I am beginning to doubt the laws of evolution. And always those pertaining to religion. But in relation to the first, here’s why:

Now we are supposed to think that evolution favours the intelligent and the fit. Over lots and lots of time, traits that improve environmental adaptation tend to be favoured and replicated until they become the norm. That’s the way it works for trees and for ladybugs. But it doesn’t seem to work for humans. If humans are supposed to be part of nature’s rich fabric, then humanity’s evolutionary server seems to be off-line. Of course, the religious types would immediately contend that humans are above evolution as we are above nature; being selected by higher powers… But, given the choice of animal, vegetable or mineral, most folk I know are closer to animals than plants (though they do tend to enjoy emulating potatoes when they take seed on the couch…) We follow the herd just like all the other bison on the plains. How else could you explain the prevalence of football, country music and the latest Australian election results…

No, humans are animals too; squabbling, bickering territorial aggressors just like every other species I could name.

Here’s where the theory of evolution breaks down. Here’s the nail in the evolutionary coffin.

All other animals seems to possess higher levels of cautionary behaviour than people do. Not too many animals throw themselves into harm’s way. Not too many animals are persistently oblivious to threats. If they were, they’d soon become extinct and so that evolutionary sub-routine is served. But not so with people! It seems that most humans choose to thrill seek in the face of death. Or maybe it’s just because they are chewing the cud of consumerist excess to spare the space to notice all the evolutionary signals out there. Especially when it comes to all those life and death threats with which they participate as an everyday unthinking routine. Take this example. Take the drivers of SUV’s (or 4WD trucks as some would describe). There’s plenty of these where I live. As a matter of fact, that’s all that seems to be on the rural roads around here.

Here’s the game. The roads are 1.2 times as wide as the average SUV. The roads are unmarked with centre lines. Our roads have more bends than a bird harassed snake. Here’s the scene. Lady in silver Landcruiser off to town. She drives in the middle of the road. A hat wearing local bloke is coming the other way. That one’s in a 4WD ute with dogs happily face surfing the wind. Neither moves off to one side when passing. Both are doing over 100km/hr (60 miles per hour). Both fix their glassy gaze into the realms of some other place. The same place their minds are always in when they drive a car. Defying physics and, probably, the laws of chemistry as well, they both pass with only friction burns to their driver side rear view mirrors. Not a thought. No inclination to evolution’s proposed laws of evolutionary caution.

Now, let’s spice this scenario up a little. Add in a cyclist using the road. Of course, our sainted peddler uses vastly less space than the width of the road, but using the road is still in his or her set of rights. Just a little bit of road. Now, consider this death-defying maths. One road equal to 1.2 times the width of an average SUV (not including the snouts of overhanging dogs who, unlike their masters, do indeed pull their heads in when passing another car). Two SUV’s passing each other equals 80 per cent more than the width of the road they seek to both employ. Add in the cyclist at, say, another 20 per cent and the total demand for the road is now 100 per cent more than the road that there is. But does this stop those moto-loco’s from attempting to pass at the same time as the cyclist who is now in their way? Nope. Nada. Forget it. In a blinding feat of defeat to the laws of evolution, pass is what they do; probably without even a thought (because thinking seems to be a vestigial mental appendix on the killing fields of our local roads).

And who, might I ask, is the likely victim of this feat of perversity to the hard wired caution that’s built into every other animal’s evolutionary routine? Why, the cyclist, of course. And that’s where evolution is proved now, definitively, to be wrong. The survival of the fittest? The two couch potatoes in their mind-souping SUV’s survive. The fit cyclist is the first to go. Evolution has become a warted parody when it comes to this evolutionary freak show we call our roads.

If evolution worked, the future of the human race would be a universal peloton of fit, resilient evolutionary cycling success. Whatever mental derangement that inclines people to drive cars should, eventually, take them out of the evolutionary game. Car drivers should, by rights, eventually become extinct. With SUV drivers the first to hit the evolutionary exit lane. Where’s the evidence for this? Evidence for the contrary is all it seems we get to see, in these days of oil-fumed insanity.

But, I am not taking evolutionary time scales into proper account. Evolution takes eons of time to play. Cyclists were around long before the first automobile. Cyclists will, it is in all our interests to hope, still be there when the oil runs out. So, will cyclists ultimately prevail? We’d need to wait a millennium or two to check the cadence of humanity’s progress in this regard. But I am, when it’s all said and done, confident that if only just a few of we cyclists survive the holocaust of this, the Morlock generation of human kind, we should be there to regain the evolutionary ground when the cargo cult of this age of the car is finally relegated to the evolutionary scrapping yard.

