fair Cahuenga Pass

Once under the highway near Universal is where does begin a magnificent hill. Its sidewalks are wide with green trees it abounds and thick are the shade-spots that dapple its grounds and rich is the reward that arrives at last when spying the peak of fair Cahuenga Pass. It’s rideable whenever daytime or night (now during the latter I switch on a light) and watch at the top for loose rocks on my right while pedaling madly with all of my might. Along it are fast-food booze cigarette shops dispensaries groomers yet few red-light stops; when southbound upon it people rarely turn lest they run smack into nature’s own rock-berm. Then… over! I’m over! by golly hot dog here comes some relief from that hard-churning slog my wits are about me though I dare not rest for slaloming traffic’s a demanding test. At some points are gravel at some points are holes I take over lanes lest I should be bulldozed by uncaring drivers who’re trying to shoot the gap between me and boulders thick with roots. I know not the name of the goddess whose is the honor of guarding the Cahuenga Pass but thank and applaud her for her loving hands that guide and protect all who pass through her lands.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on avoiding traffic

Recently, I wrote an article about sponging anger, and how when I am bicycling I would often get angry for reasons I could not place. After carefully analyzing this hatred and noting when it tended to arise I have concluded that I am allowing myself to be controlled by the mostly negative emotions of the drivers I come into contact with while out on the road. Oh how they must hate me for daring to ride on the sliver of pavement that runs to the right of the single white line and to the left of the edge of the road, as witnessed by a recent increase in the number of cowards who shout out of their windows at me as they speed by, often saying things such as, “Get out of the road,” and, “Move over.” (Soon, I hope to find the courage to stop responding by telling drivers to go fuck themselves.) I have taken to occupying the entire lane while climbing a particular hill on the last stretch of byway before the last turn toward my house, as in the past on this short rise people tended to floor their engines and squeeze daringly between me and opposing traffic as we were all trying to squeeze up a blind, sharp incline. During this maneuver the transference of hatred and loathing from the drivers to me is particularly strong, as I take up the entire lane for fifteen whole seconds while powering my way up to the top of the rise, dragging myself across the asphalt landscape silently and without belching noxious fumes from a metal tailpipe. Once I reach the top I immediately vacate the lane to allow the vehicle that has been tailgating me to roar past toward business that – I am certain – has to do with curing cancer and saving a stranded kitten and eliminating hunger in the Global South. I am happy to be doing my part to honor and conserve the mineral resources of this our only Earth, and to be saving hundreds of dollars a year on car maintenance and fuel and registrations and fees and taxes and fines. I have been lucky up to now, for which I thank the gods of the traveler, among them Legba and Ganesha and Christopher and Hermes, lifting my supplications to the heavens and saying: “Please guard these travelers along their path, keep them this day from Fate's patient wrath.” Aho.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on velocipedists' tools

Avé, dear reader, & welcome. Come, let's explore the tools of a velocipedist. Her most basic elements are the following: a stout and fearless heart, that central muscle primed and pumping proudly, pulsating without palpitation betwixt her gently heaving breasts; fed by her blood and quickened with the hot action of honest labor are her brains, which analyze, sort, and weigh the options facing her before commanding her body to tilt this way or that, to zig or zag, to shift gears down or up, or to abandon her smog-sled altogether and roll tumbling onto the nearest patch of grass; then come her senses – mostly those of hearing and sight – with which she takes in the landscapes flashing by, which feed her brains and give them data to chew on and react to. On the periphery lie other elements, lesser but by no means indispensable, namely: a loud, no-handed whistle; a quick, sharp shout; a firm pair of close-toed shoes; a kit containing all the tools she might need to fix her wire-donkey on the fly; an ankle cuff to tie her pants away from the whirring links of chain; a helmet or other such protection for her cranium; patches of reflective material prominently placed to make her presence known at night; and lights to cut a swath through the shadows' gathering and alert others to her hurtling passage. With these few tools the smog-sledder transects the phaltscape (asphalt landscape) silently and cleanly, skimming across the planet's surface using only the food in her guts as fuel, discretely voided wastes her only measurable exhaust. So come, now, my hearties, and grab you bike, partake of its wonders, there's so much you'll like.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on getting fancy

This morning, on the way to anatomy class, I jumped onto a Jersey barrier upon my (loaned) bicycle in an attempt to avoid having to ride in the busy street around a bit of construction blocking the pedestrian path. Immediately upon mounting the concrete structure I lost my balance, fell over onto a spot of muddy grass to the right (i.e. not into vehicular traffic), tore open a finger-knuckle on my right hand, and badly bent the front wheel of the purple-and-blue women's bicycle I have been riding for the past week. Undaunted, I turned around and walked the mangled velocipede back to my hostel, turned back around, and walked the 2.3 miles to class.

