Why Cycling and Curiosity Go Together
(Quick intro: Lee lives on Mackinaw Island. Has all his life, I believe. He ran a bike shop. He now runs a hardware. MI produces fine folk. I don’t get to see them much anymore, but there was a time…. MI has no cars. Just horses and bikes. MI has an intensely ‘inside’ aspect due to its summer raison d’etre of tourism. If you just visit, you miss it, which is what locals need to survive. It’s not a big island. Despite the hordes of cheapo one-speeds that fill the summer streets, MI still has a strong and long quality love affair with real bikes. Man, just typing this about makes me cry. It’s where I first caught the deep human bug behind all this stuff. Oh, I forgot, there’s boats there, too. And bright crystal water. It gets into your brain. As Lee will now demonstrate….)
by A. Lee Finkel
Mud deeper than spoke nipples and about the same squish as fresh play-dough snakes the half mile from the paved road’s end to our house. Two to six passes through the mud each day: we feel it builds character. We also feel we have quite enough character, thank you, but the mud is the mud just the same.
The secret is no secret; you just keep turning the crank. If the crank turns, you’ll get there. It matters little, really, how fast you spin, when you stop you stop and when you turn the crank, you get closer, closer, closer.
I’ve often thought that “Life on the Big Chainwheel” would be a neat title for a biography. How much can you or will you handle? An abstract curiosity floats like a cloud of breath steam around my head. It is without substance or resistance. It is persistant. Persistant also is the advance of the chain. Without end or goal it transmits the stress of the chain to the stress of the cog.
So many analogies pass by like the trees on the sides of the road. Thoughts interweave like vines, and truths are as each of the many small leaves.
Much of our effort is spent in an attempt to re-order that which is already ordered properly. A bag of M&M’s is meant to be random.
So much pressure is built up simply because the mesh through which our lives are strained is too fine. As more passes, more passes. Perhaps a settling tank works better than a filter, or maybe both work best if a low restriction combination is used.
I shift, turn down steep rocky path, and begin to dance. It is some symphony played by gravity and flight, slip and grip, smooth and rough, and my body moves responding to the random rhythm. I’m pretty sure I love riding and sleep because they are self-sanctuary in a crowded world.
The cheery lights of the house get stronger and bigger, and I put my thoughts away as I lean my bike on the parking tree, looking forward to the next time. Then I go inside to be with my family I love and we all live together in our house.
