It’s national Occa Day! A day to celebrate the dumping of convicts on a coastline that’s now the most expensive real estate in the country. It’s also the day to celebrate the big invasion of an ecology hitherto relatively untroubled by far too many people. But that’s all OK. Boot scooting in Tamworth’s Country Yokel festival aside…

I have nothing against the place where I live. I don’t want to live anywhere else and I have seen many of those someplace-else places where other people live (I like the region of Provence in France almost as much as here). Nothing against Aussies either; but I am a global citizen rather than an adulator of human culturally constructed boundary making; especially when most Aussies persist in pretending they are Americans to a degree that would indicate pathological cultural insecurity. Folk here are like folk anywhere else. No better or worse. They are all folk; many of whom drive cars which makes them lesser folk to me. If you are going to claim nationalistic individuality, at least tie that individuality to the ecological realities to which you deign to attach yourself. Flowing robes for desert places, floral shorts for tropical islands. But where-oh-where do polyester-suited tie-wearers and grunge kitted ‘hey dude’ high-fivers fit into this big brown land? And who said ‘we’ own it anyway? I am universally pleased that there are still more kangaroos than people jumping about the place just to remind us that the reality of the non-human world persists outside the city gates.

No, the true identity mark of a man, or of a woman, is not the place they occupy but the bicycling they do. I’m not prejudiced. I just don’t like non-cyclists…

But, even that’s getting a touch tenuous these days. Via my ride out to a local dam on this day of way too many degrees on the Centrigrade scale, I managed an epiphany. Something occurred to me that never occurred to me before. It’s a simple observation, probably overly apparent to every one else but me. But that’s what epiphany’s are for. They power the old light bulb moments that linger in the memory and inject our world views with added layers of peripheral vision.

The setting for my illumination was this long hot road out to that scenically splendid, though caravan infested dam. I ride this ride every Tuesday. 80km of nice fast pace making with a few good hills thrown in to wake me up. Today, being Occa Day, there were lots of Aussies out driving their cars with flags waving from roof racks and bumper grills. And there were lots of mountain bikers out for a ride. They were the source of my inspiration.

You see, anyone can buy a mountain bike. Some even take them off road! But most don’t. And most of those only ride a few times a year. But good on them I say! Better to be out on a bicycle vastly unsuited by design to the application to which it is being applied than to never ride a bike at all. But with this many sandshoe-teeshirted-hydration packed riders out all at once, it’s only natural that they’d end up collating into tribal packs. And that’s where things were coming unstuck.

Riding up behind, it was more than a little disconcerting to notice that these distant relatives of the cycling tribe were riding like wheat farmers topping up on a two-day end of harvest binge drinking spree. Someone had the idea that they should ride in the formation of a peloton. Two abreast and lined out down the road. Except that no one had the vaguest idea of how a peloton might actually work. Except as a strategy devised to totally infuriate every car driver who might come up behind. On every hill, they were weaving around from one side of the road to the other. On hills or the flats, they filled the whole road, to the overheated chagrin of all the caravan toting motorists also out for a visit to the dam. Overtaking them is exciting. Get in close and they loose their brains; it’s like playing Russian Roulette. Maybe they will hold a line so you can pass. But maybe not. My ride became like riding a needle through a dizzy drunken basket weaving frenzy. I’ve never encountered such dangerous road skills from any kind of road user before.

And here’s my point. What do you think the average car driver is going to perceive when they come across riders such as these? Confirmation for their anti-cycling biases for sure. But shock and awe as well. Shock at the scare their random riding reactions invoke. Awe that they’d be allowed on the road at all. But here’s the thing. To the general motorist, these folk are perceived to be cyclists! To their simple car driving minds (how else could they accede to belong to that particular tribe?), these are cyclists, I am a cyclist, I am like them! No wonder I keep getting shouted at by the car tribe as they pass me by. No wonder we roadies keep getting road raged by those coffin-boxed jockeys of fuming tin.

Honestly, to my mind, our causal mountain biking counterparts are more like car drivers forced into penitence served out on two wheels. It’s a forced fit that really does not work. Some might progress to better things; but most will not. But it suddenly occurred to me that these are the folk for whom all this suddenly politically prioritised cycling infrastructure is being constructed wherever we look. I can now see why car drivers want cyclists off the road! I can see why they advocate the construction of cycling paths and the like. And I can see that if, to their eyes, I am a member of that same fraternity, that they’d expect me to cycle in those places too. My source of anger is not directed at these casual bikers, but at the incapacity of car drivers to apply the same nuance of difference and distinction that they apply to their own world of cars. In that world, there’s little cars, big cars, SUV’s, busses, trucks, sports cars and motorised shopping carts; all different and recognised for their various distinctive needs and capabilities. Why can’t we cyclists be given the same rights to distinctive difference? On this day of nationalistic fervour, I demand the right to be called a citizen of the road cycling fraternity. I demand the right to be treated as such. And not lumped into that camp of misplaced car drivers experimenting with chain store mountain bikes on public roads. I demand the right to ride on the road and be given my space. Let it be known that folk in my tribe travel as fast as cars in town. Let it be known that we can descend hills at near the posted legal limits. And spare us from those horrendous cycle paths! I want my own flag! A full-on Caisse D’Epargne kit would be just perfect for the identity I’d be keen to proclaim!

I live in the clouds. For years, as an academic, that was figuratively true. But it’s also literally true. To go just about anywhere else in this vast continental country of Australia, the journey is always down hill.

Now, of course, this is no Tibet. Or the Canadian Rockies. It’s only 1,150 meters here. But that’s still way up there in a country that peaks out (on Mt. Kosciuszko) at 2,228 metres. But no one lives on that (albeit road trafficable) peak. The elevated tablelands where I live is home to people, lots of sheep, a couple of Koalas and vast tribes of Kangaroos. Kangaroos still, fortunately, outnumber humans around here…

There’s some choice of escape routes to the world below. My favourite just happens to be via what I think of as one of the world’s most spectacular bits of road. That’s the ‘Waterfall Way’ that literally leaps off the cliff face of the rural village of Dorrigo. Down, down, down via a windy, twisty motorcycle hooning road. Down from the rolling virulent greenness of Dorrigo’s potato farming and dairy lands into the lush temperate rain forest that girdles the escarpment’s edge like some kind of verdant moat. And, within a space of only 20 minutes, you exit, brakes smoking, into the lush tropical nectar-drenched, blossom fuming coastal hinterland of the wondrous Bellinger Valley. Alternative Lifestyle Capital of the Eastern Seaboard. There are few places where geography changes so rapidly as you descend this hill. Open grassy sheep country to mangoes and illegal weeds; all over a classic, world class drive.