Oh the plans I had to repair the front wheel, to tune the spokes by hand, myself, whilst sitting in a nice park and whistling away my sorrows. Anyone who has ever attempted to tune the spokes of a badly-bent bicycle wheel will know how frustrating, infuriating, and all but hopeless it is to try and do this type of work freehand, by eye and feel alone; I spent more than three hours trying to do it myself as well as trying to find a bicycle shop in Houston Texas open past six in the evening, both to no avail. Now, it is after ten p.m., the wheel is still bent (thought not nearly as badly as it was this morning,) I am exhausted in will, spirit, and body, and not only is my time gone but I will be out roughly $35 for a new wheel or a few bucks less for a quick tuning job, adding those to the 3+ hours I already spent (at $20/hr, ), and I'm almost out a c-note with nothing to show for it but my all-too-apparent frustration. One of these times I'll remember to just take the bike to a shop and pay someone else to tune the spokes rather than working myself into a lather trying to do it myself. Oh brother, phew, and mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

Vicente v. Ord

This author is barely back a week from Los Angeles, and already he yearns for the runs. The velocipedist who reads this blog will recognize the Ord Run from previous writings: it starts at Marukai Market in Little Tokyo, heads up to Hill and Cesar E. Chavez, and mashes Sunset all the way over to where that boulevard hits Vine. Old man Ord, however, has a new companion, the San Vicente Run (i.e. Santo Viczenzo), which starts at where Wilshire crosses the 405 freeway and approaches Hollywood from the west, either via Elevado or Santa Monica Boulevard.

Both of these runs the author would make regularly, never ever standing to pedal, on an L.A.-made, fixed-gear, gray Retrospec bicycle with bright green wheels. He surfed Bay Street and the Venice Breakwater, hunted urban art from the Palisades to Elysian Park, and ran the runs whenever he was able to – during rush-hour or at 3 am, under skies clear and smoggy, his heart bursting joyfully with every passing foot, flashing spoke, and humming tire. And the Boba Fett nods he received from other smog-sledders (!!!), each glance-and-dip a barely perceivable acknowledgement of his worth as a self-respecting street cyclist, each quick look grudging recognition of the toughness commonly found among persons who mash California's sun-burnt boulevards.

Someday, I will once more reside in the fine Golden State, and run these runs whenever my heart desires, but, until then, be well in my absence, fair Angelinos, and mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on abandoning cars

Another Bucephalus has fallen victim to neglect, spendthrift, and procrastination. The car, a red Subaru Forester, the author's stout and loyal steed for the past 4 years, died in northern New Jersey on Saturday evening, something within it giving way with a sickening series of uncharacteristic crunching and groaning, screeching and banging. “At least $800 to repair what we think is wrong with it,” the woman at the repair shop told him once the mechanics had had a look at it on Monday morning. “But it could also be the water pump, or something else – we won't really know the total cost until we open it up and take a look inside.”

And so he consigned to the junk heap his faithful Sleipnir of night and fog, brave mount of a dark and fallen prince, choosing to wash his hands of it rather than invest more than the roughly $7000 already in. Bought out of necessity and a luxurious bauble stuck in the otherwise coarse and simple cloak of his life, his old friend will soon be torn apart, raided for parts, chopped, shopped, or simply put outside and left to rot. If he'd have had an extra $2000 lying around he might have had the recent ruptures repaired and a new serpentine belt installed; sacrifices must be made and expectations must be altered to reflect new realities, however, and, so, he'd signed the back of the car's title and put it in with the rest of Tuesday's mail. Requiescat in pacem, dear friend – you shall be missed.

His new mount, a gray and blue landshark-style bicycle that had sat under the front porch for nearly a decade, is once again working well: he has been riding it regularly for the past year. With new tires and brake pads fore and aft, fresh shifter cables, and rear spokes properly tuned, the velocipede allows him to go everywhere he needs to go around town and haul everything he might need to haul silently and without producing more exhaust than his own breath, more waste than that already gurgling in his guts. If he had but sold the car before it exploded, he might have recouped some of its value, but at least no one was injured when the automobile system failed, and he now has one less albatross dangling from his neck. At the end of the day, none can know what the Universe intends, and, so, the author accepts his new reality with a silent word of thanks to the shifting winds of Fortune for forcing him to make a difficult decision.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

interstate bicycle pathways

In the middle of the last century, American President Dwight D. Eisenhower envisioned a highway system ambitious in both scope and design. It pioneered new techniques (the clover-leaf interchange), spawned new ways of living (the suburb), and provided wanderlustig individuals with a relatively cheap method of traveling for both business and pleasure. But every silver lining has its cloud, and, today, Americans' dependence on petrol-carbohydrates is destroying the environment and helping to fund terrorism around the world. If we expect to keep breathing air and fitting into our jeans, we need to utilize a time-tested and reliable device largely ignored since the beginning of the automobile age: the bicycle.

Imagine ribbons of road stretching from Boston to Miami and from New York to Los Angeles, roads designed and built exclusively for bicycles. Imagine being able to bicycle to work each day without having to worry about getting sucked into the wake of a passing semi-truck. Imagine saving money and losing weight while pedaling a bicycle instead of spending money and getting fat while sitting in a car. The automobile isn't called the slave's chariot for nothing – it demands of its user ever and ever greater sacrifices without doing much to improve his financial or physical health or that of the environment. This author has been bicycling instead of driving for the past ten months in a town built around the car, and even though he contends daily with individuals who will pass him in the breakdown lane so that they can be the first in line at the next red light, he still feels sympathy for the poor fools who willingly trap themselves in mobile prisons of glass and steel.

