Why do I ride my fucking bicycle?

I realized the deepest beauty cycling gives me. It has taken me a lifetime to understand the force that compels me to turn the cranks of my bike for hours on end. I frequently ride with a large group that maintains a small group of core riders. I am not one of those core riders, but I’ve been with the group long enough to know who is. I watch them disappear or hear through the Strava grapevine that they were hit or crashed. Usually it’s pretty bad. I was never the person hit year after year. And then, on a quiet Sunday afternoon that changed and I found out I could not dodge that collision forever.

I was rolling down a country road just outside Folsom when an SUV hit me from behind. It hurt. It was scary. The police were coercive. Everyone was against me—the cyclist. I was afraid that if I sat down I would never get back up. My body was torn up and life slowed down. At first, everyone was concerned and it was like I had fifteen minutes of fame all my friends and family. After a few days, there was silence as I struggled on. The days rolled into nights. I looked at my bike and after a few weeks I tried to put my hands on the handlebars only to find I had deep bruising in the exact shape of those bars. And the waiting continued.

I read online to try stretching my leg—excruciating pain. I eventually could climb the stairs. I started walking without a limp. I climbed on my bike on a Wednesday morning and took off for school—a twenty-mile ride. Halfway there I changed my mind, but it was too late. I let my leg spin like dead weight, using my good leg to propel my bike forward and move the bad leg up and down. Crawling along I made it. Limping back I made it back home at the end of the night.

The next day I convinced myself that if it hurt I would turn back, but my bad leg felt pretty good. My bad leg could push down on the pedal. My good leg shared the work and for the first time in a month I felt hope. I felt normal. I felt freedom as the wind shifted and swirled around the riverbed as I rolled a long at a faster speed than before. However riding held a different meaning as it became linked to so much more.

Now when I ride I feel the air hit me just before a big truck passes me inches from my back and I shudder. I hold my line and force the demons out of my mind. I force the memory of the side of that ill-fated traveler instantly colliding with me. I shut out the image of the side of the road coming at me while I was upside down and in the air. I feel the next car coming upon me and I repeat the same process. So what does all this have to do with beauty?

After someone has been hit in the cycling club it is almost as if there is a ghost in their place within that group of riders. Some times that ghost turns back into a rider as they pick their bike back up again and sometimes it slowly fades into nothingness. I found the secret meaning hidden beneath spring days, sharp tan lines and splendid journeys—I am not a ghost. I felt my feet spinning revolutions and I understand I got back up again. I look down at my purple knee pumping next to my frame and I lifted myself back onto the saddle. I look into the memories of my broken marriage and I know I will stand back up again. I look at my torn childhood and I realize I will not break my daughter’s youth. I am more than my experiences. I am bigger than the small moments that try to define me and shatter my world. I feel that rush of air behind me and I hold my line because I am not afraid to fall down.

Here Come the Clouds

Ahhhhh, getting hit by an automobile.  I think I have some dark days a head of me.  I wrote an incredibly optimistic post about how nothing could be worse than 2013--yeah, so perhaps there was a little bit of ironic foreshadowing in that one.

I'm watching some of the wounds turn into scabs but its what I can't see that's scaring me.  Two days ago I could barely move my arms, now I cannot sleep because my leg hurts.  It feels like a knife is tearing through my leg.  It feels like every step makes it worse.  I hopped up after I slid to a stop following the collision, and was almost running around.  Now I tell my child I can only go up the stairs one time.

When I do sleep I dream I'm riding my bike.  Since 2009 I have never quit moving.  I stopped running because marathon training forced me to take breaks, and those weeks of inactivity were too much.  I am in so much pain that I wonder if I will pedal again.

  

When I Shuffle off this Mortal Coil

I keep remembering the side of an SUV coming at me and the side of the road moving towards me while I was upside down and off the ground.  While I have been hobbling around campus and groaning as I sit down I realize one day I will die.  There is a strange silence in my life right now.  It's kind of like unknown to me, everything was building up to the events of last weekend and now there is just a quiet release.  

Initially I recieved a wave of support from friends and family, but now I look at my bike and wrap bandages around my arms and legs to hide the bleeding from the outside world.  I walk around with this hidden trauma and pretend nothing happened.  I looked at other people's car versus bike outcomes and feel lucky.  Only, what do I do?  I really think it's just a matter of time until the next driver is texting or drunk or just plain malicious and I find my life at the intersection of their actions again.  How do I live my life from here?  Am I afraid I'll fall down again?  Am I too scared of the outside world to get back up?

-Saved my life and you can barely tell except from some cracks and scrapes...

Almost a Ghost Bike

Yesterday I was riding down White Rock Road for a little warmup before I turned onto Scott Road.  I looked over my shoulder and saw an open road.  I looked over again and there was an SUV flying into me at 50 mph.  The SUV hit me and I remember being upside down and in the air.  I watched the side of the road coming at me thought to myself to just roll.  In some insane adrenaline I popped up and started hopping around to check for broken bones and make sure I was still alive.  The car went through a fence and far into a field.  I was hopping around I realized I had no major injuries.  My leg was really injured from being hit my the car but nothing was broken severly.  I grabbed my bike out of the road and waited for the paramedics.  The driver of the SUV never got out of the car.  

After the hospital I realized just how entirely lucky I am.  I went home and found everything on my body was shredded.  My helmet took all of the impact as I am pretty sure I remember landing on my head.  My clothes are shredded.  My arm warmers and leg warmers shredded.  Even my shoes are destroyed.  But I'm walking--a little slowly--but still walking.  

Self Portrait at the ER.

Where's My Mind?

