Old Fools Journal: Slow Bicycle Movement

July12, 2008

Slow bicycle movement

I think I have found a movement that has enough variety to keep my short attention span focused. I have been a advocate and registered in the Slow Movement since I first heard of it. I could say how long in real time units if I knew but it seems as I get older that I get more like a child in my concept and estimation of time in that a minute is an eternity and eternity is only a minute.

I made my first commitment after reading about a town in Italy and their Slow Food Movement (sorry but I can't seem to find that article). I stopped eating fast food when I read of the Slow Food Movement and vowed to take time in food preparation and consumption. If I can't do that then it is better to not eat at all. My record of slowness so far is 30 minutes to prepare 4 cheese and crackers and 20 minutes to eat them. I haven't used drive ins (drive through) in years but now it's not from weight control or not wanting to use a car but is something more fundamental. Fast food drive ins have, like cigarette and candy machines, become invisible and all the food stains on my shirts from eating in my car have disappeared as well.

When I found http://www.slowdownnow.org/ I immediately signed on. Now there is a new one called the Slow Bicycle Movement and of course I, already being a practitioner, have signed on to that. I have a gang of one in my part of the movement so it will swell membership by that many.

http://theslowbicycle.blogspot.com/

I am not sure what kind of style I have over speed but it is certainly style and not speed that I am after.


Competition

I have rarely been competitive. I don't care to be in competition or to watch others in competition. I don't like losing anymore than anyone else but I don't like winning either if another creature has to lose. Their losing embarrasses me. My first understanding of this part of my nature came in grade school so I have had a good while to think it over. Now I think I would like to start a new competition and I will call it “Competitive Cooperation”. I don't think there will be many competitors as winning does not depend on someone else loosing. There is no embarrassment in loosing as even the looser wins. There is no final score as the competition is not over until you pass to a condition that is truly non-competitive as in dead.

As I travel around on my bicycle I see great evidence of both competition and cooperation among vehicle operators. I am sorry to say that the only reason I can say that cooperation prevails is because there is near one hundred percent cooperation of staying on your side of the road. So the scale is heavily weighted to cooperation. This is something that most drivers are totally unaware of. On occasion a driver becomes aware of it and decides to not cooperate and slams head on into another car in an act of defiance. Those acts of non-cooperation are so minor in the grand scheme of things that they hardly affect the total unless you happen to be the one who gets slammed into and of course the defiant ones will no longer have to worry about cooperating.

Everyone is involved in the cooperation without being aware of it. The competition is usually small, momentary, childish and silly. I believe it is done without thinking but occupies the entire being. I have never seen any competition on the street that was not degrading, dishonorable and in some cases disastrous except for the rare occasion when someone tries to out polite someone else. That is so very rare but I have seen it.

American condition

Now I come to the American drivers condition. I am not a psychologist but I am an observer. I think that Henry David Thoreau's "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them" may be in play here. I think that the vast majority of Americans are leading lives of “quiet desperation” and that any change in their life is welcome even if it is an immature act of stupidity. As in....

“I'll just get as close to that bicycle as I can and show them my contempt. After all if I hit them it's just an accident. No one will be killed. That only happens on TV and that's not so bad. I won't have to go to work/home and I'll get sympathy.”

I don't think anyone actually thinks that but I believe that is the mindset. Americans seemingly have scabbed over their sense of responsibility when in their vehicles. They are apparently willing to toy with the health and welfare of others to the own ends whatever that may be. The thought of hurting someone accidentally or on purpose physically upsets my stomach and I am a callous old man.

There is an apparent lack of of empathy as well. When I was young a pain feeling mammal that was hurt, whether it be a human or not, was given a great deal of genuine concern. The more sensitive would weep and even the macho men would remove their hats and dip their heads. Children would be devastated. Now it just ho-hum.

I don't mean to imply that we are mean and uncaring but after too long a day, too long a week, in traffic, starting my period, impotence, in a divorce, caught with the bosses wife(daughter)(boyfriend?), in deep debt, foreclosure and no one understands me we are mean and uncaring.

"That bicycle rider up ahead needs a lesson and I, without considering the consequences, will give it to him. If it goes wrong it won't be my fault it will be an accident."

Lives are ruined or lost everyday because of this kind of redirected aggression.

Children like to use “it was an accident” as an acceptable reason for unfortunate events. By the time we are old enough to vote we should know that accident or not there is still a responsible party and that a “accident” you cause can be a very unpleasant lifetime event. I find an alarming number of adults using the “it was an accident” reason. “It was Gods will” is another scary “reason”. I don't buy that one either.

I by no means think that this is just a American thing but my only other experience was in Mexico and drivers there are just suicidal for the fun of it. It didn't seem to matter if someone was killed as long as you looked good doing it.

In conclusion
We have pills for everything else so why isn't there a pill for concentration. If I were an mp3 player I'd send myself out for repair. My brain seems to be stuck in the “Random Play” mode. Several weeks ago I took a coaster brake apart and in the “Random Play” mode I went on to something else. When the “put the coaster brake back together” tune came up the next time I just simply could not remember how. I have probably taken a dozen of these things apart over the years and put them back together too and I have never had a problem. Fortunately “Random Play” kicked in again before I got frustrated. Now I think I'll just wait for long term memory to kick in.

I received this from a friend several years ago and I sort of related to it then and thought it funny. Now I see it as explanatory.


Diagnosis: A. A. A. D. D. (Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder)

This is how it manifests:

I decide to water my garden.
... As I turn on the hose in the driveway,
I look over at my car and decide my car needs washing.
.... As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on the
porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.
... I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.
... I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the
garbage can under the table and notice that the can is full
.... So I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.
... But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my check book off the table and see that there is only 1 check left.
... My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the
house to my desk where I find the can of Coke that I had been drinking.
.. I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Coke
aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over. I see that the Coke is getting warm and I decide I should put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.
... As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye--they need to be watered.
... I set the Coke down on the counter and I discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning.
... I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers.
... I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with
water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table.
... I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers. I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor. So I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.
... Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.
.... At the end of the day:
* the car isn't washed
* the bills aren't paid
* there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter
* the flowers don't have enough water,
* there is still only 1 check in my check book,
* I can't find the remote,
* I can't find my glasses,
* and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.
... Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm
really baffled because I know I was busy all day long and I'm really
tired.
.. I realize this is a serious problem and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail.

I am going to post this now but first I'll check my email then it's time for my nap.