Prosperity through sacrifice! Safety through knowledge! Happiness through exertion! These are the slogans that will drum up support for America's interstate bicycle pathways (IBP). Not only will the IBP create new manufacturing and service jobs in communities around the country (think of all those bikes breaking down and getting flat tires), it will cut this country's reliance on dirty, sadness-inducing oil and gas products. Furthermore, new developments in battery technology as well as cheaper and more efficient solar panels have prompted bike makers to equip velocipedes with electric motors for help on hills and super-efficient coasting. The author is not calling for the construction of an entirely new web of roads spanning from coast to coast, merely that the bike trails that already exist be linked to one another with dedicated, bicycle-only riding paths. In the Netherlands, roughly 27% of all trips are done on bicycle, whereas in the United States of America, less than 5% are. Difficulties of comparison aside, bicycling is a viable form of transportation even in places where the winters are harsh and the North Sea winds are strong. For the past year, the author has dreamed about being able to bicycle into Philadelphia from his house nearly a hundred miles away, but the most direct route – 30, the Lincoln Highway – is a traffic-choked road that was not designed to handle both driver and velocipedist. Adding insult to injury, the nearest commercial bus station lies more than twenty miles from his front door, and the most efficient method for reaching it is on a road even narrower and less bicycle-friendly than Route 30. Some day, fellow pedal-mashers, we will convince the slave's charioteers of the error of their ways, and get everyone back on the saddle. Until then, however, keep your clothes tight, your eyes and ears open, and your head on a swivel. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

a logo from 2012

a parting delight

The author has been experimenting with how he dresses his hair. Whereas he used to comb it over without part, he now parts it on the left-hand side. His favorite hairstyle – which he calls the fade of the recession, or the recession's fade – consists of a malleable tuft at the top and front of the head that fades quickly down the sides and back, where it is closely cropped. (For examples, see here for two men from the 1930s and here for Tom Hardy in the movie Lawless.) Since he has been cutting his own hair this way for nearly fifteen years, the author has decided to name his hairstyle the recession's fade, mostly because it resembles hairstyles sported by individuals who lived through the Great Depression. As a person living through the Great Recession, he can only hope to chase away our enduring economic blues by affecting a bold and brash hairstyle, just as his predecessors conquered their troubles by heaving into the shifting winds of Fortune with wide smiles, strong backs, and daring coiffures.

The looks he gets from people fuel his mirth and keep a smile in his mouth. His meek and unadventurous fellow Americans cannot get enough of his audacity – they stare and point, laugh and mock, looking at him and his slicked-down locks as if he were a sulfur-breathing alien from distant Blaxon-7. Add to this an Abraham Lincoln style chin-beard and neatly cropped mouth-whiskers, and people all but lose their minds. They can't figure out if he is a hipster, a lunatic, a Civil War reenactor, or merely a tragically-lost Amish bloke. On some level, he does not mind being the brunt of their jokes, or the focus of their attentions, but he wonders sometimes why they spend time thinking and talking about him instead of opening their own minds, strengthening their own bodies, and cultivating their own unique sense of style and dress. Another of his unusual habits is to ride bicycle properly, with his shoulders pulled away from the ears, his head erect and scanning, his back straight, and his buttocks planted firmly on the seat. He rides this way so as to isolate the workout to the lower extremities, to keep his head on a swivel, and because riding in any other way is plain foolishness.

An avid cyclist and amateur barber since his early teens, the author's knowledge of the power of hairstyling grew during a recent airing of Radio Lab. The hosts of the show discussed with compelling brilliance the symmetry in our cells, in our thoughts, and in the rest of the universe, but the author nearly fell off his chain when they began speaking about the effect that parting one's hair can have on how one is viewed by other people. Things suddenly made sense – the looks and gazes, the random smiles from passing women, kindness and warmth being thrust upon him because of a simple change in how he combed his hair. If parting is the sweetest sorrow, he shall stick with his current hairstyle until the Recession fades, bearing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for as long as circumstance demands.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

people in motion

On a velocipede, or bicycle, a person is a largely independent entity beholden to few others. The velocipedist drags himself across the phaltscape (or asphalt landscape) by pumping a crank with his legs in order to move a thin chain across a series of skinny gear wheels. Beyond the maker of his smog-sled, he interacts only occasionally with replacement parts manufacturers. In order to commute across the face of the Earth, he requires neither filling station nor foreign oil; he has use for neither computer diagnostic tool nor power-train warranty; he spends his money on things other than monthly finance charges, oil changes, state inspections, and car washes; he is one person in motion whose mobility hinges on his ability to balance on a pair of rubber tires and to keep his head on a swivel.

Let us briefly consider, however, the operator of a motor-vehicle, or car. In order for her to move herself across the phaltscape, she needs prospectors, wildcatters, pipeline inspectors, ship captains and crews, deep-bore drill operators, indigenous security forces, foreign policy wonks, navies, supply-chain logistics specialists, fueling-station clerks, unleaded-gasoline delivery drivers, brake-line hose manufacturers, industrial robot maintenance engineers, TIG welding specialists, and many others; in order for her to stay in motion, a thousand other people need to be in motion; her mobility hinges upon all elements of a ridiculously complex system working together in perfect harmony, a thousand different people all doing their job with precision, care, and diligence.