Unless, as is usual, you end up banked behind the caravan lemming parade, gray nomading off to – or away from – the coast on an endless pilgramage to rediscover the imagined pleasures of freedom from a long-lost youth. Which really would have to be one of the world’s most exasperating frustrations to those who choose to fly by bike; motorbike or bicycle.

Which leads me to the fruits of my contemplations on my most recent trip down that illustrious hill. This bit of road is custom-tuned to the maker’s intentions for my cherished Triumph Tiger 1050. But it is an even closer fit to the song sung by Msrs Pinarello as they visioned my Pinarello Prince into this car-clogged world of ours. Up or down. The ride would be a classic.

But I have a problem: all the tin-topped traffic that vermin-plagues this road. The wobble weaving of drivers with skills extended just to maintain a straight line. Clearly, driving round corners is a skill beyond the basics with which they are licensed to comply. Or, infinitely worse, is a skill that they think they possess but clearly don’t. You see, with so many tin box Don Quixotes, corner hooning is a misplaced test of manhood to which they aspire like jousting with knights dressed as windmills; without hitting we two-wheelers as a by-product of their ineptitude. They ruin all the fun! They’d turn what should be the last bastion of road riding pleasure into a plague-centre of mangled death.

My dream is to ascend this wonderful 11 km of Onda fork-wavy twisted curvy road. Then, ride straight back down again. Refill with fat-loaded treats at the Post Office/Petrol Station/General Store/Local Pub/purveyor of frozen goods store in the hill bottom, one-horse Village of Thora, and do it all over again!. But I can’t. I would succumb to blind-corner broadsiding by the talentless tin-entombed throngs who infest the hill. What a surprise for a teeny-pimpled/balding be-bloated mid-life crisised Holden V8 hero to encounter a bicycle enroute to disrupt their fantasies of race track manly glory. That’s outside the death-band of my personal risk seeking profile, I am saddened to say. That and sky diving, ascending Mt Everest in the dark and wrestling brown snakes for fun.

Until, that is, I was leveraged out of my car-oppressed state by a sight to behold! As I was re-fuelling my Triumph at the Jacaranda-festooned Thora Store, I noticed something rather strange. Something unexpected and certainly inspiring. I noticed one of those ‘hippy vans’ pull up beside the road. Hardly unusual around here… But the surfer dudette at the wheel stepped out to wait for someone else to arrive. That someone else turned out to be her twenty-something surfer dude mate on a rigid mountain bike! A board shorted, sandal wearing, surf shirted, surfer dude who had just ridden the ride I’d been moaning for, for so many years. He was all smiles. The image of stepping off a perfect wave. They threw the bike in the back and drove off to hit the beach. Now that made me feel strangely dislocated like an ageing phobic contemplating impossibilities which, for others, are at a vastly closer reach. For the first time ever, I contemplated my big-engined motorbike with disdain. I wanted my bicycle, right now! Right there and then, I would have launched off to take on that ride. Next time, I will. Now that someone else has shown me how.

There’s probably no doubt that someone like Jens Voigt, Heinrich Haussler or Andy Schleck could win a bicycle race on a lesser bike than the one they’re sponsored to use. There’s also no doubt that we can enjoy other things like listening to music and going for a run and enjoy the experience without spending up big. But, I have a theory that finding the precise balancing point of form-function-price is going to be as elusive as finding an alien signal via SETI, so long as we allow the death grip the marketing profession continues to inflict on these trying, post-Copenhagen times.

As we launch off into the teen years of this new era where ecology and economics have, finally, declared open-war, the search for more modest consumerist satisfactions will become ever more important. Sometime soon, the all consuming flood tide of culture change will start to recognise excess as the new ultimate social fopaux. Conspicuous consumption will become the baggage of the ‘naughties; that odious era of the Global Financial Crisis and government bailouts for those who should, more reasonably, be left to float in the bilge of their own vile excess. Lean footprint consumption should be the meme for these new teen aged years of this, our 21st Century.

But the challenges presented by the necessary purge-we-have-to-have, have me worried. You see, marketing can corset flabby reality under the disguise of an iron spun PR girdle. To play the new ‘lean is keen’ game of what should be a genuinely enlightened new era, we’re going to have to shove the virus of marketing hype and vacuous spin into the airlock and open the door. All those marketing campaigns proclaiming ‘eco-sensitive’ SUV’s, the virtues of weight-loss pills and zero-footprint bottled mineral water: out they go! Into the airlock. It’s going to be harder to insult our intelligence with junk like this as we enter these more jaded, post failed-Copenhagen years.

But, never underestimate the cleverness of the dark marketing arts. These black witches work on the very gravity well of our souls: our ego’s. Those master-builders of fallacious social constructs are out there and looking for prey. How many fell for the clean-green claims for enviro-fouling SUV’s? How many sucked the slop of Emissions Trading Schemes as the panacea of all our collective, accumulated enviro-evils? And who fell for the abject nonsense of carbon-offset air travel?!

I declare that the overriding sign that we are ready willing and able to grow up and face the consequences of our environmentally-destructive actions is a new-found cynicism for ALL marketing campaigns. Will the human race evolve to become self-aware of the manipulations of the marketing machine? Our progress will pace that emergence via the rise of a degree of cynicism that has, hitherto, been a commodity rarer than diamond and more valuable than fresh air.

So, to return to my opening point, the new crusade to launch at the dawn of this new decade is a new search for truth; the truth of our real needs as opposed to the needs we think or are told we should have. To focus on an example close to the home zone of my own obsessive pile: how can and should I choose my next bicycle? If I need a next bicycle at all.

As a rampaging subjectivist (truth is in the eye of the beholder), it’s a little perverse that I am about to contemplate objectivist choices all of a sudden. But perhaps mathematics can, indeed, help us out. Imagine an equation wherein we could measure up all the attributes of a bicycle (or a new refrigerator, a new car if you must, or a new TV…) that best suits the needs we might claim are in need of a fix. There’s two sides to this equation. On one side are the attributes of the thing we want. On the other are attributes of the needs we are attempting to fulfil.

