In those days I was was wont to see a lesson in everything, a tendency which hastened with my newly found habit of taking my bicycle everywhere humanly possible. When you’re on that sort of kick, there’s a sign in everything—slow down, winding road, railway crossing, bump-ahead, STOP. I lived my life by these signs, on and off the saddle. I’ll tell you an example. Some people just get annoyed at children, but I see ‘yield.’ Or, when their pompous boss saunters in-and-out of a room, bald-headed, with a completely smug abandon, some people will want to become angry, lose their temper, get confused, self-conscious even, or -- if these baser emotions are left unchecked -- start to learn to hate the world; all I see, simply, is ‘bump-ahead.’ Signs are everywhere, if you are looking, and this is a memoir of that time in my life when I lived by their dictate.

I know what you’re thinking, how can you ever know for sure what is a sign worthy of your attention and what isn’t? Right. Ok -- so I’ll admit, it is not a perfect science. Much in the same way there is no science in how one ought to read a Frank Herbert or H.G. Wells novel, nor a recipe for what you are supposed to get out of it. Similarly, there is no universal ‘hand-book’ you can study that will tell you how this ought to be done. That is a question that is perhaps as old as the use of the written word¹ and one which I am not here to answer. Suffice it to say, I learned by the skin of my teeth.

Allow me to gear down so I might stop and tell you what actually happened that summer where I, as I have said, learned to live by the dictate of signs. Moreover, in the course of telling you what happened, it is my intention to tell you how it happened. How the humid city air that baked pizza-stone sidewalks became a beautiful green pasture beckoning for my heaving and pumping, my legs throbbing under wrinkled, cotton chinos that served dual purposes, athletics and work. How the city smog delighted in my heavy breathing more than I delighted in it. For I was virulent, a force that billowed like a cloud alongside Teslas and Mustang Mach-Es, my beard being pulled wherever the wind wanted to take it. With my technique, my absurd dance like a drunken warrior, I repelled careful semi-drivers whose life hung in the balance of eighteen-wheels more precarious than my two. There was no vehicle there more timeless nor timely than my steel-framed Raleigh racer. Its black paint-job glistened in sunlight and rain, like David’s eye that glistened when he took his aim at his final opponent before releasing that fateful sling.

And there is the first and most important lesson; fear not a great size, for the careful cyclist is much more nimble than a heavy freight shipper. The obsession that a thing must be infinitely bigger and newer than everything else that came before it is another point entirely; yet, no-one possesseth an appreciation for lightness like the cyclist does. Every push, kick, slight rotation of the wrists or shoulders will set her on an entirely new path. She has little issue when surmounting curb-sides, speed-bumps or railway crossings. She makes no pains to find a parking spot when going to work, nor does she worry about other careless motorists denting or scratching her vehicle as hers comes with her, up the elevator into the office. For it is not her size that will protect her, but her boldness, to which motorists everywhere yield. Assert yourself, take up the space you need on the road, and ride without fear.

There was once a black-pick-up-driving nationalist (I could tell from his hat) that got aggravated once by my riding on the road. He threw a fit, honking and cursing at his windshield, as the traffic and I prevented him from passing. There was a red light, so he shifted into park and proceeded to step down from his cushy seat and approach me. He made a little display of his anger with some exaggerated gesticulations, cursed some more and finally returned to his vehicle. All I did was look at him from my bicycle saddle and laugh.

Whatever his reason was for backing-down, I did not much care to know. Neither did I not mind his leaving, since the heat that day was much too oppressive for unmounting to engage in needless violence. Assert yourself and do not back down, David.

The second lesson is that of simplicity. The bicycle has already outlived the motor, which is being haphazardly replaced by batteries. Kinetically propelled machines, without dwelling on the obvious limitations, require little to be maintained and use little more than the input of human energy. With ample nutrients, which can be provided well-enough by the charity of strangers, and a very basic technical knowledge of mechanics, one can travel practically without end, so long as the terrain will allow it. Try going cross-country bumming gas and car-parts from garages when your 2019 Honda Civic blows a gasket, or gets a faulty sensor, and I’m sure you’ll be laughed out of the room. But, provide a good-enough reason and I will feed you or lend you a wrench so you can get to where you wish to go. Many will be moved by the human propensity to charity and will gladly share their meal with you or provide their warm shower. For what is in a bicycle, really, besides a few basic parts and a lot of soul?