On the one hand, the driver who fills up her car with gasoline keeps the money flowing to a thousand different persons working in a hundred different places; her actions grease the wheels of the global economy and tighten the bonds between peoples; her dependency on the pump, her slavery to the self-propelled chariot, fills the pockets of armies of workers around the globe. On the other hand, however, oil and its derivatives are a dirty business that relies on the burning of a useful and valuable resource; their production and removal taint the groundwater and the soil of any region where they are found; their sale has made the autocratic leaders of oppressive regimes – persons who support and finance terrorism – fantastically rich. The driver's mode of transportation leads to war and pollution, while that of the cyclist promotes self-sufficiency, healthful living, and peaceful interaction with both Nature and neighbor. Free yourself from that self-propelled glass and steel prison; mount a velocipede, today.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

figuring things out

A few weeks ago, after finally accepting the reality of a Mid-Atlantic winter, I dug out my long underwear from the back of the closet. Long had they sat there, unused and forgotten, for last year's winter was mild, cool but not freezing, breezy but not wind-swept. This year, however, things are different: the first freeze came in late October, the winds have been strong and out of the north-west, and temperatures have sunk below freezing every night for the past week – long john weather, to be certain.

Starting in 2002 I spent seven years in California, hunkering last winter in Los Angeles. Therefore, I now ask myself: How do I use the long john? When do I don it, and when doff it? I started out by just wearing it all the time, which worked out great at my job, where I spend a lot of time sitting in the cold because I am too stubborn to turn on the heat; but, being a regular and avid cyclist, I found that the extra layer of insulation caused me to sweat too much, especially when climbing the hills south of town back to my home, from work. And so I put the undergarment back into storage and had forgotten about it until yesterday morning, when I was preparing to do my yoga in a cold, ground-floor room (I do yoga pant-less, for ease-of-movement), and I thought: I need to keep my legs warm during my asana, and, since I write in the same cold room after making my stretching exercises, an extra layer of insulation might mean the difference between frozen toes and a buoyant spirit. Now, after some trial and error, I proceed as follows. I awake at dawn in the warm cocoon of a German down comforter, put on my sweatshirt and pants, go downstairs, take my pants back off, put on my long johns, do my yoga, put on jeans, and do my hour of labor in the yard before breakfast, changing back into regular clothes before breaking my fast, after which I write until my netbook's battery dies. Then, I do more yoga (sun salutations with some core-strengthening exercises thrown in), take the long johns back off, eat a lunch of a half a cup of rice and a few dollops of peanut butter and honey, and gather up my things in preparation for bicycling down into town, for work. If I return in the evening and the house is still cold, I put the long johns back on before doing my asana, leaving them on during the rest of my nocturnal activities and taking them back off again mere moments before crawling back into my nest of blankets on the floor in one of the upstairs rooms.

If one were to have asked me three years ago how and when to use long johns, I would likely have responded off-handedly with a snide remark about donning them when one's legs get cold; today, though, I would say that the use of this undergarment depends on a number of factors, including one's level of physical exertion, the average temperature of one's home, one's ability to withstand cold, and one's usual pants-changing rhythm. Things have been going similarly with many things in my life – I find that the more I think I know about a given subject, process, or procedure the less I am in a position to actually pass judgment on it, to talk about it, or to give my opinion about it, and the more damage is done by my talking and opining and judging. Perhaps the central lesson I have learned from this adventure with the long john is to check things out first before dismissing them offhand, and, as always, to keep an open mind. Some day, I'll remember this simple mantra. Until then, mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

the phaltscape calls

As the leaves turn brown and the morning mists catch me shivering, I struggle to resist the siren-song of the far and distant phaltscape. Known also as the asphalt landscape, the phaltscape exists in cities around the world, in urban environments large and small, in concrete jungles the world over. To some degree, the phaltscape exists here, too, in this rural little Pennsylvania town; I ride on it every day, pulling myself on my smogsled across its winding expanse, laboring along its curling and rising and dipping pathways with as much speed as I can muster. There is one phaltscape in particular for which I long, however; it stretches from Santa Monica Bay to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, from the Griffith Observatory to the 10 Freeway – I pine for the blacktop of my fair lost city, El Pueblo De El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula.

I do not linger in agony, nor do I suffer too greatly from being absent for the past seven months from her cruel and tender embrace; my love for her lives in a special place within the folds of my heart, in that place normally reserved for one's biological, or birth, mother. It is likely because I died and was reborn more than once in L.A. that I regard her with such child-like devotion, that I think of her with such fondness, that I am blind to her faults and see only her virtues; if she were less harsh, I'd feel betrayed, yet if she were to age and gain some wrinkles, I would not care one bit. Ask me to explain this affection, and I will draw a blank. Ask me to define, even, what I mean exactly by L.A., and my brains will overload and go blue-screen while they trying to pin down her elusive and terrifying grandeur.

Part of her charm lies in the diversity of her people, in her Chicanos and Japanese and Russians and Germans and Thais; part of it lies in her pleasant weather, in her hot winter winds and cool spring breezes and weeks upon weeks of bright, sunny days. Ah, but I have slipped into the trap I just warned against and tried to pin down that which I just said I could not pin down, struggling for words as my mind grew sluggish, only through great effort pulling myself back from the brink of complete mental shutdown. Suffice it to say that beyond the direct calls from her people – from friends still living there who ask when I shall return – I feel as if Los Angeles herself were pining a bit for me, too, for my footfalls to sound once more in her forgotten and noisome places, for the pneumatic wheels of my wire-donkey to sing from the Ocean to the River, the sweat of my brow gently moistening byway and avenue alike. Of course, such thoughts are but mere foolishness, the heart-pangs of a star-crossed lover yearning for his mate; she is likely glad to be rid of my stink, happy that I have begun to sink in roots of tree and garden, out here. No matter how much, though, I tell myself otherwise, I cannot with ease shake my memories of her. Sigh… and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

