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Bottled Lightning
Aug. 26th, 2010 06:32 pmToday was all about my bike. I headed to work on it, nervously-- I'm always nervous for the first few months of road riding (if you're all endorphined up, you may well type 'nervous for the first few' as merely 'new' and not notice for a moment or two because things move really /fast/). Riding a bike in traffic is dangerous, I haven't done it much at all in almost a year. It's even more dangerous when you're going downtown only an hour before rush hour, they've changed the bike baths and routine, and you don't know exactly which way you're going.
There was a little bit of annoying, but in general everything was fantastic. And when I say that, I mean really fantastic. I got to work and worked through my half-day, leaving the bike in a hotel in which I work because I'm terrified of it getting stolen, then I met up with Brendan and Paul and we went for lunch and then Paul and I took off on our bike adventure.
Now first, Brendan and Paul are good friends, and both have something I recognise as a sense of humour-- not entirely a common occurrence. Brendan is also an urban planner, and as such shares as certain awareness of cities and the planting thereof as I do-- he's more likely to be aware of architectural details and history, but he can also appreciate poor plant placement &c. He's one of the very few people I can "geek out over street trees" with, to use his term, and we also share a similar level of cynicism about urban systems and sustainability. Paul is Paul, has done a fair amount of environmental planning work in his life, has some environmental background, is mostly about the people side of the equation but is absolutely someone I can talk to as an equal about this sort of thing, and I respect his greater knowledge in some areas (as in I ask questions and expect good answers).
So lunch was great. And biking was great even though my tyres were pretty damn flat going around the park-- with that and the headwind it felt like uphill most of the way. When I finally had air in them again it was like flying-- that was after going around the park, when we stopped for creampuffs (we each ate 4, if Paul incites me to be a hooligan I'll damn well incite him to be a hedonist) and to start a wonderful discussion on evolution. Paul made an argument for some pretty extreme mass extinctions in the world of Avatar, and we kind of took it through snowball earth hypothesis and through the largest organism in the world (populus sp vs fungus) from there while we biked around Yaletown and up home.
I have to admit, keeping up with Paul on the bike took some doing. I absolutely had more speed on the flats than he did, but I'm still working on getting the new gear shift system on my bike down (if you shift the wrong way when you're going uphill, sometimes you just gotta get off and walk up the hill like an idiot), my tyres were pretty bad, and-- Paul spent a lot of the last year biking in Nepal, so any time we were in traffic he was at an advantage. I hate riding on sidewalks, switching at will from pedestrian to vehicle traffic and back (well, I love it, but I don't like to do it, on the principle that it pisses people off) but he was the supreme master of that kind of element. It was a joy to watch him and a terror to follow.
All told I was on the bike for maybe three hours or a little more today. I feel great. Now, I love biking-- I absolutely adore the feeling, like flying, like a fish in water. There's something about the way the world feels on wheels, and especially the way the weight and heft of my new bike sits between my thighs so that I steer with little shifts of weight without even thinking about it, so the bike just goes where I want it to, that is kind of transcendent. I feel neither like I'm being carried nor like I'm one with the bike, but instead there's a synergy of two organisms. Together me and the bike are more than the sum of our parts. And it's fun, it's a game the bike and I play together to go fast and play with precision of placement and just everything --I love biking, but afterwards is just as wonderful. When my body is well-used, when I push it and it listens, just living in my flesh feels like the part of a song where the choir suddenly soars out of a hush of background hubbub. Right now every bit of my body is singing to me.
Yeah, there are endorphins going on. Obviously I'm having a very good afternoon for many reasons. In addition to the mental glow, though, I just love the way my body feels.
In conclusion, I like biking and intend to keep doing it. Today was both a gift (you know who you are) and an awakened memory. I am reassured that no, I'm not just dicking around with this, I love it, and I can do it a bunch-- and I will. And now, I will go play Home by the Magnetic Zeroes over and over, and perhaps scrape some of this sweat off me.
There was a little bit of annoying, but in general everything was fantastic. And when I say that, I mean really fantastic. I got to work and worked through my half-day, leaving the bike in a hotel in which I work because I'm terrified of it getting stolen, then I met up with Brendan and Paul and we went for lunch and then Paul and I took off on our bike adventure.
Now first, Brendan and Paul are good friends, and both have something I recognise as a sense of humour-- not entirely a common occurrence. Brendan is also an urban planner, and as such shares as certain awareness of cities and the planting thereof as I do-- he's more likely to be aware of architectural details and history, but he can also appreciate poor plant placement &c. He's one of the very few people I can "geek out over street trees" with, to use his term, and we also share a similar level of cynicism about urban systems and sustainability. Paul is Paul, has done a fair amount of environmental planning work in his life, has some environmental background, is mostly about the people side of the equation but is absolutely someone I can talk to as an equal about this sort of thing, and I respect his greater knowledge in some areas (as in I ask questions and expect good answers).
So lunch was great. And biking was great even though my tyres were pretty damn flat going around the park-- with that and the headwind it felt like uphill most of the way. When I finally had air in them again it was like flying-- that was after going around the park, when we stopped for creampuffs (we each ate 4, if Paul incites me to be a hooligan I'll damn well incite him to be a hedonist) and to start a wonderful discussion on evolution. Paul made an argument for some pretty extreme mass extinctions in the world of Avatar, and we kind of took it through snowball earth hypothesis and through the largest organism in the world (populus sp vs fungus) from there while we biked around Yaletown and up home.
I have to admit, keeping up with Paul on the bike took some doing. I absolutely had more speed on the flats than he did, but I'm still working on getting the new gear shift system on my bike down (if you shift the wrong way when you're going uphill, sometimes you just gotta get off and walk up the hill like an idiot), my tyres were pretty bad, and-- Paul spent a lot of the last year biking in Nepal, so any time we were in traffic he was at an advantage. I hate riding on sidewalks, switching at will from pedestrian to vehicle traffic and back (well, I love it, but I don't like to do it, on the principle that it pisses people off) but he was the supreme master of that kind of element. It was a joy to watch him and a terror to follow.
All told I was on the bike for maybe three hours or a little more today. I feel great. Now, I love biking-- I absolutely adore the feeling, like flying, like a fish in water. There's something about the way the world feels on wheels, and especially the way the weight and heft of my new bike sits between my thighs so that I steer with little shifts of weight without even thinking about it, so the bike just goes where I want it to, that is kind of transcendent. I feel neither like I'm being carried nor like I'm one with the bike, but instead there's a synergy of two organisms. Together me and the bike are more than the sum of our parts. And it's fun, it's a game the bike and I play together to go fast and play with precision of placement and just everything --I love biking, but afterwards is just as wonderful. When my body is well-used, when I push it and it listens, just living in my flesh feels like the part of a song where the choir suddenly soars out of a hush of background hubbub. Right now every bit of my body is singing to me.
Yeah, there are endorphins going on. Obviously I'm having a very good afternoon for many reasons. In addition to the mental glow, though, I just love the way my body feels.
In conclusion, I like biking and intend to keep doing it. Today was both a gift (you know who you are) and an awakened memory. I am reassured that no, I'm not just dicking around with this, I love it, and I can do it a bunch-- and I will. And now, I will go play Home by the Magnetic Zeroes over and over, and perhaps scrape some of this sweat off me.