Well...one semester of college left. I can make it, right? I have sort of been in a self-imposed cocoon. I realized I am really messed up from all that divorce stuff. I thought I did not care. Yeah, I guess I do care. What no one tells you when your spouse cheats on you is what is left behind in the dust is you. All I have is a painfully obvious trail of clues and some majorly telling memories that make me wonder where was my mind? So I have been staying up late and listening to Ted Talks and trying to relax as much as possible. I had fun visiting friends and managed to get the nastiest flu ever. So I guess one day I'll have to make a decision to trust myself again. I am certainly quick on picking up on all those clues now. I just wonder how I can want something so badly that I turn off my reason and live a lie. Of course when I'm wonder where my daughter is and whom she is with I think I can figure out how that happened...

Christmas 2013

So I decided to head out for some Santa Searching today and take advantage of the empty roads.  While I did not find Santa I did have a blast hitting some favorite climbs between Newcastle and Auburn.  

I climbed up Sierra College Drive and turned towards Lincoln.

While the roads feeding Lincoln were packed I think I found two cars on the road from Fowlers to Ophir.

Auburn was a ghost town today.  It's usually crawling with people in old town and it was super empty.

The Crying of Lot 49

So I found a new obsession last week with my discovery of The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.  It's one of those books that infects your mind.  You listen to the news and hear Pynchon's commentary reaching across the 1960's to today's world.  It is probably the most relevant book to modern times I have ever read.

So if you're wondering what makes it such a profound work just imagine watching the first two seasons of lost and discovering everything in that show is real...

I am going to post my verbal essay for class below.  It is attempting to answer the mystery behind Pynchon's use of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and basically managed to get everyone in the class laughing--including my professor.

According to the website Wikipedia:

 “The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems spontaneously evolve toward thermodynamic equilibrium—the state of maximum entropy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the second kind are impossible.”  

Of course that definition comes with a few other terms that have to be defined like entropy and thermodynamic equilibrium.  The same website states thermodynamic equilibrium is:

“In thermodynamics, a thermodynamic system is in thermodynamic equilibrium when it is in thermal equilibrium, mechanical equilibrium, radiative equilibrium, and chemical equilibrium. Equilibrium means a state of balance. In a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, there are no net flows of matter or of energy, no phase changes, and no unbalanced potentials (or driving forces), within the system. A system that is in thermodynamic equilibrium experiences no changes when it is isolated from its surroundings.”

 And finally as if it is not confusing and scientific jargon laden enough, entropy is defined as: 

“In thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of the number of specific ways in which a thermodynamic system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of disorder, or a measure of progressing towards thermodynamic equilibrium. The entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium, which is the state of maximum entropy.”  

I find the standard definition of the Second Law of Thermodynamics kind of humorous when coupled with The Crying of Lot 49 as the beginning is extremely complicated with a little statement almost randomly tossed in about perpetual motion machines.  It’s also slightly funny to look at entropy and thermodynamic equilibrium’s definitions because—when paired with this novel—they sound a lot like sorting mail.  While entropy is pushing everything towards chaos the second law of thermodynamics states that you cannot side step entropy—which is what all this business is really about.  It’s almost like Pynchon wrote a book about sorting mail to poke fun at physicists.  So how does all this stuff relate to the novel?

Within the book Oedipa finds a clue in a bathroom stall at the Scope with the symbol of a muted post horn with WASTE written below it.  Later in the novel when she is touring the Yoyodine plant she stumbles onto Stanley Kotex drawling the same symbol on a pad of paper.  She engages Kotex and he offers her attempts to persuade her as a “stock holder” to change the company’s ownership of intellectual property.  Oedipa ironically offers Thomas Edison as the last person to really invent anything of value and Kotex  explains James Clark Maxwell and John Nefastis inventions.  Kotex tells her about Nefastis’s perpetual motion machine based on Maxwell’s the Demon. 

 And here I have to offer a side note…James Clark Maxwell was real.  He did some crazy stuff like event electromagnetic theory and influenced Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity.  So it would be really funny if the demon was real…right.  It’s real.  Wikipedia shows two boxes full of little molecules and a green demon sitting on top of them opening a trap door between the two. 

Okay, so Kotex explains Nefastis’s Demon working by a sensitive taking the place of the demon and staring at a picture of Clark Maxwell.  Kotex explains it doesn’t really violate the Second law of Thermodynamics because “It’s mental work but not work in the thermodynamic sense,” (p. 80).  Almost sounding like the Remedious Varios painting described by Dr. Madden last class Oedipa wonders if she is a sensitive and thinks to herself, “Shall I project the world?” (p. 81).  While it is funny to think of a man who majorly influenced the modern world making a machine with a demon operating it the bigger question should be why would Maxwell care so much about sorting molecules?  The big reason Maxwell creates his Demon is resisting the forces of the universe that is propelling us all to our inevitable death—entropy.  If one can stop entropy couldn’t they live forever?  

When Oedipa finds John Nefastis in Oakland she tries to operate his demon machine to see if she is a sensitive.  Nefastis expands on how the demon connects with entropy and the Second Law:

“ Entropy is a figure of speech, then,’” sighed Nefastis, ‘a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow.  The machine uses both. The demon makes the metaphor not only verbally graceful, but also objectively true,’” (101). 

While staring at Clark Maxwell’s image she sees he could be holding something in hands that have been cropped out of the picture.  She wonders what was in his hands and I think it could have been a muted post horn or an upside down dead badger?  Maybe Maxwell’s machine works and expands the mystery of Tristero even further?  Could he be one man moving through the pages of history?  Who is that mysterious bidder?