right of way

Recently, NPR aired a show which included mention of efforts undertaken during the first decades of the Twentieth Century to teach the American public to cowtow to the automobile, explaining that Americans had to be trained to think that roads were the domain of cars, the rightful place of automobiles, and that citizens not driving cars had no right to be on them. As a velocipedist – an avid and regular bicyclist – I suffer daily of the affects of this mis-education of my fellow upstanding Yankee, who now sees the car as an almost sacred thing, whereas persons not trapped within the stifling confines of these glass-and-metal prisons are seen as bothersome interlopers upon our tens of thousands of miles of commonly-owned bituminous track.

A car is nothing more than a hunk of steel and glass and plastic with a person or persons sitting on its plush seats and being moved around through space-time by the internal combustion of gasoline, a byproduct of oil, for which our brave brothers and sister pour out their blood and tears in distant and dusty places; oil is a poisonous thing that must be pulled from deep below the earth and refined before it can be used, whereas a bicycle is a few pounds of metal and rubber that allows a person to move himself around through space-time using little more than the muscles rippling beneath his taut and ruddy skin. And yet – daily – I am confronted by at least one person who considers his souped up, gasoline-guzzling shitbox, and his business, to be far more important than the car, conveyance, or business of anyone else.

Just two days ago, in fact, as I was approaching a blind intersection on my way to the local public library, I heard a motor behind me rev up, as if the vehicle's owner intended to pass me in the scant thirty feet that separated us from the stop sign. Putting myself squarely in the lane, I balanced for a moment, waiting for a gap in the approaching vehicles before shooting down a narrow side alley. Riding squarely in the center of the alley, the impatient driver approached to within a few feet of my bicycle's rear wheel, revving his engine and making as if to pass me where there was no room to pass. Flying into the next, two-landed road (the alley ends in a yield, not a stop, sign) and barely making it in front of an approaching car, I had moved to the far right side of the lane and was approaching my next right-hand turn when I heard that same engine rev up behind me. Turning around to see what was the matter, I made eye-contact with the impatient driver, whose vehicle – a black SUV – was so close to the silver Volvo behind me that I could see neither grill nor bumper. Passing the car in front of it, the truck screeched to a halt directly next to me, restricting all north-south traffic by completely Blocking The Box, the man within it staring at me menacingly.

Turning after having made the appropriate hand-signal (I signal all turns, and am loathe to ride at night without running-lights fore and aft), I glanced back again, laughing at the impatient man and giving him a little fare-thee-well hand flick. These egregious actions caused the man to reverse his vehicle very quickly (on a one-way street, into oncoming traffic), whereupon he, with squealing tires, raced down the road toward me, screeching to a halt next to me on the sidewalk where I had taken refuge near a tall brick building. “You're a real tough-guy, eh?” the man said, pushing his finger against some sort of box on his throat. Scrambling to keep moving, I bounced down the sidewalk and started to pedal onward, glancing back and noticing the black car had a Harley-Davidson front plate. The man pulled into a gravel lane, threw open his door, jumped out, and began to stalk toward me, chest puffed up and face fixed in the tortured rictus of a man whose heart is calcified with fearful hatred. Seeing that I had bruised his ego, and knowing the human ego to be one of the most terrifying and murderous of foul things ever to grace the planes of our fair Universe, I kept moving. “You're a real tough guy, eh?” the man said again, to which I responded with a shouted, “Slow down!” The man, of course, shouted back, “You slow down!”, touching a finger to his tracheal collar before speaking, each time.

A number of things became clear to me during yesterday's altercation. First, the man's business was so inconsequential (even though he seemed in a terrible hurry) that he could take time out of his schedule to run down and harass a bicyclist who had dared to retain right of way. Second, the man considered himself more important than anyone else on the road, riding everyone's ass and generally being a poor sport about things. Third, seeing that his belly resembled a beer keg and that his throat was perforated with a plastic speaking-collar, the man had ruined his health and body by eating too much, smoking too much, and drinking too much, which had obviously filled his heart with such frustration and self-loathing as to make him a Danger To Others. And, finally, he had allowed himself to be brainwashed into thinking that roads were made for cars (or, at least, for vehicles with gasoline-combustible engines), and that roads were the domain of nothing else, causing him to menace persons who happened to have left their own homes a few moments before he did, putting them, unwittingly, in his hateful path, riding, of all fucking things, bicycles.

To persons who insist on driving cars everywhere they go (even though, of course, buying gasoline puts cash in the pockets of Saudi Arabians, who use our money to fund terrorist groups such as al-Qaida), please remember that bicyclists are simply persons who have freed themselves from the prison-like confines of internally-combustible vehicles, flinging off the foul fat-folds of sloth and moving their bodies around using only muscle power. So, dear friends, please give other persons the right of way, even if they are not burning as much oil as you are burning while out-and-about; and, of course, please share generously of our common roadways, byways, highways, paths, alleys, lanes, and streets; but, most importantly, keep a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and your head on a fucking swivel. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on individual ownership

Bicycling everywhere I go in this little town gives me certain glimpses into the private lives of the people living here that simply cannot be obtained by driving around in a car. For one, I approach people nearly silently, with only the occasional creaking gear or rattling chain to betray my presence, allowing me to observe them candidly until I am all but upon them (or at least until their peripheral vision picks up my whirling feet). Secondly, whereas when driving in a car one is prone to choose the most direct and well-paved path to get to one's destination so as to maintain a good fuel economy and to spend as little time as possible stuck in traffic, when riding a bicycle I take a variety of routes paved and unpaved, direct and circuitous, back-alley and broad-way, as I see fit and as my schedule allows.

By avoiding the beaten and asphalted paths, and by keeping my head on a swivel and looking into everyone's yards, I have made a number of judgments and come to a number of conclusions. The first of all these unbearably smug and better-than-though-art observations is that people living in close proximity to one another own items in such redundancy as to nearly boggle the mind. No matter how large or small a person's yard should be, it will be cut using a full-sized, gas-powered lawn mower. No matter how few obstructions and other solid objects that cannot simply be mowed over, they will be trimmed using a gasoline-powered weed-whip or edge-trimmer. Every yard – even the postage-stamp-sized ones – will have a shed of sorts for storing gardening tools; every home-owner – even the ones with more time than money on their hands – will rush outside and pay good money to have machines to do such work as they could easily do themselves at the cost of some sweat and a few minutes of precious television-watching time. Oh, if communities but had a central storage-and-loan shed for tools, a type of tool lending-library, a place where persons not interested in always buying such things as they might need to keep their property up to code could go and borrow a pair of hedge trimmers or a ladder. Imagine the volume of extra cash that would be floating around! Imagine the richness such a facility would bring to communities across America, people coming out of their homes and mingling with one another on a regular basis while queuing for tools, discussing methods of lawn-care and sharing freely of hard-won secrets, second-hand tips, and local advice.

The second observation I should like to make is that far too few people seem to be growing victory gardens, accepting rather the luxury of being able to buy their food at grocery-stores as some sort of Eternal Truth and wasting their time sitting around in air-conditioned houses eating cheesy-poofs and watching reruns on TV instead of mucking about in gardens where they might – oh cruel and terrible thought – stumble into conversation with a neighbor or passer-by. Square miles of good growing space sit wasted on grass; endless expanses of fertile soil stand planted with little more, perhaps, than a handful of ornamental flowers. Sew grain, not just grasses! Plant food, not just flowers!

Dear friends, I am coming to see the widespread use of television as the root-of-all-evil in America, that one main factor that has sent this once-fine land into a tailspin of societal and communal decline, that one primary thing without which ours would be a better, stronger, and more closely-knit nation. Without TV, people would not be constantly told to Buy More Shit, and without TV, they might get off their fat fucking asses and go outside for a nice, healthy walk now and again. Woe is unto us, sisters and brothers, fellow Lovers Of Liberty, we who reject the tenets of conspicuous consumerism, we who seek to be self-sufficient and self-reliant; our siblings have stumbled down the path of convenience and leisure, seduced into personal debt by the candy-sweet promise of touch-screen-equipped tablets and one-click-ordering, lost in a land of false and hollow hope, ensnared in the web of ubiquitous advertising, bled dry of honor and self-respect. Which way leads back out again, friends? To whom do we turn for salvation? The answer, in short, is that we must turn now to ourselves, setting such good and positive examples as might show our fellow Americans that there are other methods besides their ruinous ways. Mahalo, friends, and keep fighting.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on signaling turns & lane changes

As one who velocipedes in a rural area, a town not at all designed with bicyclists in mind, I find myself adhering more strictly to the rules of the road than most of the automobile drivers with whom I share it. While I admit to running the occasional stop-sign – when no one else is within my fields of vision – and while I flagrantly violate the local law that states that pedal-mashers must ride on, of all places, the sidewalk (which is, one would think, intended only for foot-bound pedestrian traffic), I follow the law in one instance more than most others: signaling turns and lane changes.

Signaling one's lane changes and turns indicates a number of things. First, and foremost, it is a courtesy to the other drivers, a simple yet effective way to let them know that their location is known, that their existence on the road has been noted, and that the person making the lane change will do so, if at all possible, without slamming into any other cars that happen to be in his or her vicinity. Second, it gives the other persons on the road some small bit of warning that one's conveyance is about to undergo a series of sudden and likely violent maneuvers intended to change its direction and that of the people riding within or on top of it. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it shows that, as someone operating a vehicle on the road, one has one's shit together to the point that one knows just which route to take to get to where one am going, that one is taking the most direct and efficient path toward one's goal, and that one is paying attention to what is going on on the road rather than browsing the interwebs or clicking through a friend's tropical vacation pictures on facebook.

If you, dear friend, like to prove your worth to society at large, if you strive to be respectful not only of the property but also of the opinions of others, if you think that America would be a better place if everyone simply respected the life-threateningly dangerous activity that we call driving, please consider signaling your own lane changes, turns, and merges – every time and everywhere – even if it does not appear that anyone else is around who might benefit from such courtesy. With a bit of concerted effort, and a simple flick of the wrist, we can, each one of us, help to make this nation a better place for all who live here. Thanks, and mahalo.