This was one lesson I learned the summer that I learned to live by the dictates of signs, on a strange night beneath a pavilion at the shore of lake Erie. This lesson struck me as particular, and so I find it to be worth dwelling on. In fact, it was one of the few points in my life when I felt I had touched another world.

You wouldn’t believe it, but I had not been cycling on that summer afternoon. Although, as I zoomed past a cross-country cyclist flying a Chilean flag from his backpack along the shoulder of the highway, I grew not a bit envious, smelling the manured country through my open window, wishing to feel it passing through my hair and beard. Feeling the cool air wisp off the lake, I drove, daydreaming about my next cross-country cycle.

“That oughta be me right now, boys,” I shouted to my fellow travelers. We’d been on our way to spend the remaining hours of that hot summer afternoon relaxing and grilling under the sun on the beach. As the day’s remaining honey-hours dripped slowly by, blustering winds began to foretell storm clouds which soon gathered on the horizon, consuming the setting sun. The surf washed away the ringing in our ears left by fluorescent-lit offices as it crashed on the beach. Once we had been satisfied and started to catch a chill, we packed our belongings and made for the car. As we walked, the twilight teased us from behind its stormy cloaks, begging us to stay a little longer.

“Let’s just stay a little longer under that pavillion,” said Mack, pronouncing it like a french-man.

No sooner than our few belongings had been packed into the hatch-back, the sky began to open up. Rain drops tapped us on our already-damp heads as we made for the shelter to watch the storm pass, and the smell of rain-soaked asphalt flooded our nostrils. Little did we know that standing there was that same Chilean cross-country cyclist we’d passed earlier on the highway. He was thrity-three, had long cherry-blonde hair and a beard. He wore sandals and jogging pants and had his few belongings spread out there on a picnic table. He had just come from bathing in the lake. The same wind that made it impossible to secure his tent for the night, blow-dried those long locks of his.

“My name is Camilo,” said he, through his thick Spanish accent.

He spoke in broken English but was able to tell us that he was biking across Canada, had arrived in Chicago by plane with the little he was able to carry on his bicycle, and set off from there, taking the tunnel-bus from Detroit to Windsor and then carrying on down lonesome highways all the way to Vancouver. He ate whatever food locals were willing to give him, and used an app to connect with a network of people offering accommodation to cross-country cyclists like him, and posted sparsely to social media to keep in touch with the friends he made along the way. He carried with him a saxophone and a wooden flute that he played beautifully and carried hand-made jewelry made of copper wire and gemstones or carved wood, which he intended to sell in the city.

We’d tried asking him ‘why’ in that enlightened fashion of studying nature and its causes typical of Northerners, probably so we can put them in the appropriate mental category, but this was a question to which his only answer was, ‘because I’m a hippie.’ We were not sure if it was for a lack of eloquence or the complete opposite, but in hindsight, I can say for certain, truer words have never been spoken. It made me feel like the post-boy in the poem by Wordsworth:

As we were caressed by misty gusts that blew off the lake, he serenaded the moonlit summer evening with Careless Whisper, the music of Illapu, and Los Jaivas. I began to realize, how simple, after carving away its trivialities, life could be, and whether hippie or prophet, he taught me in a moment to live by, or even trust, the dictate of life’s signs.

I would be remiss not to mention the countless mishaps that one is prone to when city commuting, though I am less familiar with those affecting the cross-country cyclist. Of course, there are thieves that lurk in alleyways with bolt-cutters. They will coerce the art to a mere means of transportation. Cycling, also, exposes oneself to the elements of nature, so that one has to be prepared to battle headwinds streaked with icy, precipitous needles bearing upon them, puddles, snow, heat, etc. One must learn to accept the loss of returning to their locked bicycle to find their rear wheel bent like a potato chip, which, unridable, they must shoulder over the metro turnstiles and sit with as they take the crowded train home. Heart-stopping Harley Davidson engines are wont to blow by to unsteady the unsuspecting novice cyclist. Roads in the average North American city are built too narrow and government bodies have little to gain by commissioning projects to make these places more bike-friendly. City bus drivers quite enjoy a game of leap-frog, which, more often than not, they become intent on winning, but we cannot blame the heroes getting numerous people on-time to work. And of course, you have the countless incidents, those tragedies which easily could have been prevented, not by having fewer cyclists on the road, but by having more.

[1945 words]