Do you ever stop to wonder at the astounding degree to which money and the machinery of its making, the economy, rules our lives? The economy is like electricity. Turn off the power and we stand around blinking as the world around us spins down to a stop. Turn off the economy and we become extra’s along The Road to post-holocaust oblivion. Even if you reckon you can ‘escape’ by going to live in a tree, can you really escape from the machinery of money? Are you sure??

The economy connects our dreams and desires to the dreams and desires of others. The world always seems to be shifting to a wobbly balance between those who create and those who take. Pollen makers and pollen takers. Together they sing the song of equilibrium! There’s an infrastructure to support the servicing of our birth. There’s an infrastructure to support when we go to school. There’s an infrastructure to support when we set up a business or get a job. And there’s a whole industry devoted to servicing our death. But it’s not as simple as that. We are each takers and givers at the self same time. Even if you are a bureaucrat on the public teat. Or a recluse living out your life on a self-sustaining farm. You need stuff, you give stuff. Stuff is shifted via the lubrication of money.

Sometimes this can get pretty oppressive. The economy’s also a bit like the atmosphere. Breath in, breath out. Turn off the economy and we run out of air. So, perhaps, it might be nice to head off with a backpack into the hills. But we are then just a battery off for a holiday. Eventually, we need to re-dock and recharge our way back into the Matrix of the economy. The experience lives on only as an asset of memory.

I was once an economist (fully paid up and qualified). So I am always intrigued with the cleverness with which the economy can seep into places you might have imagined as some kind of sanctuary. ‘The wilderness experience’. Big business these days. Water? You have no idea! Trees in a national park? Amenity, Option, Bequest and Market values can all be used to configure their place in the ecology of commerce. What’s the value of your life? Just ask your life insurance actuary for an estimate. What’s the value of a flower or of an hour beside the sea? No worries. There’s a Willingness to Pay measure to value their worth; the market places rations the experiences we seek to consume. The value of a view? The value of art. Easy to do, easy to tax. Fringe Benefits, Capital Gains; they will get their Take.

I must confess to being overwhelmed. Having just set up a new business, I was amazed at how quickly the economy of others started to oil slick its way into our pocket. Two days in business and the stand over men started to arrive. Solicitors and their craven kin wanting payoff for setting up our connections into the bureaucracy of Take. And then the local council caught the scent! Fees for daring to start something new. Fees for existing in their tin pot territorial turf. For what? It’s not as though they offer any known service that we could ever detect… Registration fees, name change fees, rates. Even the local power company wants a bucket of cash to simply register our name! Odious oiks on every side; flabby warty hands extending from every side. Fingers, fingers, everywhere. There’s a blood lust going on around here.

Is there any asset in which a person can invest that can be protected from the avarice of an economy on the take? Is there any asset in which we might invest that returns a dividend only in proportion to effort directly given? Is there any asset that can ever be totally ours! Tax free. Is there any asset that can not be directly converted into cash? That cannot be bought and sold? That’s safe even from the most devious of plans from that vulture-draped tree of local government? Is there any asset in which to invest that exists outside this economy?

Yes there is! There’s an asset of ultimate refuge from a world otherwise owned by greed and the culture of Take. It’s an asset accessible to just about anyone. It’s the one asset that, while operating in a state of perpetual undersupply and over demand, still remains immune to the economy! It’s the one asset just about everyone wants; but no one, even the super rich, can ever buy! Cash will not do the trick. Pretence will not do the trick. Aspirations without effort will go unmet. You can’t delegate it’s acquisition to someone else. It’s even beyond the purview of the quackery of pills! You can have it, but you can’t sell it. Even if you wanted to.

Serious cyclists know to what I refer. Serious runners, swimmers; athletes of any kind. It’s a simple thing. It’s ever so rare.

Fitness. Athletic prowess. Health. That’s my safehouse from the economy. Go on you odious little oiks from the mafia of local government. Go on you legal vultures; you on the take of the government teat. Just try and make me pay! Go you accountants, you who seek registrations for all the other details of my life. Just try to hitch a licence plate on this asset of mine. Shove your fringe benefit tax where it fits. Just try to tax this refuge of mine. It’s all mine! Go Mr business tycoon. Go Mr CEO man. Try to get what I have got through some kind of bypass with cash. Get out of here! It’s my safe house from the Global Economy of unhinged insatiable greed.

Cycling did it. Cycling does it well. Ride and ride some more; day in and day out. And on it comes. The more you do the better it gets. It’s a fragile thing. We have it only as long as we put the effort in. Freedom from wheezing up a hill. The forestalling of the ravages of age. Freedom from the noxious pretensions of the gym. Cycling does it, cycling is the key. I love this ticket to economic escape.

Following my tradition of seeing the world through the spokes of my bike, I have come up with a clever plan! I have a plan that could shift our ecological-economic chains onto an easier cog. It’s a simple plan with which to start a Big Bang. Here it is: allow us all to claim cycling and everything to do with lifecycling ourselves into a more sustainable future as a tax deductible expense! Imagine what would be unleashed if only cycling were so proactively encouraged? Lower buying and running costs. Encouragement to ride; endorsed by the State. Think what that would imply. That cycling is recognised, formally, as a strategic solution to a world engorged by the Oil Spilled obesity of our contemporary culture of cars.

It’s one of those simple plans; a simple plan that leverages a single chain to a chain reaction of goodness that will propel us all to a vastly better place. A catalytic explosion of strategic brilliance. All we need is an intelligent politician to recognise the potential of such a plan. But that’s the problem. Where do you find an intelligent politician these days?

It’s a timely search considering the political games now playing for our entertainment here in the Land of Oz. Here in Oz, it’s election time! And never, ever, has the prospect for clever politics been more bleak. I can’t decide between the outrage I feel over the platitudinous inanity that our political candidates are now regurgitating over us or the outrage I feel that anyone – any person at all (even the car drivers amongst us) – could ever possibly be deranged enough to vote for any of those who now seek our support. Or for the system that props them up.

I have sheep. I have lots of sheep (about 8,000, last count). But my sheep are more intelligent than the general voting public. My sheep won’t follow each other over a cliff. They will resist. Which is more than I could say for those who would enthusiastically vote for what’s on offer here in Australia right now. But if we refused to vote, anarchy will prevail. So, should we vote for the least worst and encourage the continuation of this game? Or should we think up a better plan? Lots have tried, many have died! Perhaps it’s best to simply improve the chain of command; a well-managed chain shifts so much better than one rusted into a single gear… And better still, it only takes a few sharp teeth on the cog of command to summit the hills of these troubled times. So, maybe we should aim to upgrade the chainring of State and conquer those Cols rather than ride the broomwagon of empty political rhetoric.

But that’s just one side of my concerns. The bigger side is why we all are so taken in by this charade. How did politics ever get this bad? Who, precisely, is taken in by all that baby kissing stuff? Or by that odious shopping mall meet-and-greet? And who could possibly be taken in by the inanities of contemporary political debate? We KNOW that they lie. We KNOW that election promises are as insecure as tubulars attached without the grip of glue. The first corner they find and their willpower all comes undone… The cycle of State heads off a cliff…

Politics is all about sensing and skimming the froth of collective opinion; it’s all about capturing bubbles rather than dealing with the real deal of malingering sediment beneath. Skim the bubbles and all that sediment will ferment a new crop of gas for the next electoral round. Politics draws the gas and escapes the mud. Perhaps those vapours are an alcoholic charge to those who prefer to float rather than send down roots into the real matters at hand. Our politicians have no grip.

I posted my contention on Twitter the other day. I said I’d figured out a meme that works for me: I’ll vote for whoever allows me to claim my cycling as a tax deduction.

Think about that for a moment. What would it take for a politician to enact a change such as that? it’d take someone prepared to dig deeply into the workings of the Social Machine. It would take someone ready, willing and able to seek out some clever catalysts for change. It’d take someone with a canny intellect for strategy. Think about it. Why would a politician ever do anything to apparently favour a minority group like us? When all politicians ever do is contemplate the detritus of consensus via the artificial construct of the ‘majority view’. Why would any politician ever favour a group such as we cyclists who are so roundly marginalised by the car-driving majority? Why? Because by tickling that seemingly ’specialised’ group, he or she would unleash a wildly chaotic catalyst for change that would sweep right through the bog of a society emasculated via its dependency on Oil. That’d be pretty clever. And clever is pretty rare! I want a politician who can dig more deeply into the system he or she seeks to govern; to find these great catalysts for change;to find the best cog and work the best chain; to unleash agents that can blast us out of those complacencies that blight contemporary society and the environment upon which our overstuffed lifestyles are inserted way too deep.

I want politicians who pay more attention to the health of society rather than to mustering it towards the electoral shearing shed. I want politicians who are genuinely clever and who are prepared to do stuff that will, at least initially, confound the cud chewing masses who drive their lives with only one finger on the wheel. I want politicians who earn respect through actions rather than words. I want politicians who dive beneath the foam of consensus. Give us leaders like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. I want to be inspired! Right now, my inspiration is only to go for a really long ride on election day – way, way too far from any local polling booth.

I can see and hear him now; even after all those years.

He was working up to his point; a verbal victory of wit. The delivery of a decisive score of intellectual perspicacity to be absorbed like water into a dehydrated sponge. His triple chins quivered in excitement. His rotund button-popping belly was thrust outwards towards us along the lines of a peacock’s tail flourish; at least to the delusions of his own mind’s self-attracted eye… His considerable bulk was, somehow, testimony to the weight of his authority.

‘No…you would never get me on one of those death traps…’ ‘Bicycles are the shortest path to suicide’.

Said and done with all the authority of one who had so very obviously never, ever, ridden a bike. Even in his porky play station stationary youth. And off he went on a rampage to recount every incident observed through his piggy windshield shielded eyes that could contribute to his cumulative log of irrefutable evidence.

‘Only yesterday I just managed to avoid hitting a cyclist. Riding along the road as though she owned it. How do those morons expect us to see them? Worse than kangaroos on the road. Just as dumb…’

Yes, cycling is deadly. We are temporary phenomena waiting in a queue headed Stage Left to an early death. Road Kill to dent the polish of car polished minds. Road kill that needs the inconvenience of Police to explain. Road kill that can put innocent car drivers in court; that can put them in jail! Nasty lycra loonies.

Yes indeed! We are hard to see. Then again, so is every thing else when so many car drivers drive with their eyes directed to anything and everything other than the road. Driving these days is such a busy chore. What with attending to the phone, dialling in the latest news, checking the GPS, checking speed to avoid a fine. All those buttons, dials, air conditioning controls – graphic equalisers, heads-up displays. Econo-meters, temperatures to check and calibrate, iPod controls, rear view cameras, radar displays. Nose hair or eyebrows to pluck in the rear view mirror. Lipstick to apply. Teeth to check. One finger on the wheel. One finger out the window to let them know your contempt; if only the control for that pesky electric window winder could be found… Burning cigarettes to find, lollies to unwrap. Rear seat conversations to conduct. Children to control. Five per cent attention on the road. Pot holes! Speed bumps. Old women wobble-driving off to bowls. Yes, it’s deadly out there… It’s amazing the road’s not painted red with cyclists’ blood.

They listen to the shock jocks jack up their contempt for the lycra loony crowd. A disease of the road! Should be banned. Make them pay to use the road. Keep them away. Psychopathically deranged. Who said they have rights?!

Ah, the challenges for moto-terranauts bravely directing 200 mechanical horses via the whims of a distracted finger; fired by chemistry and physics few if any motorists could ever comprehend. 200 mechanical horses under the control of arthritic or hormonally distracted fingers and high heeled fashion distracted feet. All kept under control via some painted lines on the road. Paint! Visual queues. Visual queues for those moments when the vision is directed at the road. Queue’s to be processed in a queue of discussion, musical entertainments, ringing phones, screaming kids, that sassy Holywood-voiced GPS… Hot babes to impress with the 200 horse power penis extension their cars are imagined to have become.

Road kill everywhere. Dead animals littering the road. Testimony to the safety of being in a car… Testimony to the stupidity of all animals that don’t get out of their way. Possums, kangaroos, cyclists. Road kill to litter their way. Death happens outside the car. Safety resides within. What happens outside is an abstraction from the reality of this modern mobile living room on wheels. Outside has become the virtual reality of a video game. Somehow, if something goes wrong, the game will reset and they can pick up a new life; take on new ammunition and an extra dose of health. Life outside has become unreal. Until they come up behind a lycra loonie meandering all over the road.