場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit

on trashing Mother

Please, patriotic citizens of America, please take a moment, at some point during the day today, to consider just how much we litter in this land. For all of the bluster and fuss about everyone being patriotic and waving flags and hanging them from cars and homes and businesses, we show great disrespect, even outright hatred, for the motherland – she who is fair Columbia – by disposing of our trash in inappropriate places. Fast food cups fill meadows and ditches; plastic take-home containers tumble in breezes; and our parks and forests are strewn with waste large and small, tin cans and candy wrappers and all sorts of other items discarded carelessly and without a moment's humble consideration. To claim patriotism is a poor and hollow substitute for acting in such a way as to cause as little harm, and as little disruption, to the natural condition of the many wild areas with which we as a People are blessed. (It is a unbearably shameful that we stole these lands from the First People tribes who lived here first, and that we murdered them gleefully and treated them as if they were worth less than beasts, but that is beside the point of this article.)

Beyond the more visible forms of litter, the byproducts created by the explosion of gasoline inside a car's engine – particulate matters, soots, and noxious gases – are all forms of litter; therefore, it is important for everyone who is capable to ride a bicycle and to avoid driving as much as possible. The true patriot does everything in her power to minimize the harm her actions cause the motherland; just as she would not stuff handfuls of empty candy-bar wrappers into her biological mother's vagina, so she does not toss them heedlessly into her local rivers. Just as she would not douse her birth-mom with a gallon of spent engine-oil, so she avoids dumping any fluids other than water directly into the curb-side drainage pipe.

It would seem, perhaps, that this article covers things that people already know, that it would be unthinkable to imagine that there are individuals in this land who are such tremendous assholes that they would pour our their waste, discard their trash, and flick their cigarettes butts onto the first available natural surface, but it is true. We are a nation of individuals seduced by the notion of a false convenience, tricked by advertisers, pastors, and politicians into thinking that our daily actions do not amount to much, that things shall soon get better. America is great because of industrious, positive individual effort, but our negative, careless individual efforts are costing her dearly, and leaving her stained, tainted, and diseased. So, please, dear friends, please pack out anything you pack in, leave your surroundings better than they were when you found them, and nourish a love for Mother earth as vast as is the love you feel for yourself.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on the slave's chariot

Oh, how much we Americans suffer for our petty conveniences, and how terribly we abuse the Earth to maintain them. It is not entirely our fault, perhaps, that we lock ourselves in shiny metal boxes whose insides are constantly exploding – in part, our opinions have been shaped by a century of false intelligence that touts the benefits of the automobile and its socialist highway network while obfuscating the true cost of motor-vehicle ownership. Imagine someone today describing the car's negative effects – suburban sprawl, pollution, high maintenance costs, the alienation of the individual from society – and imagine your reaction. Would you jump for joy? Would you sign up at your local dealership in order to spend a year's salary on a combustion-driven steel battering-ram that is lined with miles of tiny wires and sensitive rubber hoses? Would you say, “Of course, Mr. Ford, Toyota-San, Herr Benz, of course I shall take on that second job so that I can drive to work, to school, to the store, to the post office, back to the store, to school a second time, perhaps to a publick-house, and then to my home?” If you are an clear-thinking and self-respecting American living today, your answer may not be the resounding Yes issued by previous generations.

One of the main reasons that we mere three hundred millions of Americans use more gasoline than billions of other people combined is that we have transformed our society into one that is wholly dependent on the automobile – we wantonly waste petroleum and wage war over oil because we choose to perpetuate self-enslavement to the notion that one's body can be moved around through space-time without expending much physical effort rather than to accommodate and promote the frugal and simple life of the bicyclist.

Compared to the slave-charioteer, the smog-rider knows how hard it is to move her body around, and that certain things take time, and that certain things take effort, and because she knows these things, she plans ahead and maintains time discipline while seeing to her own physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. By liberating herself from the artificial demands of a lumbering blunderbox filled with volatile chemicals, she keeps her soul free of sadness, discontent, and desire. By fixing her bicycle and keeping it road-worthy for an entire year for less cost than a single oil change, she spends her resources wisely. Her mouth, not a twisted metal pipe, is her exhaust port; her beating heart, not a cast-iron maze of tubes, is the motor that drags her across the phaltscape; her legs, not a row of oil-drenched, whirling plugs, are the pistons that turn the crank that sees her on her way.

The velocipedist, her heart buoyant and her soul aroused, lives the life of honest and healthy labor, while the car driver, that poor wretch sitting in his glass prison of perpetual payment, lives the life of one enslaved to the demands of a hardwood-accented beast. His mount of choice requires specialized and costly repairs, whereas the cyclist can pinpoint and fix problems easily and while on the go; his conveyance is the nation's problem, the bicycle, it's solution. Therefore, dear reader, please consider switching from a high-cost slave's chariot to a low-cost wire horse, and rejoice as your spirits, and your savings, rise.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on idling enemies

From oil (as in crude oil, sweet crude, Big Oil, oil wells, the British Petroleum Gulf Disaster of 2011, and the like) we get gasoline. From oil we also get plastics (which are used to make water bottles, baby toys, toothbrushes, car seats, laptop cases, lampshades, bottlecaps, pens, linoleum, clothing, shoes, and the like). Oil is a precious and a strategic national resource of the United States of America, and it is the duty of each and every citizen to protect his nation's precious resources. Therefore, the patriotic citizen never allows his gasoline-powered vehicle to idle for longer than 30 seconds, since idling past 30 seconds compared to turning off and later restarting the vehicle wastes gasoline, and gasoline, as it is a derivative of oil, is a strategic national resource. (Idling while stuck in traffic may seem unavoidable until one sees bicyclists flying exuberantly by, unopposed.)

