on why to velocipede

A half dozen times over the past couple of months, during the rain-filled and the dismal nights, upon announcing to my quasi-adoptive family my intentions to ride upon my bicycle the few scant miles back to my own home, I have been met with such statements as, “You are riding home in this weather?” or “Dude, are you sure? It's raining, you know, and dark.” Upon hearing such statements, or ones cautioning me to “Be safe out in this wet,” I think invariably two things. First, I say to myself, 'I am homo sapiens, a man made of flesh, blood, and bone; I am not made of sugar, and this light drizzle surely shall not melt me.' Secondly, I remember the gloveless woman of joyous mien, her cheeks flushed and ruddy, whom I saw riding her bicycle through a cold, wet Amsterdam winter a few years back, and I say to myself, 'If that woman who glanced at me can ride through the slush and driving rain, braving the North Sea winds with a smile on her face and three small children clinging precariously to the sides of her velocipede, then I, one person riding through the warm, tender mists of Sister Spring, have little occasion to heed my friends' warnings and to wait for a period of bone-dryness before pedaling off into the gloomy night.'

I velocipede not because it is easy, or because it is convenient, or because I wish to avoid at all cost getting wet. I velocipede because I wish to stop supporting terrorism by purchasing crude-oil-products pulled at tremendous expense from deep below the earth's surface by states that sponsor terrorism and that oppress and murder their own citizens (among these are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and their regional neighbors, states that supply most of the gasoline bought by everyday, supposedly patriotic Americans). I travel by bicycle whenever I feasibly can because I wish to stop burning petroleum in order to move my body around through space-time (as opposed to buying into the lie, so deeply rooted in the Yankee mentality, that I can simply get in my car and drive wherever I please without having any negative impact on my own personal health or on the health of the greater environment). I mash pedal because it is hard, and because it makes me more tough, and because it requires of me discipline and a certain amount of planning ahead, leaving early so as to arrive on time. I mount my vondrais because I have spent too long trapped inside glassed-walled, plastic-and-steel slave's chariots to know just how much they alienate the driver and cut her off from contact with the bright and beautiful world outside of her self-moving, exploding prison. And, for now, lastly, I mount my wire donkey out of a desire to keep my body in good shape by working its muscles out regularly, by dragging myself across the phaltscape using little more than my own brute strength, and by filling and emptying my lungs alike of the clean and of the soiled airs.

For all of these reasons, and more, I ride, joyously coasting throughout this little, driving-obsessed town, drawing the ire of persons late for work and incredulous stares from just about everyone else. To velocipede is among the methods for pursuing Happiness I enjoy most, one of those things I best like to do, burning not gasoline but the food in my guts in order to get around, my head held high, my chest thrust out, and, in memory of that tough, smiling mother in the fair Netherlands, my heart filled with a joyous song.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit