perfectly good bikes

I work at an elite New England liberal arts college that shall remain nameless. It’s early March. The snow is melting, the grass is coming back, and out of the depths of the 10-foot high snowbanks, the abandoned bikes have started to appear. As I walked back from my noonday swim at the field house, I saw the rear tires and partially exposed frames of some really nice bikes. They had been locked to the bike rack for the winter. Bikes like these are scattered all over campus, chained to lampposts and garbage cans, or just left in heaps by the entrances to dorms. They look so sad and abandoned, orphans all. I’m sure their owners will claim them again when Spring finally arrives for good, but I couldn’t help thinking of that John Hiatt song, “Perfectly Good Guitars,” about musicians that smash their instruments just because they can. Maybe it’s because most of the students at the college where I work are wealthy and can afford to let their bikes freeze and rust in snowbanks. Maybe it’s because when I bought my first mountain bike with my own money, I used to keep it in my dining room and wipe it down with a soft cloth every night, much to my wife’s chagrin. Maybe we live in a disposable society where we don’t value and take care of our precious belongings that have been so hard-won. I don’t know. I just know that those bikes looked lonely and cold, and if I could have, I would have brought them all home.

Vinalheaven 2008

Impressions of Vinalhaven 2008…black slugs on the green grass of the playground…listening to WERU in the car (Beck, Aimee Mann, Death Cab For Cutie, Johnathan Richman… “Time Has Been Going By So Fast”…Quarry swimming, laying in the sun on the warm granite…Funyuns…The Onion Field…bike riding…pineapple mimosas…lots of beer in the afternoon makes you a better swimmer…mango tango…wiffle ball lost in the bushes again, and again…TB Rays in first place…Wild Wild West theme for 4th parade… “wanted for incessant scratchin’”…bumper sticker:the truly educated never graduate…

hiatus

I had some minor surgery last Friday, so I took this past weekend to recuperate. While I was flat on my back, gazing out the window at the sun-dappled leaves and listening to the birds singing, I was able to start and finish five books. They are: The Happiest Man in the World by Alec Wilkinson, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Into the Wild by John Krakauer, Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. All highly recommended. I can’t wait to fully recover so that I can get back on my mountain bike and resume my search for the perfect swimming hole. I’ve lived in Bath now for almost ten years and I’m just now really starting to appreciate the diversity of the landscape. The Kennebec can look foul one day, and as beautiful as the Seine the next. I might take a hiatus from this blog for awhile, too. It’s too beautiful outside to spend time at a computer. I hope you all can find your own private Eden this summer, too. Cheers! – henry

creepy naked guy

I have been on a quest lately to find a swimming hole within biking distance of my house. Living in Maine, and with the multitudinous rivers, streams and ocean inlets in my general vicinity, this would seem to be an easy task. But not so. Of course there are various places to swim, but I’m looking for a place a little more secluded, if you know what I mean. Thoreau and Ben Franklin are on my side in this quest for a place where I can indulge in an “open-air bath.” But there’s always the chance that I might get caught and viewed as some kind of freak. I had an experience last summer where I drove out to a secluded pond near my home. I hiked about a mile into the woods, and jumped into the water. Not seeing anyone around, I took off my bathing suit and threw it onto the rocks onshore. It was dusk, and the chances of anyone happening along were slim. And yet, who should appear out of the woods but four women. I was floating about twenty yards offshore and they called out to me, asking if I would mind if they joined me. Of course I agreed. What else could I do? They didn’t notice my state of undress, and, clad in their various swim attire, they jumped in as well. So here we have a great moral dilemma. Does a man, floating naked in the middle of a pond, admit to his newly manifested female companions that he is in fact naked and that perhaps they would like to take their leisure elsewhere? Or does he pretend that everything’s fine, just fine, nothing to see here? Well, I opted for the latter choice. But when the sun started to go down and the water got chillier, I had to make a decision. I slowly paddled towards shore, and gingerly retrieved my suit from the rocks at the water’s edge. You probably don’t know how difficult it is to put on a swimsuit while you are trying to tread water, but let me tell you, it’s not easy. As I climbed out of the water, clothed, I heard giggles behind me. They knew what had happened. I distinctly heard one of them say, “That must have been a thrill for him.” As if I was some kind of pervert. As if it was my plan to go skinny-dipping in a remote pond and hope that some women came along. Please. And yet, they had come out of nowhere, intruded on my privacy, and here I was, feeling like the creep. I remember swearing to myself that I would never let this happen again. But here I am, one summer later, looking for some kind of swimming hole utopia. I’m a married father of two, not some weirdo hiding in the bushes. All I want is someplace where I can be alone and feel close to nature. People can legally go off into the woods, drink a few Buds, and fire shotguns at innocent animals, or tear across frozen lakes on loud, belching snowmobiles, or plow through the woods on ugly, dangerous ATV’s, and all this is legal. And yet I, with my low carbon footprint, am some kind of freak. A man who goes into the woods with a gun to kill animals is called a sportsman. But a man who goes into the woods to swim unencumbered in a secluded pond is just a creepy naked guy, apparently.

bicycle utopia

In the same way I wonder why small, inexpensive homes have to be so ugly, I wonder why we can’t create a bicycle utopia in this country. I’m not an economist or urban planner, but I can’t imagine it would cost that much. I know it might be difficult in a place like NYC for instance to widen the road a few feet on each side to make a bike lane possible, buy why can’t we mandate that all new road construction include bike lanes? Then, let’s give every adult in the country a $500 tax credit to buy a bike with. Third, let’s try and implement the two-mile rule. Since it’s been shown that most of our driving occurs within a two-mile radius of our home, let’s encourage people to ride their bikes to their destinations instead. Perhaps we could invest more in public transportation (remember Bill Clinton’s promise of high-speed rail?) and zip cars for people to use on longer journeys, and redevelop, or “undevelop”, parking and vacant lots into gardens and green spaces. Then let’s put American ingenuity into creating clean-burning and recyclable energy solutions by asking (nay, demanding) that Detroit to stop making gas-guzzlers and instead produce more hybrid and electric cars. (Isn’t it sickening that GM/Jeep/Chrylser is now trying to subsidize their customers’ fuel bills for driving their gas-guzzlers with their “$2.99 Gas Guarantee?”) I don’t want to eliminate cars completely (except when I’m on my bike and they blow past me going 50 with inches to spare), but it would be nice if in this country we could break our blind faith in the idea, created and foisted upon us by the car companies, that a personal vehicle is necessary for freedom. I can be just as free riding my mountain bike into the woods and jumping into a stream. Using bicycles and public transportation when we can just might allow us all to take a collective deep breath of fresh air, instead of the exhaust fumes of the guy stuck in traffic ahead of us.

my new fantasy

I biked to work and back today, 20 miles round-trip. My standard garb: some long underwear from Reny’s under a few old T-shirts, bike shots bought at Goodwill, beat-up brown suede slip-on comfort mocs from LL Bean. It looks like I’m biking in slippers. Oh, and my helmet. Nothing fancy. I dream sometimes of quitting my job, selling my car, and biking everywhere. It feels so good not to consume. My new fantasy is to bike to my job at the brewery and then peddle home with a fresh sixer tucked under my arm.

simple needs

Here’s a nice piece of wisdom from one of my favorite blogs, How to Avoid the Bummer Life:

“You know, as I’ve said before, I’m a simple man with simple needs. By my own choice I have very little social life, I don’t eat much, I’m mostly house broken, and generally when I’m feeling in need of a break, instead of taking time off to go lay on a beach, go camping, or whatever regular people do when they go on vacation, I simply peel off on the bike for a few hours, drink some beer and maybe nap in the woods somewhere..”

upon awakening

This from Bhante Bodhidhamma, in his latest email from the Satipanya Buddhist Trust in the UK. Another of his witty, insightful Tips O’ the Day:

“An alarm clock is all well and good, but it is often a rude awakening. Consider how you wake up when, on holiday perhaps, you don’t put the alarm on. One wakes into a presenting mood. But the jolt of the alarm creates a shock wave in the mind and heart, and we wake into that reaction. This is hardly a good start for the day. If you can quieten the waking alarm by smothering the clock a little or go to the expense of one with a rising alarm that is the better way to waken oneself. You can always put on a second alarm clock which, should you fail to wake, is guaranteed to blast you out of bed. So we awake into a presenting mood. It may be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Should it be neutral, that is a peaceful start to the day. Should it be pleasant, the mood will grab an idea from the mind’s library and create a reverie. It will do the same should the mood be unpleasant. These opening moments to the day offer us an immediate practice. To turn these opening gambits to our advantage, we have to be wide awake upon awakening. We will do this if we have made that resolute resolution to wake with the bell. It may take a little practice, but it is not so difficult to develop. We center that immediate wakefulness into the body, especially attentive to that area in the mid-chest where we distinguish our emotional life. As soon as we recognize the mood, we acknowledge it and practice vipassana. Should we wake into a peaceful state, rest there and acknowledge it, grateful for this gift. Develop a taste for it. See it as a default position and make a resolution to return to this peacefulness as often as we can throughout the day. Should it be pleasant, from excitement as to what the day beholds, to a flowering romance, to a joyful memory, whatever the cause of the happy mood, be wakeful enough not to be transported into the dream world. But again we acknowledge the state. We see the danger of a make-believe world and we practice, if possible, until it quietens, hopefully into an inner glow. This is to take the attachment out of happiness. And we make a resolution to maintain this quiet joy. Should the mood be unpleasant, from depression, to anxiety, to anger, whatever the cause of the unhappy mood, we prevent it from hurling us into a mental maelstrom. So again we acknowledge the state. We see the danger – how the mood uses the mind to wind itself up. Bury the attention into the feeling, the sensation, of the mood and practice at least until it begins to subside. In this way we take the sting out of these unpleasant states. And we make a resolution not to allow negativity to hold sway. I have to say this is where the snooze button comes into its own. Here, not simply for the purpose of reminding us of time passing, nor to appease the base desire to exercise one’s sloth (heaven forbid!), but the very opposite, to be sure our enthusiasm for this wakening practice doesn’t make us late for work! The Buddha admonishes us, ‘Don’t be lazy now and remorseful later’

baking bread, naming trees

I baked two loaves of bread the other day. This might not seem like such a radical thing. People have been baking bread for centuries. I got the idea from the book I’ve been reading, The Freedom Manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson. In it, he says “if you can make bread, you can do anything. It’s amazing how much confidence baking bread gives you.” My family and I have been eating this bread, which is so much more substantial that supermarket bread, for three days now, enjoying it with our dinners or toasting it for breakfast. It’s a gratifying sight to see your three-year-old son eating the bread you baked. I’ve cooked many meals for my family but for some reason making bread has been the most fulfilling cooking I’ve ever done. And it’s thrifty. Another of Mr. Hodgkinson’s mantras is to “reject waste, embrace thrift.” He advises us to throw out the telly and stop buying magazines. These devices just entice us to buy things we don’t need. Ride a bicycle, the thriftiest invention ever! I just saw an ad on television for Lowe’s, a chain of home improvement stores. Spring is here, and so now we must start our “outdoor projects” Gene Hackman, their paid spokesperson tells us. We are forever working, even during our leisure time. “Let’s build something together” Mr. Hackman exhorts. More like “Spend a lot of money at Lowe’s, using your Lowe’s credit card, and then go home because now you’re on your own, friend.” Commercials never tells us that spring is here and now it’s time to lay in the grass, do nothing, and watch the clouds pass overhead. For the stores, there’s no money to be made in promoting idleness. But it feels so much better to be thrifty than to shop. Shopping will never gratify us. That’s why we keep doing it. If we were ever really gratified, we’d stop shopping tomorrow. But that’s not in the stores’ best interest. To always keep us wanting for more is their philosophy. But what a sweet victory thrift is over waste! For example, I found a free book in a donation bin a few days ago, a guide to identifying trees of North America. It’s one of these old fashioned Golden guides, with colorful drawings instead of photographs. I didn’t pay a cent for it, and yet my children and I have been enjoying looking at trees and trying to find them in the book so as to name them. We found out that the tree in our front yard is (probably) a Norway maple. We’ve lived in our house for almost ten years and never knew that. For the longest time the tree in our front yard was just named “tree.” But now it has a name. And just yesterday my son said that when he got out of preschool he wanted to “look for trees.” Now that’s much better than television.

energy independence

I’m still amazed by the bicycle. It is a miracle of human ingenuity and design. In its ubiquitousness the bicycle is easy to take for granted. But is there a more perfect invention? If there is, I can’t think of one. When idle, it humbly stands by, waiting only for the application of human energy to spring to life. As I was riding my bike to work this crisp morning and the pickup trucks and SUVs with the American flag decals were blowing past me, I smiled to myself and felt secretly superior. It’s amazing how your perspective changes when you’re on a bike. When I’m driving my car, I feel relaxed and safe. The world floats before me as I glide down the road in my cocoon of steel and glass. Nothing can touch me. But when I’m on a bike, all motorists become my enemy. I sometimes get the feeling that they are actually trying to drive as close to me as possible, just to give me a scare. In this way, riding a bike while others around you are driving seems like an almost rebellious act. During my commute this morning I was thinking about this notion of energy independence. It’s a phrase that gets tossed around quite a bit these days, especially due to the current crisis we’re in. As Americans, it seems that most of us equate freedom with the ability to do whatever we want. More specifically, to drive whatever we want. We have come to expect cheap gas as a God-given right. Somehow the ability to waste things (money, gas, food, energy, etc.) is the luxury we have of living in a wealthy country. But the fact that the fuel crisis has made its way to places like Costco, where they are limiting the amount of rice you can buy, should show us that we’ve been on the wrong track for quite some time. I’d like to abolish the notion that patriotism equals gluttony. I know energy independence to some means drilling for more oil in places like ANWR so that we can power our ever-increasing armada of heavy, lumbering gas-guzzlers. Criticizing SUVs is old hat and so I won’t get into that here. But I wonder if we’ve turned a corner in our thinking about energy independence. To conservatives, a country full of solar panels, wind farms, and geothermal plants, with armies of tree-hugging, bike-riding hippies cruisng around and using their goddamn hand signals might seem like some kind of Ralph Nadar-inspired Hell. But isn’t true energy independence the most patriotic, conservative position of all? So declare your energy independence! Leave your car at home and bike to your destination. You’ll feel very patriotic. Flag lapel pins optional.