The patriotic citizen educates himself about his use of this precious national resource – he does not waste it, because wasting it would mean that the brave men and women fighting America's war would perhaps not have enough gasoline to complete their missions. If a person were to wish to harm the United States of America and to make her less able to provide for the common defence and the general Welfare, that person would drive an unnecessarily large, gas-guzzling vehicle. The person who drives a vehicle disproportionate to his “need” to get around (such as a lone person driving a Ford 350 or a Dodge 3500) is an enemy of the state, because he burns more gas moving himself around than he might if he were to make a small personal sacrifice and drive a smaller car with a smaller engine. (Today's homo non-sapient accepts readily the lie that she might commute to her job by car, drive her car to the store, drive her car to the gym, drive her car to school, all without consequence; at least in America, we can no longer afford to be lazy, worthless people who drive our cars fucking everywhere.) In order to protect his nation's future (and to make sure the troopers fighting our wars have enough gasoline for their military vehicles), the true American patriot rides a bicycle whenever possible.

Life requires water. Without water, there is no life. Without water, humans die. Because it is a component essential to maintaining the general Welfare, and since it is needed to effect the Safety and Happiness of the American citizen, water is one of this nation's precious and strategic national resources. Businesses that waste water are enemies of the state. Persons who waste water are enemies of the state. Persons who allow the faucet to run while they brush their teeth; who run the tap while shaving; who hose down a driveway instead of sweeping it with a motherfucking Broom; who maintain lawns in the desert (instead of planting drought-resistant, native species); who toss cigarette butts into lakes; these persons are all enemies of the state. Please, dear reader, if you consider yourself a patriot, please examine your use of America's precious resources, and adjust your habits so as to improve this country's ability to survive in the future and to fulfill the parameters of the Constitution.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on phaltscape etiquette and standards

The urban bicyclist may differ from her fellow mashers in appearance, dress, and hairstyle, but she will share with them standards of smog-riding etiquette as extensive as those of any other professional affiliation. Since it would be inconvenient to list every standard common to the smog-rider, let us examine a few of the more practical matters. To avoid making the drivers trapped in their smoking metal boxes jealous, she keeps all evidence of her bursting exuberance hidden from sight. In order to inform the people around her of her whereabouts, she will sound a series of war-whoops and signaling-whistles piercing and attention-getting enough to prevent unnecessary collisions. She rides with proper stance – shoulders pulled back and chest thrust out – so as to isolate the workout to her lower body while allowing her eyes to scan the environment calmly and with keen interest. In order to stay upright and aboard her smog-sled, she is able day or night to repair and maintain it anywhere and in any weather, and although her conveyance will look dusty and well-used, it will be in good working condition, as she has always on hand tools and spare parts.

Beyond the practical matters just listed, there are spiritual standards common to the urban cyclist. Within his brains is an extensive collection of those routes that are the smoothest, that have the least motor-vehicle traffic, and that allow him to avoid running into pesky and annoying police officers. So as to keep his body in good working condition and to avoid the irritability and dangers associated with dehydration, he drinks regularly of green coconut water, or of other beverages rich in electrolytes. An honorable and virtuous being, he will carry his smog-sled when it can carry him no longer, and since he knows that bicycling is a dangerous activity, he lives peacefully knowing that death is rushing by inches from his tender flesh-bag of a body.

Here are presented but a few of the standards of smogriding – may you discover more, and establish a few of your own.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on phaltscape-withdrawal and dating | encyclopediamericanifesto

  Modern sociologists look with pity upon the smogrider who attempts after years of absence to re-enter the dating scene while she is suffering from withdrawal from the phaltscape, but you and I shall examine her more favorably. For reasons mechanical, spiritual, or otherwise mysterious, she is not riding smog regularly; thus, she is distressed. With her smog-sled sitting dormant, her hands are less calloused, her cheeks have lost their rosy hue, and cheer has fled her moods. This is not an isolated phenomenon: from the urban cyclist orphaned within the last few years to the gear masher with layers of parents, any person who is kept away from something she loves (such as smogriding the phaltscape) will approach potentially romantic meetings gingerly, and with hesitation.

  The physiological reasons for the smogrider's hesitation are clear – since they no longer bathe regularly in endorphin blasts triggered by rigorous exercise, his brains are cloudy and sluggish; lacking their hard and churning labor, his muscles atrophy, and his limbs twitch and jump about at random. Additionally, his speaking is as difficult to understand as his morals are to justify (which we speculate is caused by changes to the physical make-up of the cerebral cortex triggered by conscious epigenetic manipulation). Compared to the physiological reasons, however, the psychological reasons for the smogrider's romantic inability are less well known. Rumors tell that in the hours leading up to his rendezvous he descends into a period of existential crisis that lessens only long enough for him to scream self-loathing obscenities. Other unconfirmed data show that upon meeting his date, the smogrider panics and bears his soul without compunction (from which point onward no modern girl will give him the sex), and that by the end of the date he is on the brink of total personal despair, his failure all but assured, his time and his money surely wasted.

  Denying someone what they love is a crime both cruel and heartless, but keeping whorphan from him phaltscape reek downright of madness.

  場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit