13 March

Photos March 2024

 

Just one of many semi-slushy bottom-bracket destroying rides this winter...


Another night on the rail trail. One of those moments you just HAVE to stop and press the button.


New Look pedals and a tree stump older than every reader of this blog combined.

Taken at the end of our street. Dramatic cloud edges.


My Grandfather Mars. 

Bike photo with duck while hiding from a rainy day under Rt. 95 in Peabody.

Actual duck from Ipswich River Audubon.


Bee.


Depth of field at the forbidden canal (no, I didn't go beyond the no trespassing signs.)


self portrait at the end of a cold cold ride.


Itty Bitty chocolate and PB stout at Old Planters Brewery in Beverly


Swans at Coy Pond.

Pretty self explanatory. 


Golden hour on the Whippoorwill Isthmus Loop.


The stump again. Apparently this Gary Fisher headbadge is two mountains reflecting in a pond.


Return of the bee.



This sign has been hanging there... awhile.

Foggy day at Coy Pond. I think I've probably taken a photo from every foot the whole way around this body of water.


Self-portrait with bonfire.


Taken at the same stop as the ferns up above. Just happiness at the return of some color to the world.


26 February

...As a bee

 Is there any point to having a blog anymore? I'm not sure.


I certainly have a couple of blogs I read on a regular basis. In fact, I much prefer them to you tube videos and... what else is there? Tik Toks? 


Anyway, maybe that helps you understand my ambivalence about writing here. 


And that's not even mentioning the busyness of life. A busyness I create for myself? Yes, probably. 




(In fact, that's something I've been thinking about off and on lately. Am I the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland? Now, I've never actually read the book... or seen the Disney movie, for that matter. But I think I understand that rabbit. Sometimes I feel like I'm ALWAYS on a time schedule. Even my times of relaxing are not open-ended, but require my watching the clock. I'm always just on the verge of late. And psychologically, I don't think it's an ideal way to live. So where possible, I've been trying to soften the expectations. Work doesn't really go along with this schedule, for example, but when I head out for a ride after work, I do try to let me family know a general idea of when I'll be back, without promising to return in EXACTLY one hour. Because that's just extra stress, and on a normal evening, they don't mind half an hour one way or the other. )


 

06 December

Hunched Shoulders

"...he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart forever; the vulture the very creature he creates."   

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick.



 I'm no expert, but I think I probably have horrible posture. For example, it has always been a struggle to relax my shoulders as I ride a bike. 


    I first noticed at 17 that my default cycling position was (and still is) to keep my arms straight and hunch my shoulders. Horrible for your shoulders; not great for your arms. Instead of absorbing bumps, you take all the shock straight up into your bones and joints. Now, back then, I remember being told that proper cycling form involved staying narrow (and therefore "aero.") Your knees should stay relatively close to the top tube as you pedal. When you approach a long downhill, get your head down, your hands in the center of the handlebars, and your butt up in the air to make yourself aerodynamic. (the frontal area part of this equation is true. Maybe not so much the towering nether regions). And on and on. So maybe that somehow encouraged this bad form way back then. Or maybe I just misunderstood what they were telling me.

    But I know myself and my anxieties well enough to know I would've ended up in that position either way. I try to picture cement blocks tied to my elbows with strings to get them down. It works for a few seconds. I move my hands to different positions, searching for a place that will naturally cause my shoulders to fall. (Lately, I've learned that putting your brake levers higher on a flat bar does in fact encourage more relaxed arms!)  You would think that switching from a road bike to a mountain bike would've made a major difference in this regard, but although the hand placement was radically different, my shoulders somehow found their way to the same spot. Wider handlebars also discourage this straight-armed hunch---but they have problems of their own when they get too wide.



    Call it masochism, call it type-2 fun. What is it that makes some of us love to punish ourselves?  When there's a comfortable hotel, why do some people choose to sleep on the ground in a tent? And others feel even using that tent is "soft." What is so wrong with being comfortable?

      Years ago now, one of my friends was on a bike ride with me and asked, out of breath and innocently enough, "Why do you always choose the UPHILL trail?" I'll bet her forgot about saying it later that day, but it has popped into my mind and even conversations with a therapist many times over the years. Why DO I always choose what's hard? 

    Part of it is a belief that people today are way too soft and pampered. If we want to be stronger, a good default answer to this recurring question is to choose the harder way. Part of it is just my place on the glass half full/empty scale: I will always choose to hear the bad news first, do the hard thing first, in order to enjoy the good news/easy thing all the more. It's just that I sometimes forget the second part of this equation and just do the hard thing again.

    The American Heritage Dictionary—following some odd definitions involving sexual neuroses—gives this definition for masochism: 

"A willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences." 

    Maybe it's the last part of this sentence that sheds the most light. Do we do these things because deep down inside we feel we deserve punishment for something?  Or is it a lack of self belief that drives us to prove ourselves with these tests/quests over and over again? Why else would we subject ourselves to unpleasant experiences on purpose?

    And most disturbingly, does this play into why I find it easy to accept the Christian gospel? Especially in its more strict Calvinist form? (The popular TULIP summary of Calvin's theology begins with "Total Depravity.") Does a belief that humanity has fallen into sin and must be redeemed EXPLAIN my masochism or FLOW FROM it? It's a disturbing question to say the least. I would hope the answer is the former (though I have reason to strongly suspect some other explanations that I won't get into here for my tendency toward self-flagellation).

    But we've traveled far enough down that rabbit hole, and if you'd like to proceed farther, I've shared a link and you can explore as much about John Calvin as you like (the psychology is easy to find in any search engine). Let's return to bike positioning. 

    This is always a bit of a moving target. Adjusting one thing affects how you relate to all the other things. Move the saddle back and you'll affect how your legs move the pedals. Lengthen the stem or lower the handlebars and you'll be able to stretch out more- but put more weight on your hands. Which is good if you pop the front wheel in the air every time you climb a hill. But generally harder on elbows and shoulders the rest of the time. It's the same with adjusting the tilt of the saddle. You can aim the front down, and you'll arguably be more comfortable climbing steep hills (you won't have the nose of the saddle in your crotch), but at all other times, your weight will constantly be forcing your body to creep forward onto your hands. Of course the answer is moderation, but that's not always as simple as it sounds.


 

    But to return to the problem I originally spoke of—the hunching of the shoulders—it's amazing that I'm still wrestling with this. Perhaps it's because every frame interacts with contact points (grips, pedals, seat) differently, but you'd think after nearly 40 years, I'd have this down to something of a science by now. And in some ways, I do. I know my ideal measurement from cranks to the top of the saddle, or from the center of the stem cap to the back of my saddle. But biomechanically, I'm still woefully far away. Maybe I've discovered this position multiple times, but my body keeps changing and therefore the "perfect" position changes too.

    Or maybe life is just a long practice of resisting our self-destructive tendencies, and those of us who hunch our shoulders must simply continue each ride to remind ourselves to relax and keep our elbows and shoulders low—and carry that lesson into the rest of our lives. 



08 November

Evolution or Devolution: Covid, E-Bikes, and the Outdoors

     When 2020 happened, and people weren't allowed to do anything that put them in close proximity to one another, it happened to coincide with Spring and Summer, and this was good. People seemed to rediscover the outdoors, and cycling benefitted from this, too. Outdoors was the perfect place to be together- but with plenty of breathing room (pun intended) to keep the requisite 6 feet from each other. 

    And something started to happen. The parking lots at all the state parks and state forests were filled to capacity. More trash began appearing in the woods. Certainly there were more cairns. And most of this was fine. The trash wasn't, but I for one assumed these were just growing pains from people that hadn't really spent much time outdoors and didn't know the etiquette. And then people began painting on rocks and trees in the middle of the woods. "We're all in this together!" and "Stay Safe!" and other cheerful and well-meaning slogans. Totally inappropriate and out of place in the woods. but... they were just learning, right? This too would pass.

    But along with the trash and paintings and rock piles came two other things that were linked. People's lack of endurance and the rise of the electric assist bicycle. The THEORY here is almost sound. Spouses or children of stronger cyclists can use the E-Bike to keep up with them. Aging cyclists or those facing health conditions (one popular youtuber began reviewing E-Bikes after she underwent treatment for cancer, for example) can keep doing what they love. I'd see one of these E-Bikes every once in awhile. You couldn't really tell them apart from other bicycles. The riders seemed to be going quicker than you'd expect, but they acted in every other way like all the other people on bikes. 'And besides' said the bike companies, 'these are only e-assist bikes. they can't pedal themselves. And they don't offer any assistance past 20 mph anyway.' 

    But then a "miracle" happened. These self-imposed limits might've been true of bicycle companies, but when word got out that there was money to be made with these electric bikes, other people seem to have gotten into the game. And with their bikes, pedals and chains seemed to be secondary to electric engines. 

Bicycle? Moped? Electric motorcycle?


    And I witnessed other seemingly impossible occurrences. I'd see people on the trails riding uphill WITHOUT PEDALING. What kind of dark magic was this? Why, if it wasn't for the pedals and cranks, I'd almost think I was looking at a small electric motorcycle. And the majority of ebikes seemed to get bigger and louder. Not loud in a gas engine sort of sense, but they had big fatbike tires that buzzed a lot on the road, much like when you hear a big 4x4 approaching from behind while driving down the highway. And despite the obvious rolling resistance and weight, these "new" ebikes seemed much faster than before. 

    And their riders stopped looking like other cyclists as well. For one thing, they didn't wear helmets. That was a little out of the ordinary, but their choice. And not an unheard of one for recreational cyclists. But I also noticed they didn't seem to like shirts very much.  That was quite a bit different from the average biker/hiker/equestrian/hunter or really anybody else you regularly see in the woods. 

    When we look around, though, this seems almost inevitable. "Acoustic" cycling can be hard. There's no questioning it. Going up a significant hill is not "comfortable"- especially when you're new to riding. And in every other part of modern life, we're totally OK with  allowing technology to make our lives easier. Our cars make phone calls for us. Our phones have taken the place of paper maps (and cameras. And many other things.) How can we be surprised that the average consumer would rather make it easier to pedal than harder? Faster with less physical effort-who would say no? Well, I would, but that'll need to wait for another post.

28 August

Various recent(ish) photos!

My bike next to my most common ride around Coy Pond.

New chunk of rail trail in Danvers heading toward Middleton.

Bee on Purple Loosestrife.

Button Bush, or so I'm told.

Well, I guess we can see why THIS tree fell down...

Rainy day.

Along the BF Rail Trail in Concord.

Race bike at rest (next to the barn).

See? It's not all bikes. Here's the moon in the trees...

...and here's the trees in the fog...

This is some sort of flower. At Bradley Palmer State Park.

Here's dramatic golden-hour light on a tree.

This is to show how narrow the trees are compared to the handlebars. 

And this is just a gorgeous trail. 
In the spring, little blue and purple flowers grow in those plants on either side.


 

24 February

No, Virginia, there isn't a Poop Fairy

Deer fight pumpkins, not your trash.

In my last post, I mentioned how depressing it is seeing trash along trails in the woods near here. Today, I'd like to address a particular kind of trash: those little plastic dog poop bags. Go for a walk or ride in any public trails, and you're absolutely guaranteed to see them. Not hundreds; but not just one or two, either. The question is: where do they come from? Maybe it's more specifically WHO do they come from, because the trees and animals aren't making them like seeds, the dogs aren't using them, and that leaves only dog owners. They're not completely selfish. They clearly have some notion that it might be incredibly entitled of them to simply let their dog leave waste wide open in a public place. They take the extra step of picking up said waste in a little plastic bag. THEN THEY LEAVE IT THERE. Why? What could possibly explain the proliferation of these things in our public spaces? Do they leave them where they've done the cleaning up, CERTAIN that they'll remember the bag when they leave? That might explain one or two, but the problem involves far more people than that. Do they think they're leaving a less disgusting package (than open waste) for the park employees to clean up? I guess that could be argued. It's certainly better than someone else having to clean up after your dog. Or do they believe a mystical "someone else" will come along and clean up after them? A magical pixie that flies from place to place collecting bags that good little boys and girls have left in the woods, like some bizarrly twisted combination of Santa and the tooth fairy?("She knows when it's been pooping- he sees when you clean up...") Bad news, everyone- that entity doesn't exist. So I'm afraid we're back to square one. If you choose to have a dog, and you choose to take it into shared places and it poops there, then you're going to have to clean up after it. The whole way. The sad thing is that the people doing this probably imagine they're doing something good. But by wrapping the waste in plastic, they've simply insured that instead of it decomposing in about two months, according to one source on the internet, it will be encased in a little plastic shell that lasts 1,000 years in a landfill. That's obviously a whole different issue that we won't get into here, but suffice to say that you're not doing the environment any favors bagging your dogs droppings.

09 February

Hello, again, Hello

No time right this moment for a deeply thought-out post, but I wanted to get a few words on here and not just photos all the time. I won't kid you. Ever since 2013 when Kathy got her BC diagnosis right around Valentine's Day, February has always been a bit of a trigger for me and the fact that it's dreary mid-winter doesn't really help much. Not a major stress, exactly, but something lurking in the back of my mind throughout the shortest month. Kind of a downer, I know- but also the truth. Another worry that's not a full-on panic, certainly, but in my mind: global warming.
More specifically, the immediate weather changes we see year-over-year. In 2015, we got the winter of all winters. It seemingly snowed every day. We had to rake our roofs for fear they'd cave in. Last weekend, it was approx. -25F on Saturday, then nearly 50F on Sunday. That's just not normal. And not to go too negative on you- because I've heard I have a tendency for that-but when I look around at the litter not only on the sides of the road, but even out in the forests on the trails I ride, I don't see a lot of hope that we're soon going to turn things around in any meaningful way. On the other hand, one could question whether a little bit of litter has any environmental effects next to industrial pollution. But hey- people are driving Teslas- lots of them. Who ever thought they'd see an electric car become a status symbol? Personally, however, that shifting weather has been pretty good for me. Warm dry days (or even cooler but dry days) are perfect for continuing to ride. Not only does that keep up my physical fitness- and burn calories-but more important to me, it preserves my mental health. For whatever reasons I could get into through navel gazing and such, the woods relaxes me. It makes me more pleasant to those around me. It's my therapy in a very real way. If you read the article I wrote for Dirt Rag before it closed its doors, you have heard of Forest Bathing (Shinrin Roku) and know about the very scientific and real research that's been done into WHY time in the woods has that effect.
I've been hitting the peloton at work on the bad days, and though it's not exactly ideal, it is pedaling and it sits in front of a wall of windows, so it does have a natural element. Certainly beats lieing in my bed playing Angry Birds (that's for AFTER the ride!) So that's a bit of an update. You can find my email address on the home page of this blog. Shoot me an email if you have any questions- or leave a comment. Peace out.