Let’s take the attributes of the thing we think we need. If it’s a racing bike that’s desired, and racing is the thing you want to do, then the key elements are weight, mechanical efficiency, reliability and handling. All these attributes are somewhat hazy and imprecise for sure, but we can at least have a go at filing our facts on the decision tree. Notice what’s missing here? All those bits to do with ‘image’ and apparent prestige. Forget those bits for now. Do as wine tasters do and white out the brand. Taste our choices blind to makers names and the like.

Now let’s look at the mathematical bits on the other side. Let’s look at needs. This is the wild side of just about any of the choices we make. Extract, with the dedication of a surgeons knife, the tumours and related extraneous growths our egos tend to impose. What are the real needs? The real needs… other than for meeting the demands our tyrannical ego’s usually impose. If your need is to go fast, suffer a minimum of mechanical failure and to be as unimpeded by technology to put all the power you genuinely command onto the road in the form of speed, we can start to fill in the equation with some realistic facts. If, on the other hand, the real need you have is to look like a Fred, that’s revealing too. In that case, do us all a favour and buy a car instead.

OK. If we populate our equation with as much in the way of measurable or at least vaguely quantifiable data as possible (which means that the machinations of our egos and the related panderings of marketing spin have been removed), we can get down to work. The results might prove to be a surprise.

I’d be willing to make a bet. If we could take such a clinical calculation, unclouded by the fictions of marketing spin, most of us would be best served by significantly more humble choices than the choices we’d ordinarily make. I’d probably be choosing a mid-range Giant instead of a top-end Colnago. Ultegra over Dura Ace. Chorus over Super Record. In a different space, that might mean a 40 inch TV over a 50 or 60. K-Mart shorts over Gucci … Blundstones over Prada. You name it. Once we de-spin the choices once poisoned via that odious orgy of marketing in perpetual copulation with ego, these new lean, more enlightened times should, indeed, be freed to take a firmer hold. I am going to proclaim this new post-Copenhagen, post-top heavy governmentalism, post-consumerism era to be the dawn of our necessary ‘Ultegra-Chorus Years’. Hallelujah.

All I want for Christmas is a brand new Pinarello Dogma; dressed in Super Record, in lovely black and red. No, I really want a Moots Cyclo Cross titanium racing bike. No, I want…

It was probably a bad time to visit my LBS (Local Bike Shop) to try on a new pair of knicks. But as I contemplated the fit and concept of a new pair of duds to update my usual threadbare look, I looked out over the top of the changing room door to note a frenzied scrum of portly matrons fighting over any and every two bit bike they could secure on the shop floor. You see… it’s the Christmas bike buying spree again. The annual orgy of cheap Chinese junk bike buying for kids without the vaguest inclination or interest to ride; or really to engage in anything too far from their well worn couch.

I am wondering about the fate of all these dinky bikes. How many will be ridden more than twice? How many will end up in the local land fill. How many will earn rust rather than respect? I am wondering if giving a bicycle is actually a good idea. I am not convinced that the target intended’s will be contemplating universal joy at the prospect. And I am quite sure my LBS team is not particularly thrilled by this annual ritual either.

Consider this. If you give a drain-pipe, lead-weight bicycle to an unsuspecting kid, what will be the impression of cycling they receive? The gift of a bike is actually a gateway to the gift of cycling. But if you give a dodgy bike, that might taint the experience of cycling for life. Let’s face it. When we first start to ride, any and every hill is a struggle. Distances are limited by the fragility of our unaccustomed rear ends. If a bike is heavy, hills hurt even more. If a seat is of the usual el cheapo ultra padded cushioned kind, the rear end will hurt with a perversity linearly related to the depth of that spurious padding. No. The gift of a Christmas bike can actually cut any latent cycling desires for life. Is that what our frenzied Christmas bike buyers are about?

It’s not just bikes for little kids that can go so terribly wrong. I was observing a stupendously well-intentioned young lady buying her unsuspecting boyfriend an entry level racing bike. It was a capable machine; worthy of enduring rides and genuine sporting endeavour. But, how would a gift like that be perceived? There is a kicker in the tail of the gift of cycling that few acknowledge and for which virtually no unsuspecting giftee is ever prepared. Cycling is most definitely NOT just about the bike. It’s a culture of endeavour that requires; demands; insists on a life-embedded allocation of time and persistent dedication. It takes months to wear the body in. It takes months to break through the barriers of pain to the point where riding becomes an unmitigated joy. Cycling fitness needs to be earned. You can’t tie a dose of fitness to the bars of that Christmas bike like some kind of energy gel. The most important accessory to cycling cannot be purchased in any shop. Cycling fitness can’t be purchased at all. And that is the true beauty of cycling; and it’s greatest curse.

Who these days is prepared to break anything in? Who these days is prepared to wear pain of any kind? If you never had fitness, how can you judge the joys of its possession? Cycling is a rare endeavour. It requires a commitment beyond the reach of cash. But then again, the rewards are also beyond the dimension of money as well.

The bicycle is just the entry point into the vastly greater space that cycling represents. When you give the gift of a bike, will that seedling actually take hold? What are the odds? Pretty low by my observation. But there are ways and means to improve the strike rate that any bike gift giver would intend. For starters, do those who give a bike also ride? If not, the chances of a successful graft are slim. Are you prepared to redecorate your life and the life of all those around you to nurture the cycling gift? This is not some kind of computer game the kids can pursue on their own. The world of our lives needs to fold, if just a little, around the life shaping realities that cycling can unleash. If all you are prepared to commit and the degree to which you are prepared to adapt is the occasional sideways glance, then your cycling intentions would be better served through a photograph, brochure or velo-arpres tee shirt instead.

I have a theory. Bicycles should never be given, they should always be earned. Desire breeds intent. Intent leads to preparedness and preparedness leads to mindful purchase. Purchase has a purpose. Purpose means there’s a plan. Is the plan to ride the road? To ride the trails? To stunt jump off walls? These intentions shape the choice of bike and all that supporting gear.

If someone has a well-developed plan, then, perhaps, the generosity of a Christmas benefactor can play a useful role. Perhaps you can pay for an upgrade over your intended’s current choice; or a great set of cycling shoes, or a helmet, or a set of spare tyres. These are the customers most LBS’s prefer. Real bike shops are into the business of cycling, rather than just the business of selling bikes. The gift of cycling is, really, too big for the rituals of Christmas time.

Cycling advocacy is surfing a rising tide of passion. Every time a car driver runs over a cyclist, the war is re-stoked with vigor. Every time a cyclist escapes a stalled parade of cars, motorists scream a violence of frustration to the freedoms their enemy seems to so nonchalantly enjoy. They complain, they shout and they scream their frustrations through horn tooting bellows and the therapeutic vitriol of prime time talk-back radio.

But it’s a strange kind of war. I am convinced there’s more than a modicum of envy driving the reactions we cyclists seem fated to endure whenever we confront these self-abusing slaves of the motorcar. Read the vitriol. Read into the rage. Dig and you will find, time after time, expressions of frustration over perceived airs of insufferable righteousness we cyclists seem to so consistently convey. We are, apparently, ruthlessly arrogant about what must surely be pretensions to fitness, mobility and ecological sensibility. We are senseless, apparently, to the sober responsibilities of conformity to this contemporary socially constructed, economically rationalised age. We are the wild irresponsible children wielding spanners to their well ordered works. Why can’t we suffer like they do?

But there’s much more to the passions that fire my own particular advocacy of cycling and ‘cycling mind’ (which I’ve officially proclaimed to be the cultural phenomenon of ‘bicyclism’), than the thrills of rebellion. This is a life defining passion; but I’m not just in it to reduce my personal carbon load.

Cycling has indeed become a statement of practical action in relation to doing the ‘right environmental thing’. Riding a bike’s not some kind of a statement of insincere intent (like ‘I donate to good environmental causes’ … and switch my lights off, and proudly proclaim the energy star rating of my ‘fridge). No, cycling is direct action; just like chaining yourself to a tree to stop the forest-leveling bulldozers from moving in – or joining Paul Watson’s Sea Shepherd anti-whaling crusade. Cycling is real. Cycling is proactive. Cycling is putting the rhetoric to work.

But there’s more to it than that.

Cycling keeps the biological clock tracked to a slower, more measured pace. Serious cycling keeps us fitter for longer (until we get run over by a car…). Cycling is proactive, holistic medicine without pills, potions and the whackier rituals of the incense chanting plasti-zen, off-the-shelf health food alternative consumerist crowd. Cycling’s the real deal of hard-earned wellness of body and mind. Rewards are gained in direct proportion to physical effort; and enduring life-embedded persistence. One ride a month at granny pace spinning down a hill is the packaged weight loss programme the deluded seem to think will achieve their aims. No, money can’t buy fitness of the hard-won kind. Fitness that’s earned through effort is the only elitist indulgence with which I am prepared to engage. I love stuff that only dedication and persistence can buy. Persistent fitness is something even trillionairs can’t buy. Manageralist tyrants can’t take these achievements away. These are assets beyond the protective possibilities of the world’s biggest vaults.

But there’s more to it than that.

Cycling is obsessively compelling as an endeavour of itself. Just like I am sure flying would be if only we had wings. Effort and rewards are directly linked and at the command of your legs. Is there a freedom of movement quite like this from other endeavours? Like running, swimming, skiing or paddling a racing kayak? Not for me. Cycling can take me further, faster and for longer than anything else I could do. It’s more all-season, free access, infrastructure independent than anything else. There’s no chair lifts, car portage, time rationed barriers and irksome apres-posing rituals attached to the riding I do. Running is close. But cycling is complete.

But, yes, there’s more to it than that.

Cycling is my kind of club. Anyone and everyone can apply for membership. But only those willing to pay the entry fee of physical and mental dedication are permitted to stay. There’s no slave class of caddy carriers here. There’s no side-line cheer squad apres-associate memberships on offer in this sporting club. You are a cyclist; or you are not. Money is not in the equation of membership. You can pretend. You can spend. But we all know who is real or not. All is revealed on every hill we ride together. This is a club where mind, body and machine mesh together like nowhere else. There are no bald mid-life crisis fatties hiding-behind-the-wheel in the world of skin tight lycra and muscle powered speed.

I must confess that now we are getting to the core. There’s another thing about cycling that can explain the life-hold it has over me. Cycling is the most technical endeavour with which I can engage while still being in control. My confidence in machines of any kind extends to the limit of my maintenance and engineering expertise. I need to know how things work before I can trust the workings of the thing I am working with. Every tiny bit; every part and the way those parts connect. These are the things I need to know and understand. If something goes amiss 60 km out on a remote rural trail, I am in command of my fate to return home. There’s a sense of security there that is totally alien to my experiences with any car. Or motorbike. The bicycle is an holistically beautiful machine. There’s nothing to disguise under the ruse of styling or anything else that’s fake. There’s a beauty of precision and mechanical perfection in every single part. There’s an astounding beauty in the synergies of how those parts interact. There’s a beauty in the abject honesty of design and purpose. In my view, the bicycle is the highest level complexity to which any machine can extend before trust and blind faith enter the equation of use. Anything more complex than a bicycle and you are no longer on your own. Your enterprise then becomes a vehicle of dependency with behind-closed-doors specialist skills and their moderation through the marketplace. Your vehicle then becomes a vehicle of disenfranchisement from the pleasures and satisfactions of doing stuff yourself – and of being in total control. I am passionate about doing stuff myself. I don’t like being undone by the undoing of others. Those who have also lost careers to the egotistical excesses of machine management managerialism will understand…

I was riding along the other day when I came up behind a cattle truck stuck in the middle of the road. It was nose up against a herd of cattle all busy balking at a bridge. Now cattle don’t like crossing bridges; they’d almost always prefer to go around, under or, generally, in any direction other than over the scary insecurity of what they must perceive of as a ramp to certain hell… Same thing goes for horses and sheep. But cattle are particularly hard to push across structures such as these. Mainly because they are so astoundingly stupid. I prefer sheep…

So, here we were, truck and bike waiting patiently while a couple of stockmen threw curses and instructions to their dogs to, somehow, break this stalemate of who-goes-first. But these steers would not shift. They turned their backs to the bridge to counter this threat of barking dogs. They bellowed and decorated the road. They stood their ground like defenders of some kind of lost cause. No one was going anywhere, at all. Until one iconoclastic hounded beast decided to head off over the closest fence; a clever mooove, I am sure, to confuse the enemy. Which it surely was. As now the stockmen have another task to perform quite contrary to their original intention.

Finally, after about 20 minutes or so, one solitary steer turned to sniff the bridge. He placed a hoof to experiment with the security of this possible path. Then another. Looking back, looking forward, our brave explorer took off up the road and, like all chain reactions of follow-the-leader, all the rest soon followed suit. At last, the herd was across and the truck could proceed. So could I, but it was not fun for my clean carbon rims…

There was something astoundingly familiar in the dramas of this scene. Looking at all the excreta on the road, the stupefaction of the target audience, all that pointless barking and shouting and all that dysfunctional milling around, I was reminded of the current Great Climate Change Debate.

The bridge is the Copenhagen Conference. The mindless mentally loop-locked bellowing crowd in-search-of-a-leader is us (well, those not possessed of bicycling mind, anyway), and that notable beast who took off over the fence in search of a better, less traumatic place to hide, is the model of our current political leadership and their advisers (chasing Emissions Trading Schemes and other worthless fantasies).

There are some exciting parallels to note. That steer that took the first step across the bridge … is the stall-buster we’ve all been looking for. The barking dogs are the frenzies of big-stick managerialism at work (wielding trading schemes and associated policy prods) – all noise and pointless confusion to the real task at hand.

The stick might work, perhaps, but all it really took is one steer to take that first step; then the job was easy! In this case, the big barking stick simply inspired that contrary escape across the fence: a diversion and futile escape from the traumas of temporary realities. No, this herd did it’s thing via the time-honoured tradition of grass-roots emergent leadership. If we can catalyse just one beast to take the first step, the mob will follow. It’s ALL about the mob. It’s all about clever catalysation; or the pulling of clever levers to get the mob to move. That’s how fashion shifts work; that’s how religions grow; that’s how social change ordinarily proceeds (except when prodded by the gun of tyrannical Managerialist psychoses from which reality-sheltered academics, public servants, and corporate machine managers seem to particularly suffer). That first hoof across the bridge is how paradigms shift. The impetus for change can come from any element in the crowd; in beautifully unpredictable, chaotic ways. But change does happen. Eventually. Even if only because we all die from the effects from far too much standing around in each other’s ever accumulating poo…

So, you see, the task at hand is not about cattle dog barking conferences, agreements and other associated over-priced diversions. The task at hand is to work on the crowd; directly, intelligently, patiently and with a degree of cleverness completely missing from the current Climate Change Debate.

The task at hand is to spark a revolution of emergent, grass-roots derived revolution of purpose and action. It’s all to do with the folk milling in the crowd at the edge of the bridge. Not with the application of big sticks, shouting and energetic cursing. Those are blunt, unwieldy, energy intensive tools to apply. Much better to get in there and ‘whisper the right words in some well chosen ears’. The task is much more a process of herding cats… or steers, than laying down some polished rails from the platforms of mega-conference ego-fests.

I am un-surprised by the herd culture most people seem to be displaying in relation to Climate Change. All these debates of denial vs. advocacy are the mutterings of a bunch of steers balking at the bridge. It’s all a noise of brays and moooing … signifying, ultimately, nothing at all. Except, via a five star irony of momentous proportion, for all the atmospheric gassing and mega ecological footprint defecation our leaders will be depositing on the bridge precipice of Copenhagen.

It really is astoundingly simple, that first step. Here’s what we each can do. Here’s what we each should do. These things are easy and cost virtually nothing. Indeed, these things are win-win for our personal wealth, health and happiness. Here’s some things for each of us to do that will collectively change the world:

• Control population. We are all in this together. The world absolutely does not need more people. Stop at two kids per couple.
• Reject the car. Use bicycles, or public transport instead.
• Control consumerism. We don’t NEED all that junk!

Imagine if everyone followed this simple plan! This is stuff WE can do without the urging of policies, plots and plans. These are the steps we can take to cross the bridge. Stop watching that runaway Hopenhagen steer. We are the people who make the world work. Not the corporations, tower sitters and the machinery of state. The cause is for each and every one of us to take personal responsibility for our journey across the bridge. You, me and 6.5 billion others. Before the poo piles get far too deep.

This week, I would simply like to refer your attention to the following article that appeared in Two Wheels (October 2009, pages, 132-133). The piece is by Jeremy Bowdler, editor of that fine Australian motorcycling monthly. Despite the fact that the article was written with motorcyclists in mind, it is 100% relevant to cyclists as well. Indeed, I would suggest, even more so!

This is, quite simply, the most succinct, intelligent and insightful piece I have ever read on the mental models we all need to have when negotiating the clear and present danger that cars and their drivers represent to those who travel on two wheels. This article could save a life or two; even yours!

BEATING THE ODDS: STACK THE DICE IN YOUR FAVOUR ON THE ROAD.
Words by JEREMY BOWDLER

Sometimes riding on the road seems like a gamble at best, and a lottery at worst. There are any number of horror stories trotted out by well-meaning friends and family about why you shouldn’t ride, about how dangerous it is and about how they’re just trying to be helpful. It doesn’t have to be like that. You may not be dealt all the cards, but you can stack the odds in your favour.

Last month we talked about recognising your place in traffic, and how to work within the flow to get where you’re going more easily and more safely. This month, we’ll turn to the danger or warning signs you need to be able to recognise to avoid trouble – even before it happens.

Any gambler worth his or her salt gets that way by being able to read body language, by identifying “tells”, those involuntary tics or facial expressions that give away what the opponent is holding in their hand.

Riding a motorcycle is no different. There are any number of visual clues to help you along your way. It is a question of seeing them, registering what they mean and remembering them. Some are obvious, some are not but all help you develop a sixth sense about traffic.

And anyone who has been riding or driving or riding a bicycle or even walking with one eye open will have amassed a mental library of situations that require extra care – usually without thinking about it consciously.

You know the sort of thing: you’re walking on the road, you hear a car behind you, you step up onto the footpath without thinking. Bingo, there’s one tell, and you’ve responded to it.

The classic signs, or tells, in traffic are: a bus at a bus stop. VVill a pedestrian walk out into your path from in front of the bus? The bouncing ball on the road. VVill a kid run out without looking to fetch it? The orange traffic light. Is someone about to run the red? The pedestrian crossing. Will a pedestrian use it without checking it’s safe? The stop or give way sign. Has anyone else noticed it?

These are things every road user should take into account. The next level includes physical things like raindrops or working windscreen wipers on oncoming traffic means there’s rain ahead. Dust trails in the distance mean a dirt road, roadworks or traffic turning form the dirt onto the road (a tractor or a herd of cows?). A mid-corner vanishing point that moves closer indicates the corner is tightening up. One that recedes means the corner is opening out. Cowshit on the road may means cows ahead. A lot of roadkill means beware of animals. It’s obvious when you think about it. And when you think about it, you’re better prepared.

THE URBAN SPACEMAN

It gets harder in traffic, where you’re looking both for physical signs, but also for behaviour, which is made up of tells. The physical signs are the easier, and include such obvious things as buses – they stop often and pull out with little warning since they have right of way. They also can obstruct vision of what is in front of them, making it harder for you to make an appropriate decision about how to ride.

Taxis are unpredictable, are driven by drivers who may have been behind the wheel for 10 hours and often seem to treat the road rules as interesting theories not applicable to them. Always allow extra care and space around them. Especially when filtering in traffic.

Learner drivers are unpredictable and can do anything, anywhere, any time – including very weird lane-changing and frequent stalling. P1 drivers are more predictable and still cautious, though prone to some erratic driving. P2 drivers are predictably (and notoriously) confident
in their skills, with the skills to back up their confidence. Treat with caution.

These threats to Your safety are all easily recognisable, but there are other classes of vehicle that are worthy of your attention. Any car with a four-inch exhaust. Any car with a spoiler. Any car with a sub-woofer you can detect without opening the doors. Any WRX, Skyline, Lancer or ute. Come to think of it, any trade vehicle since often visibility is poor and the drivers are often thinking of other things or rushing to or from a job. And shit falls off utes all the time. Don’t follow a landscaping truck too closely or you’ll get a face full of sand. A friend of mine collected a sailboard in her chest on the Kwinana Freeway in Perth. Her CB250N wasn’t pretty.

Beware of couriers. Old beat-up cars may belong to drivers who don’t really care about their cars or other road users. Bright, shiny, spanking new expensive cars often belong to captains of industry who think they’re above the road rules and who might get shitty when you challenge them. 4WDs are the work of the devil.

SHOW AND TELL

Once you accept the unpredictability of these road users, that leaves the majority of the traffic and they’re the ones you really have to look out for because their tells are much more subtle. When You’re following a car, check to see that the brake lights work while there’s plenty of space. You don’t want to discover it just before you rear-end the Roller in front.

Fortunately, almost all vehicles have a tell built in. The indicators. These are used to let other traffic know that the driver is about to change direction to the left or the right as shown by the indicator. Or that they are going to go straight ahead. Or that they are going to turn to the opposite side of the indication. All of the above have happened to me, and I daresay I’m not alone. The one thing indicators usually indicate is that there is a change coming up. Though not always.

The corollary is that a lack of indication does not mean that a driver will not change direction. Cars may change lanes, turn corners, Pull U-turns or overtake at any time with no indication. Where this really hurts a rider is while lane-splitting or filtering.

Speaking of filtering, when filtering next to a line of parked cars, check their wing mirrors to see if there’s a driver in the car. This means the car will either pull out or a door will open. Check the wheels. If the front wheels are pointing into the traffic, there’s a chance the driver is ready to pull out. In fact, if you see a driver indicating, check which way the wheels are pointed. That’s usually a better indicator of the intended direction.

Watch for drivers smoking, eating, talking on the phone, reading a newspaper, doing the crossword while on the phone or weaving about a three-lane Freeway while spoon-feeding a baby in the passenger seat. If they’re doing something as well as driving, watch out.

A lot of hand movements means a driver is having an involved conversation with someone – either in the car of via hands-free. Avoid.

Watch a driver’s face if you’re worried they haven’t seen you. Make eye contact if at all possible because this creates a connection between the two of you. You are no longer a thing, you are a person and that may just make them think twice about turning in front of you. It may not, of course, but then you’re already on the defensive anyway.

Watch the traffic. Is anyone in an obvious hurry? Weaving in and out, tail-gating, leaning on the horn? Angry? Maybe. Late? Possibly. Unpredictable? Certainly. Give them space.

What about the totally erratic driver, drifting in and out of their lane, not indicating, slowing down, speeding up? Pissed? Probably. Overtired? Possibly? Dangerous? For sure.

In these situations, the best thing to do is to identify the problem and then make one of two decisions. Pass quickly, cleanly and with space and then keep an eye in your mirrors until you’re safely away. Or, stay behind and watch until you want to make your move.

Don’t pass close by and give the driver an earful. He/she might be wandering all over the road because he/she is reloading the sawn-off shottie and is gagging for some target practice.

A transport depot may mean diesel spills from over-filled buses or trucks leaving the driveway. School zones may mean speed cameras and increased fines but, between 8.00-9.30am and 2.30-3.00pm, they’ll also alert you to the fact that there will be harded, time-poor parents double parking, stopping without indicating and trying to squeeze into whatever parking space doesn’t exist so they can drop their beloved children as close to the school gates as possible, without having to actually get out of the car themselves because that’s not part of the deal.

These observations are merely the tip of the iceberg and they’re ones that have applied to our riding. Because you’ll each have your own riding environments, you’ll each have specific tells to add to the ones above. They key things are to keep an eye out, keep your eyes up and learn from what you see.

I remember one instance where a tell saved my family. I was in the car with the pillion in a million and the two kids in the back. Up ahead, a taxi indicated and pulled over to the left. I instantly buttoned off and slowed down.

“What are you doing?” was the question from the passenger seat.

I had just got to “He’s going to chuck a…” when the cab driver chucked a U-turn in front of us.

“How did you know he was going to do that?

I could just tell.

Back in the days of sew up tyres and five speed cogs, I had a passion for tales from medieval times. Castle builders, rural fundamentalism! Life made from simple stuff. Wars, plagues and superstition on overdrive; yes. But life was so … organic then. They were all so local in those days of long, long ago. Or perhaps the attraction is that those were the days when all the things I so detest about modern times were beyond even the first hint of speculation. Air travel for one! The pathology of motorcars, for another. Those were the days before engineering lost control to the religion of accounting and economics. Those were the days when everything was hand made! Those were the days before the ascendency of the supercilious plastic marketing grin.

Yes, I know those times and these times are probably just times different by a degree of stage dressing and fashion… I’ll bet the cart drivers from 1066 also suffered from road rage. And I’ll bet the superstitious bureaucrats from way back then were just as unreasonable as those now blinkered by the new religion of economics. And I bet the foot walkers of the day were enraged by the moronic road manners of those who drove carts. Just like we cyclists are by their descendants who now drive cars. And I bet the pomp and circumstance of life at court was every bit as odious as these modern times of the moneyed plasti-sculptured brigade. Yes, the main difference is probably just down to the deodorants of current choice and the relative amount of horse manure on the road.

Yes, the frustrations of any age are probably just the same in different dress.

But I can admire the romance of those en-castled, herbally-infused, pre Ecological-Economic Crisis days.

Which (like everything else in life) brings me to cycling… of course.

If I wanted to capture the essence of the best of times, for these times or those times, what would that essence be? Erecting an imposing castle in my yard would be a start. Surround that with a huge piranha-fuelled moat to exclude the Mormons, tax collectors, meter readers and suitors for my daughters would be even better. But that’s not quite the essence I had in mind.

OK. You like the Tour de France. I like the Tour de France. What is it that we see almost as much as bikes when we watch the big race on TV? Castles, that’s what! Is it some coincidence that our journey with Le Peloton weaves through France like a guided history tour through that land’s timeless past? No coincidence! And that’s the point. Cycling and the residual icons of a legendary past is a mix like tea leaves and water. A splendid, mutually reinforcing mix of harmonious perfection.

Cycling is set to the same timeless scale as the historical monuments beside the road. As Le Tour cycles through and past the rural flatter lands of France, we can see and experience the connections between our time-defying sport and the time-resilience of the landscape of which it is a part. The historically-paced landscape and the unhurried deliberation of cycling are two tones from a tune played out in perfect harmony. Even the raucousness of the motorbike/official flashing-light, horn tooting car entourage is an essential part of the mix. They’re there as loud-mouthed, fume-bellowing reminders of the intrusions of modern transitory fixations and superficialities into the timeless roots of the sport we admire. These intrusions are so loud because they are so transitory. All this siren shouting is a brave, but ultimately pointless, attempt to stand out from the oceanic-sweep of the deeper things they seek to disturb. Just like disposable wrapping around the real goods inside. It’s the real goods that survive, not the tinselled wrapping foil. Cycling and a medievally marinated landscape are the real goods. These are the things that really endure – paced with time and tuned to the greater, more enduring values of life.

So, who needs time travel back to the romanticism of the deep past? Beneath the neon-lights of modern life lies a river of reality that persists beyond all the odds. Who’d have thought that in these modern times of virtual reality, simulated pleasures and a fundamentalist devotion to money, that something as primeval as cycling could persist? But persist it does and along with that goes the thread that connects all that we were with all that we will ever be. It’s not just about the bike! It’s all about the ride.

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There’s one last outpost of the uncivilised world, largely untouched by the machine manicured perfections of the bureaucrat’s ordered vision. We, the cyclists of the world, are still, largely, free to do our thing. Isn’t it wonderful!

You can almost understand why we’ve been left to last. Consider the different kinds of cyclists out there. Granny coaster-riding her way to the shops with bagel basket attached, is a cyclist. That 10 year old wobbling down the cycling track oblivious to the wider world, is a cyclist. Mountain bikers are cyclists. Lance is a cyclist. Even Cadel… Tandem riders are cyclists. So are recumbents(!) Pork bellied dentists riding the latest and greatest from the artisans of Italy and France, are, it is rumoured, cyclists. I am a cyclist too! Even my mate who only ever gets as far as remembering the bike rusting away in his shed, is a cyclist (because he did indeed ride once). Yes, consider the diversity of machine and riders out there who fit the Bicyclism bill. Was there ever such a diversity in the world of cars? It’s a glorious, fabulous untamed chaos of diversity and confusion out there in the land of the pedal powered machine. A confusion that enrages the Lego Land, Swiss clock tick tock of the bureaucrat’s lab-white Matrix model of how the world should and must be.

How long can all this last? We live in a world where the only sign of economic growth is via the perpetual inflation of government bureaucracy. Every day, in every way, we get more and more policies and rules to bandaid us from the anarchy of our unruly policy-confused lives. Like birds need to build nests, bureaucrats need to layer the world with ever more rules. It’s what they do. It’s in their genes (or perhaps it’s the drugs in their OH&S triple-approved water coolers…).

The bureaucrats have to rake the policy compost of their nests. How else can they maintain control over all the other turkeys rooting about in peripheries of their territorial domain?

So, when more and more cyclists take to the roads (as oil runs out and the rules that govern the mobility of cars finally governs all that mobility away), what precisely do you think the bureaucrats are going to do?

They’ll be wanting to save us cyclists from the compounding anarchy of our under-governed confusions, that’s what.

We’re the last Great Promised Land of unclaimed policy paradise for them to explore. There’s a gold mine of policy claims to be staked. A new world of confusion for our bureaucrats to tame! You can see the excitement build. Restructuring plans to make, Departmental re-organisations, policy summits to attend! World fact finding missions to plan. Green Papers and then White Papers to write. Senate reviews, Commissions, Investigations, Policy Councils to set up. Endless fun. It’s Party Time! A cycling-led recovery for a bureaucracy that might otherwise have fallen asleep…

Clearly, when our bureaucrats turn their gaze in our direction, they will feel the urge to do what they have always done before; to do what it is that is in their genes to do: to reproduce a litany of categories, classes and schemas through which to manifest order onto the unruly chaos within which we have wallowed for too long. In a flash, they’ll be convening committee structures all over the land. They’ll be appointing Committee’s with chairs charged to tame this last vestige of free flying chaos. They’ll be charged to deliver a vision of groomed hierarchically ordered landscapes – tick boxed, cog-driven, procedurally accountable, results/outcomes directed … ‘transparent’(!) … audit-compliant pathways to bureaucratic heaven!

In no time soon, there will be categories within categories with manuals of glorious specifications a thousand pages thick through which to define which particular hole within which we each would then be deemed to fit.

In no time soon. I’d become a cyclist Class IV, Category II, Grade V, open-restricted. Log books required. Annually reviewed. Insurance Category 1006b, Annex 1a. All for the one low and terribly reasonable cost of $500 per year. Not including medical and mechanical certification tests, also required – enlightening our prospects for eternal safety for ever more! Hallelujah! Blessed be the enlightenment bestowed by our benefactors to rescue us from our chaotic untamed-policy wilderness…

As a Class IV, Category II, Grade V, open-restricted cycling person, I’d get a series of rights. Right’s I never had before if only because I was too ignorant to know that these are the things to which I should have aspired, instead of the simple crude pleasures of just going for a ride… Please see pages 1004-6009 of the Official Cycling Code book through which to familiarise myself with what I now can and cannot do. Ownership of said Code Book being compulsory. $910.95 please. Payable at any friendly Roads and Cycling Authority Office (please take a number and wait in the queue). Credit cards – or gold bullion – acceptable. A small inconvenience to pay for the enlightenment now bestowed! Ah Men; long may the bureaucracy live forever… and ever… in accordance with the doctrines of policies decreed. Blessed be the rule makers.

Yes. This new orderly world of manicured policies through which to govern us once wild anarchical cycling louts will sing the song of glory to our bureaucratic lords. A sight to behold and admire! The vision splendid for thousands of repurposed bureaucrats once so terrifyingly dispossessed when the oil ran out.

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Is there anything on this earth more abjectly depressing than a bicycle built down to the price, standards and shelf life of a takeaway McHappy Meal?

It can’t be denied that there are, indeed, at least two classes of bike buyers out there. In the one camp are the enthusiasts. That would be anyone who reads this humble blog. In the other camp are what I would describe as the ‘Cycling McHappy Wheel’ tribe. They’re the mob who expect the world for the price of a bag of chips. They’re the mob taken in by expectations forged in the kiln of packaging and play school naivety.

The McHappy Wheel tribe are the vast majority of cycle-buyers. They’re the quickest to buy their way in and the first to loose interest; with the products of their ill-formed enthusiasms rusting in time with their short-fused persistence. These are the bicycles stowed, lost and forlorn in the shed, garden, basement or attic – or passed quickly on like some kind of virulent disease. Too crude, rude and unwieldy to use, these things blight any enthusiasm before the blessings of cycling ever get the chance to take hold.

I saw a sign! I heard the warning of danger to come. I read it first in the motorcycling press. Hate the subject or not, cycling and motorcycling are related by more than the number of the wheels they share. They’re two segments of a common front against cars. They are two segments of a common front of enthusiasm for wind-in-your-hair, braving the elements, asserted individuality that the car tribe will never comprehend. The McHappy Wheel virus has hit the motorcycling arm at gale force 10. Thus far, we cyclists are still sheltered behind the dunes.

Yes, we are seeing more and more China made bicycles out there. Yes, there have always been supermarket ‘drain pipe specials’ with all the grace and durability of a bag of soggy Happy Meal fries. Yes. But we have not seen anything yet. The cyclone is still offshore. It’s busy blighting our cousins in the petrol powered cycling domain.

Time to introduce the smirking devil we’re about the confront. The Chinese bicycle biz. This blight is as far from the history-forged cycling culture that stars the eyes of all those who truly know what it is to be, and to forever remain, a cyclist. The Chinese bicycle biz is only ever about making a buck. A quick, dirty, scruple free buck to be extracted from the loose change of those who have succumbed to the transfat-gorged fast food acculturation of the world. The Chinese bicycle biz can turn its talents with equal dedication and minimal re-tooling to the production of plastic spoons, nappy liners or red flags. It’s all the same thing to them. But for now, their focus is on the production of the most horrendous, vile, obscenely non-durable motorcycles the world has ever seen. And the great, tragically uninformed McHappy Moto-Wheelers are lapping it up.

There’s a few new games in town right now. Centre stage are the here-now-gone-tomorrow importers siren-songed into the Chinese tune of quick buck scalping busy selling ‘Flying Duck Happy Leaping Deer’ brand motorcycles to all those dumb enough to be seduced by prices way too good to be true. Even though that particular truth is the only truth the buyers are ever likely to find in transactions of that kind… The other game is the sheep-shuffle of embarrassed cringliness as the dudded McHappy Moto-Wheelers wheel their way into real dealers to get their junk fixed; once they find their 24 hour warranty has expired like the mobile phone number of the importers who’ve now so mysteriously vanished.

But what are we left with once all this dumping of Chinese cyclo-junk runs its inevitable course? No industry – that’s what! The masses have voted with their ill-informed stupidity. The real dealers are left with too many bikes they then can’t sell. Those bikes become last year’s models and become even harder to shift. Next thing you know, that dealer with a history back to the inter-war years is no longer there; or anywhere. Then the real-deal makers go under, or worse, are bought out for a song by a Peoples’ flag waving plastic spoon and motorcycle manufacturing company based in the industrial slumlands of invaded Tibet.

This model works even better for bicycles, of that you can be assured. For starters, for most folk, bicycles are an even less considered purchase than the motorbicycles with which the Chinese are now so enthusiastically engaged. The level of bicycle buyer intelligence that’s likely to apply will be even less than the low to which the motorcycle industry has now succumbed. We are all going to be dragged down into the swill-soured bog as the folk start spend-sending our industry to the oblivion of no-return.

There are some hopeful signs. Both the Canadians and the EU have hit Chinese McHappy Wheel makers with anti-dumping levies of 30% or more. To my mind, these levies are a levee from the bevy of the impending tide. Long may these levy levee walls hold! Our cycling future depends on it! Tell your local politicians you want protection! Vote with your money only for the real deal. Spread the message. Support your local bicycle shop!

Please consider making a donation to keep Bicyclism Blog going! Any contribution you make will indicate your support for my efforts and help cover bandwidth and related costs. You can make a donation through clicking the donate button on the Bicyclism Blog or the Bicyclism.net home page. Thanks!