today’s ever expanding cycling universe. It’s a pleasure to be a part of this rolling American cultural revolution.
I’ve just cycled through five years of cycling evolution in three-hundred and sixty-five days. A synergized proliferation of personalities and cycling technology have revolutionized humanity with a simple bicycle.
The Bicycle is life’s only practical, common-sense, human powered, life-affirming mode of transport that’s always a joy-ride and has no downside. The bicycle is the perfection of perfection. Get on one now. Chainge your life before it finishes passing you in that rear-view-mirror.
Back to normal? Most I encounter don’t want to hear or confront the truth about normal. Truth is America is sic, sick and twisted. Our state of selective-ignorance just ignored ten more of our fellow Americas slaughtered. A grocery store; this time.
I was at Columbine High five minutes after the call went out. Working for CBS News that morning. The overwhelming state of absolute terror on the faces of all those parents still vivid. That was 1999 and nothing changed not even after babies were slaughtered at Sandy Hook.
Boulder will change nothing as America moves on to the next shooting, fitting it in their conciseness between March Madness and the fake boarder crisis. The only change comes to the growing list of victims and their families. Are you willing to wait for this type of change to effect your friends and family?
The destructive synergy of American’s long selective-ignorance comingled with the champion of trumping ignorance further polluted our already toxic society unleashing the debilitating forces of hate on anyone not white with more ferocity then our selective-ignorance has tolerated to date.
We kill babies and bomb hospitals in Yemen with our tax dollars every day in line at the Starbucks drive-thru.
We are a murder based culture and society. One of the Columbine shooters parents worked for Lockeed Martin possible on the same weapons’ systems killing the Yemenis babies with your tax-dollars today. My Dad makes bombs that kill foreign babies! What’s your Dad do?
Video games are now the recruiting tools of the Military Industrial Complex streamed directly too your children in your living rooms. Ain’t that America? The Defense Department owns the NFL at this point. Just ask Pat Tillman.
Georgia just outlawed voting for Black American’s. Over half a million fellow American’s dead due to our trump-card of selective-ignorance. American’s have embraced this selective-ignorance for centuries now and the dangers of this constant ignorance has created our bewildering state of what we like to refer to as Normal.
Don’t know about you? Normal scares the shit our of me. I don’t want to go back there. Do you? Do something. Do anything? Think about thinking more? That’s not normal. Just look around at normal.
Is normal; normal for you? Because it’s killing me.
If you haven’t seen Breaking Away after watching this trailer you will. Buy or rent Breaking Away on YouTube. It’s a film you might want too own. I feel great every-time I watch this one.
A Definitive Cycling Cinema-Classic. Breaking Away.
I feel Breaking Away stands alone in the Cycling-Cinema Genre. Next, Bicycle Thieves, this Vittorio De Sica 1948 post world classic spins a father and son’s tale tracking down a stolen bike. It’s gem and a great wat to brush up on your Italian. Bicycle Thieves, is a weighty film in the Italian Neo-realist film movement and just one of the genres and Vittorio De Sica’s many stunning films.
Bicycle Thieves, this Vittorio De Sica 1948 post war classic spins the tale of a stolen bike.
As for other films from the past. Marathon Man, Nazi’s, Diamonds, A Dentists and A Runner. Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman star in a THRILLER you will watch again if you dare.
Marathon Man, Nazi’s, Diamonds, A Dentists and a runner. Is It Safe Yet?
Stunning cinematography just one of this films highlights, Where The Rivers Flow North, shot in Vermont’s Northern Kingdom, a cedar-oil farmer VS an electric dam claiming eminent-domain over his family land. Rip Torn, Michael J. Fox with Tantoo Cardinal, all proffer classic interpretations in once in a life-time roles. Rip Torn stands alone with his mammoth portrayal of Noel Lord.
Where The Rivers Flow North. A beautiful film and story.
Don’t Get Between This Man And His Bike.
Can’t forget this one. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, another classical story of Man and Bicycle.
Boy And Bicycle 1965 Ridley Scott, yes Blade Runner Ridley Scott. This is his first films.
Boy And Bicycle 1965 Ridley Scott
A teenage boy skips school, spends the day riding through town and a deserted beach on his bicycle, his mind wanders imagining he is the only person in the world.
Hope you enjoy these for the first time, second or third and so on.
I’ve been riding 54 years, it was the time of divorce, financial, legal assault, I moved from let’s say joy-riding to life-riding. A twenty something Diamond-Back was my savior.“A bicycle is either a child’s toy, a rich man’s obsession, or a poor man’s last resort.” In my case the latter although every time I’m on my bike I feel my cycling-soul-child, the child that sustains me, got me here, that child. After the system kicked me to the ground, I decided, needed, to change everything, realizing “If I can’t carry it on a bike, I don’t need it.” I gathered clothing, tools, Jet-Boil other life sustaining basics road to Walmart, purchased, tent, tarp, bungees, light-weight cord. Slept under a cluster of pines adjacent a stream, beautiful night, sky, stars, moon, stream, trees an me. Sunrise, Jet Boiled coffee and oatmeal then rolled out in search of a tent-site out of sight. Mile up an elk trail near a creek-drainage I set up home.
The shocking part of going penniless, the way your friends and family look at you in a different light. All the while no-one asking, “Hey man what do you need, how can I help you right now, do you need a place to crash for a while”? A few weeks into my camp-site I learned never camp on open-space land in Colorado, even if you paid taxes to support it, you will have your stuff stolen by a Ranger and can go to jail as I did; for camping In America on Public Lands. Freedom? The sheriff arresting me for camping asked me, “Why are you living here in a tent?” this made me question his capability to be armed.
After 25 years in network news and one corporate misadventure I needed a job asking myself what do you want to do? I cycled to a local restaurant and never looked back. Television production and the Culinary world are similar in that you spend the day gathering and assembling your elements, then do a show. Working with food felt like no work at all. Time would pass smoothly without thought just creating. I love this work, all of it, no bull-shit corporate mindlessness. I’ll take washing dishes over a pointless corporate meeting full of simpleton know-nothings, same with mopping floors or making Creme Brûlée, I love it all. It’s not a Bull-Shit-Job and on top of all this I get to ride my bike to and from work, every day.
I had one corporate job it was like being cast in “The Office” eventually I talked my way out of this dead-end leaving my first and last corporate experience. Now I ride my bike to work in a kitchen and can’t imagine decomposing in a corporate devolution again.
Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of riding a bike.
John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
