I wrote this paper as the final for my summer humanities class. The day we were assigned to semiotically analyze an object, I was hit by a car. After losing the object that defined my way of life, it seemed fitting to write about it for my final. It took 3 months for me to get any form of compensation for my bike, and to get a bike of my own. (I'm currently writing about how it feels to have my own bike again... Next post will be about that..)
A bicycle is a not just a composite of parts, gears and thingamajigs. Nor is it just a machine utilized for getting from point A to point B and anywhere in between. A bike is much more than that. It can be your most loyal friend and comrade. Your chariot. Your means of making a living. Whether road bike, mountain bike, fixie or BMX doesn’t matter. It’s incredible that we have the means to propel ourselves places. I never thought quite so deeply into the semiotics of biking, until I got in an accident yesterday, heading back to Cousins from a delivery.
I was heading South down the Humboldt hill coming from North Ave, when my cap flew off. I turned around to get it, and headed back down the hill. As I was reaching the intersection, I realized this car that was turning left onto Commerce wasn’t going to stop. Luckily I squeezed my breaks enough to lessen the impact, but nonetheless I ended up smashing into the hood of this car. I was immediately in shock. Everyone asked if I was okay, and I kept repeating “Yes, I’m fine,” automatically. They asked if my bike was okay. I checked out my bike, making sure the tire wasn’t “tacoed” and my gears still worked. Everything seemed fine. I was so frazzled I almost sped off without getting information from the woman who’d hit me, but someone who witnessed it suggested we trade info. Getting her name and number, I hopped back on my bike and went back to Cousins.
After doing a full body check and icing for a while, my manager said I could go home if I needed to. My aunt picked me up in time to head to Cory the Bikefixer, where I had just been that morning to check out a new helmet. I decided against it, because it had been so expensive. I justified not getting it because I’d be working later and would most likely get enough tips to pay for it in cash. We pulled up to Cory’s just as they were about to close, and had them check out my bike while I coughed up the money for the helmet. Dune was running my credit card as Dan came over and told me my bike was toast. The impact had compromised my frame, and I hadn’t even noticed. Right by the fork on the bottom tube, the chromoly had pinched in a huge dent. My heart dropped.
The bike that I’ve had for the past 13 months was a Jamis Specialized Sport. White with teal accents. Countless scrapes from god knows what. Gov’t Mule’s “got mule?” sticker, as well as one from Kink BMX, Ian’s “Pizza Slut” and of course the MKEBKE underwear bike ride undie sticker. A back rack that I used to have panniers attached to. I joked that she had a fat ass because of it, and my friend aptly named her Jezebel. I don’t remember the last time I had a new bike. Most likely all the way back to my childhood, when I had my teal D.A.R.E. bike that I’d learned to ride on. All of my bikes since then had been hand me downs and fixer uppers.
Last June, the princess Jezebel and I started our ventures together. I saw her sitting in the racks at Cory’s and I was hooked. The test ride had me sold. Only a year, and I never thought I’d have to replace her just yet. That bike earned every ounce of love and miles we shared together. It’s strange how you can take something so incredible as a self propelled vehicle for granted. I had more sentimental attachment to this composite of metal and plastic than I’ve ever felt to any possession I’ve experienced in my life. Moreso than any work of art I’ve made combined. I lost a dear friend in that accident yesterday, way too abruptly.
It’s weird to name a bike. It’s weird to call a bike a friend. It’s weird that people form attachments to material objects. It’s weird that there’s a culture behind biking. Bikes are weird things! We use kinetic energy from our legs and arms, directed by signals sent from our brains, to move us place to place. We interpret the road between cars, the lines painted in the road, other bikers, pedestrians, stop signs and traffic signals. Not to mention the endless amount of potholes and glass you’ll find throughout the city. Our brains receive and send endless signals.
Within 5 seconds, the signal it took for my brain to recognize the car was not going to stop, and I was about to get hit head on by a car was processed. Then my brain sent signals to my hands to immediately brake, and also sent signals to my body to prep for impact as my front wheel hit the center of her front bumper, when the kinetic energy of the impacting of the vehicles threw me onto the hood of her car. Instantaneously, I impulsively grabbed my bike and ran to the corner of the sidewalk as my body sends signals to my organs producing adrenaline and putting me into shock. They kept asking me if I was okay, but I didn’t really know. The adrenaline was telling me yes, you’re not broken, the bike’s not broken, it’s okay. But my brain was questioning otherwise.
I’ve only recently figured out the reason behind my seasonal depression. Once it snows, I stop riding my bike. I basically stop moving altogether, stopping the endorphins from releasing into my body. I’m addicted to riding my bike, both physically and mentally. I stop exploring. Biking offers endless exploration of the city that hiding in a bubble of a car cannot offer someone. We can go places no cars could fit, and can explore the underbelly of the metropolis we live in.
The underwear bike ride has taken me places in Milwaukee I’d never known had existed. If the bike culture wasn’t so strong, I probably wouldn’t have explored as much as I have.
Byrne, David. Introduction. Bicycle Diaries. New York: Viking, 2009. N. pag. Print.