Yesssireeee. Bicycles are dangerous! Cyclists are crazy. They are not safe to be on the road. They get in the way of cars. One more distraction with which the poor driver must contend. Plucking nose hair. Avoiding cyclists. Watching that in-dash DVD. Life is such a chore… Clearly, cyclists should be pulled from the road. Licence them. Register them. Hell… just get them out of our way! Deadly Treadlies. The biggest danger on the road.

This post is, of course, already out of date. I am watching Stage 3 of the 2010 le Tour. That’s the one with the pave. The cobblestones in the road. That’s the stage that followed on from the carnage of Stage 2; the stage of the BIG CRASH. You know, the stage that most of us are embarrassed to admit we enjoyed; being the sadists that we are…

So, we are now four stages in. That’s enough to note a few things.

I must say that Christian Prudhomme’s attempt to relieve the usually underwhelming opening week sprinters’ stages has worked! But at what cost? Certainly at the cost of a few bruises, some broken bodies and LOTS of broken bikes. From the riders’ demonstration parade at the end of Stage 2, it’s obvious that at least most of the them aren’t particularly impressed. But what was the alternative?

You see, in my view, Le Tour has outgrown itself as a rider’s race. It’s outgrown itself as an icon for the cycling community to admire. Now it’s all about the show. Now it’s all about impressing the masses who do not ride; impressing the car-driving Charlie set who drink 2363kj Green Tea Cream Venti’s at McStarbucks. It’s all about impressing those who like blood. Someone else’s blood. Not theirs…

Which, I think, is why the new self-appointed le Patron le Peloton, Fabian Cancellara, decided to make his point. The vision of that Swiss superstar herding his flock as a protest parade across the finishing line was something of a downer for all those who can’t really tell the difference between football and cycling; except one involves a ball and the other being the sport without one…Pass the MacStarbucks please…

Was that a spectacle of angst against an overly hard ride? Hardly that. No. It was a display against the gladitiatorisation of a sport that requires more brains to follow that with which the football crowd are usually equipped. I don’t think le Patron was concerned about the narrow roads, or the crashes, or even leaving poor old Andy Schleck sitting beside the road. No, I think the concern was to do with the spectacle of those events becoming the reason for the show. Is this the way Prudhomme intends to boost ratings growth? Le crash, le burn. The footballisation of le Tour. Appealing the the deadheads who love gladiator sport. Appealing to those who love to watch pain and hurting – unless, of course, that pain’s their own. Cowards of the couch. Non-cyclists to be sure. No wonder Fabian decided to react. I am on his side.

Onwards to another observation of mine. If the Belgians love cycling THAT much, I’m off to Belgium to live… What a crowd! They were Alpe d’Huez crowd crowds along the entire route. The God of God’s must surely favour Belgium with passions such as those.

Which leads me to the laws of physics. Bernoulli’s theorm to be precise. That’s the one that says the pressure in a fluid decreases as its velocity increases. Velocity is high when pipes are tight and flattens out when the pipes get wide. Which must mean that pressure goes up when the pipes funnel out. Consider Figure 1. During any given time interval the same volume has to pass through the narrow section A₁ of the pipe with diameter 2h₁ as through the wide section A₂ (V₁ = V₂). Therefore the velocity v₁ is larger than the velocity v₂, and the pressure in the narrow part is smaller than in the wider part. Now, was it just me or did someone else start thinking about Bernoulli’s theorem while watching le Peloton negotiate those incredibly narrow Belgian roads? This explains why there were so many crashes! Those Belgian pipe-like roads are pretty narrow. And the same volume of bikes has to pass the narrow bits (like A1) as has to pass through the wider roads, like at the finish line (let’s say, A2). Watching Stage 2, we sure could see the pressure at a peak when the pipe got wide! At the finish line…

Most of us would like to reach some sort of position in society; hopefully higher than where we might be now. President, general, corporate CEO. Or maybe just a councillor on the local school Board. Maybe it’s a position of status you’re after. Fastest, richest, loudest, best shot or most notorious; anything at all so long as you’re better than your neighbour, sibling or worst enemy. The games people play to out rival others can be the most exciting spectator sport of all!

It doesn’t matter if your game is delusory. What matters is that at least one other person shares some enthusiasm for the endeavour with which you seek to engage. Competition to be the grower of the biggest potato in the village matters if at least just one other person is also after that crown. That battle to be the best can be just as hard fought with passion as any other war.

I’m thinking back to one status war with which it was my pleasure to engage. A truly wonderful spectacle of pointless endeavour! It was to do with wicker chairs. A row of wicker chairs to be precise. You see, to sit in one of these chairs was true sign of success. They were a row of chairs circling inner sanctum space landscaped to define a devotional space of splendour through which to acknowledge (our collective antagonisms and jealousies for) the big boss man in charge. Just like a row of water fronting villas on the edge of some over developed bay, these wicker chairs fronted – and held back – echelons of lesser chairs behind. They girded his royal elevation from the swill of lesser plastic chair sitters behind. Rows and rows of envious wannabes. To sit in a wicker chair at the front, you needed to be at the front of your own career. You needed to be a professor who had published lots and lots of papers in journals that probably no one else in the world would ever – or could ever – read. The more abstract and impenetrable your arguments might be, the more chaotic and abstract your numerate/arcane dead-language purple prose, the more empathic you’re journey to a possie on one of those front row wicker chairs. You must indeed be clever and superior if no one else could understand a word! The more arcane your writings, the less the chance someone else would dare to admit they didn’t have a clue! Yes, the furies of incomprehensibility were a hard fought war of words and portulent posturing. The prize was to sit in one of those wicker chairs! And listen to endless drivel surrounding the administration of exactly nothing for a group of people blissfully anchorless to the practicalities of the rest of the world.

I never got to sit on one of those chairs. I had much more fun watching the sport from the hard plastic chairs behind. It was a sport of pontificational fury with a subtlety of innuendo and vacuous point scoring that would bore the otherwise comatose audiences of championship snooker, the zombie thrill seekers of world championship cricket – or lawn bowls enthusiasts; all words and wind, signifying ultimately, nothing at all. So I took up farming instead!

Now I’m wondering about the very concept of fame. Is life’s biggest goal really to occupy some dodgy wicker chair, or to gravitate to that corner office; of simply to be called ’sir’? Is it ever just about the height of your pile of cash? Is it about the size of your house? Or yes, about how fast or far you can ride a bike?

It’s the rules of engagement rather than the nature of the games we play that matter most. If your game is to lead, but all you’re trying to lead is a bicycle race, then the tool of engagement is just your legs. If your game is to lead an empire, the tool is an army of guns or diplomats. If your pathway is through war, not everyone’s going to be equally impressed. Someone’s going die. Or at least loose their house. That battle for the wicker chairs was pretty tame. The fallout was just envy and spite; rather than much in the way of blood. The game to assert individual beliefs is much much worse. Mad mullahs empowered via the compulsion of bombs is a different kind of engagement to be sure. To have our view of the world be constrained via the slit-visioned veils of some one else’s prejudiced beliefs is a tough shroud to wear.

Which is why we should all sit back and reflect on the harmless glory of sports that engage only through personal fitness and the capacity to play well as a team. That’s why cyclesport is a model for the sustained future of our race. Consider the energy of a prospective corporate tyrant or of one who would become the chief faschist in charge. How much better for all if those compulsions to grind could be diverted to pedals instead!

I have a vision! Imagine a word where all wars of ego could be resolved through summiting a col rather than mountains of underlings. Where the energy of success is measured by personal power meters rather than by the energy of other people’s resources if not by their blood and misery. Board room brawls should be resolved through heading out for group ride. Military summits should be negotiated through climbing a hors cagegorie hill rather th through poker play with a stock of nukes. At least let’s restrict our quests for personal supremacy to thrones of no greater stature than a row of wicker chairs.

Iron Man
Ok, try this. Take any mega star hero, your local politician, your President, Prime Minister or just your immediate Boss. Remove the support system of fame. Take away the Mercedes Benz, robes of honour or office, the Rolex watch, the paid-to-be-adoring crowd of zealous acolytes, the power suit, the penthouse suite and the truck loads of cash – and what do you see? Just see how vulnerable and unimpressive this one time hero has become. Someone pulled the plug on his aura. The magic, the noise, the glare of glory was but a lightshow connected to a powergrid of spin. The cogs spin off like a mechanical clock blasted by a gun. The hero staggers out and lands on her knees. He has to learn, once more, how to walk. She’s now just a doddering spectre of the big cog he once was*.