It took reading the introduction to this book to help me realize that I was indeed addicted to biking. David Byrne claims that “[he] found that biking around for just a few hours a day-or even just to and from work- helps keep [him] sane,” (Bicycle Diaries 4). Which is also true for me. It’s because “the activity is repetitive, mechanical, and it distracts and occupies the conscious mind, or at least part of it, in a way that is just engaging enough but not too much-it doesn’t allow you to be caught off guard,” (4). Biking and the repetitive movement that is necessary to move a bicycle is meditative. It allows my conscious mind to let go, and have my subconscious take hold. If I’m angry, I’ll go on a bike ride to clear my mind. If I’m happy, I’ll ride my bike. It helps me reach a meditative state while being physically active, which makes my brain more active. Any day that I don’t ride, I’m more apt to be depressed, anxious, and wound up. David also writes that, “[he] felt more connected to the life on the streets than [he] would have inside a car or in some form of public transportation,” (4). Which is also another reason I’m so in love with bikes. You feel the wind in your hair (and sometimes the bugs in your eyes), and you’re not hermetically sealed in some sort of climate controlled bubble as you are in a car. It’s much easier to find parking, and a lot quicker to get from here to there. However much I despise cars (even more so after yesterday’s events), I enjoy the thrill and danger of being exposed.
Klimes, Kasey. “The Real Reason Why Bicycles Are the Key to Better Cities.” Sustainable CitiesCollective, 11 May 2011. Web. 30 June 2013.
After having gone on a two week trip through the Southwest entirely focused on how man and nature have altered the face of the earth in some way, shape, or form, my views on the world have changed entirely. Seeing the landscape from the view of the airplane is much different from seeing it from the view of a moving car. As it is much different from being on your own two feet to a bicycle. Being in an airplane and car, you are moving too quickly to fully appreciate the world around you. But when you walk or ride your bike through a place, you get to experience it much more than you would have in a motor vehicle. Thinking about how much of an impact the roads have had on the way our world looks never occurs to someone on a daily basis, because we have never known any better. But once you realize that all of this asphalt and concrete are relatively new inventions, you start to think differently about how the landscape looks as you pass it by. In the Sustainable Cities Collective’s article, Kasey explains that you “cannot approach the average citizen and explain the innate intricacies of land use and transportation relationships, how density is vital to urban sustainability, how our sprawled real estate developments are built on economic quicksand, how our freeways shredded the urban fabric like a rusty dagger, how deeply our lives would be enriched by a collective commitment to urbanism.” But having visited Arcosanti, and lands where the only real landmarks are the power lines that stretch as far as the eye can see, this becomes an incredible achievement that normally goes unseen to the average eye. It doesn’t make sense for people to live so far away from their jobs, or to work so far away from their homes. Our cities are so stretched out that it makes finding a job a hassle unless you have some sort of motorized transportation available. Every day I notice something new about my surroundings. Generally it goes something like, “Oh, I take this street all of the time for the past few years, but have never noticed that building,” and I can’t imagine how much more passes people by, just for the sole reason that they are driving and oblivious to the world.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. “The Flow of Creativity.” Flow and the Psychology of Discovery andInvention. N.p.: Harper Collins Publishers, n.d. 110. Print.
Personally, the experience of biking as a whole is a flow experience. MC describes that what keeps people motivated in doing what they love comes from “the quality of experience they felt when they were involved with the activity… [They] described the feeling when things were going well as an almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness,” (110). This is very true for me. Let’s say I was headed to the bank. I pull my bike out of the basement, get on my bike, and ride to the Chase ATM on Capital. The route I take is essentially programmed into my brain so deeply that I don’t even think about where I’m going to turn. My bike takes the reigns and my brain settles into a trance of sorts.
Sylvan, Robin. “Trance Formation: The Religious Experience of Rave.” Trance Formation: TheSpiritual and Religious Dimensions of Global Rave Culture. N.p.: Routledge, 2005. 77. Print.
Another aspect of the bike ride which is meditative is the fact that it is much more easy to escape your ego by being completely submersed in your body. And while this book writes about the rave, the experience is very similar. While they fall into themselves while dancing, I fall into myself more so when pedaling somewhere, or nowhere in particular. One raver explains that “there’s a tendency in this culture for our consciousness to be mostly directed outside of the physical body. And what I’ve found is that there’s another direction, which is to go in the physical body and to really inhabit the physical body from another space, so that you’re feeling your own consciousness participating with physical matter, so that consciousness starts to rest within physical matter,” (77). I have thought about this before, but they put it into words much more eloquently than I ever could have. It’s not your brain and your body, they become one and synchronize in such a way that only physical activity or some sort of meditation can cause.
It’s beautiful when someones words so perfectly describe your sentiments. And yes, a bike is after all a material object, but it is an incredible feat of engineering. The fact that matter condensed can allow that object to maneuver in ways that make you physically and mentally stronger is insane! When I say that my bike was a loyal friend, I mean it. In those states of flow, the bike, the road and myself would all merge, and I thank her for the miles we traveled together.
No comments:
Post a Comment