When you removed the tower of power, only the spark that once ignited that one time furnace of fame remains. The empowerment, the authority, the aura and the mystique is gone. What was it that once impressed us so much? Was it the man (or the woman) or just the blaze he ignited? Was it the aura or the man? Was there anything, really, ever there at all? Perhaps all the persona we saw was the suit. The suit of iron. The Iron Man suit! A man inside pumped to power via super electronics and a loud Hollywood script. Imagine an Iron Man hero pumped not by electric whizz bang, but by a kingdom of slaves, or Personal Assistants, or five hundred kids who stack his shelves. Or by 100 underlings aspiring upwards to his job. Or by the less inspired who are inspired by anything bigger or just more noticed than themselves.

How easy it is for the frailties of a single man to hide in a machine of spin like that. He hides within and blinds those who would look more closely by shining the light of his fame in their eyes. Let them watch his flashing lights. His shiny titanium shields. His gas jets for self propelled flight. He’s like the Wizard of Oz. Or like the organic blob of seething malevolence that hisses and fizzes inside a Dalek suit. An individual can ascend to a great height when elevated on the shoulders of minions paid and placed to hold him up.

When we do manage to catch a glimpse of the man inside the suit, we are almost always disappointed. He does not withstand that pared off scrutiny for long. His unsupported star soon fizzes out as we watch his failures, blemishes and a reality that increasingly resolves down to just a man in the crowd. Just another guy. Or worse.

People need, apparently, to admire their leaders. Otherwise they tend to throw them out. So leaders need to impress. Leaders can choose how to realise such an aim. Leaders can design the machine that drives their ambition forward. Leaders might build a suit of power. Leaders might dig their moats and build their personal myths. The machinery of power bloats the more the man at the core is incapable of impressing all on his own.

I am watching the pandering inanities of our political leadership. The Big Man sits on an Everest of faces arrayed like a mosaic with a million parts. Picking a face to blame is like picking a face from outer space. They all blend in and fuse to one big amorphous mass. It’s hard to point the finger of blame when everyone looks exactly the same. Unless, of course, that someone chooses to be noticed to take an occasional hit of praise; or to accept their own personal 15 minutes of fame. Meeting a leader who chooses to stand out and alone gives us a shock. Not from the electricity of his personality, but through the disorientation of seeing The Man resolved from that empire of minions that usually elevates him from view. We sense that something is wrong… Especially if our admiration was actually based on the horse of power he rode rather than on just the man himself! How impressive is that bit on the very tip of Mt Everest? Is it not made impressive by the 8,000 meter mound of ground underneath?

Bicycle Man – Bicycle Woman!
There’s two ways to impress. There’s two ways to lead: by taking the lead up that hill that leaves everyone else behind, or by fighting from the safety of being out of range (of scrutiny, or of ever actually being seen at all). Clever leaders are ever so rare. Clever leaders don’t mind being revealed through letting the folk see the power of their pedal strokes. Clever leaders are happy to reveal the machinery at their command; to let us watch how all the cogs at their command interconnect. Good leadership lets us observe the part the leader plays; it allows us to see how all the cogs connect through the chain the leader drives through the sweat of his personal effort. Clever leaders are happy to let the cameras watch their smooth cadence and prowess in the hills. Inane managers prefer to ride a black box instead. They don’t want the cameras focusing in on gears they grind, so they veil their cogs under a bureaucratic veil of management smog.

Lousy leaders need their Hors Categorie hills of underlings to take up the strain; to hide their mistakes, to cloud the roles they take. The art of their part shifts from the pedalling of cogs to the shifting of blame. They prefer to ride their minions through the cowardice of remote control. They hide inside that Iron Man suit!

If you load up a bicycle with all this junk of management fat, you won’t even get to the starting line. The frame will crack and your wheels will buckle and you’ll just sit there in the middle of the road. You can stall the race. You can stop some from getting around.

Now I know what a cynic might say. The bicycle leadership model is subject to all the vagaries we see on any Grand Tour stage … like Cadel Evans having a really bad day. But! And this is the key. If leadership works like a good cycling team (which counts Cadel out), then there are replacement leaders to take a pull at the front. There are always alternative leaders in the Peloton of good management. Leaders inspire and mentor their replacements. Leaders inspire the harmony of a team. You don’t need to multi-layer mountains of support for just the man at the top; you invest in the functioning of a team of talent that can mix and match at any particular race and fit the idiosyncrasies of any particular road. You don’t need one bloated Sherman Tank to rule the world. You don’t need to invest everything in just the one Iron Man suit. Better to invest in leadership teams where every cog and every chain is open to inspection by anyone who cares to observe. How long does it take to replace a wheel in a Grand Tour stage? How long does it take to fix the dodgy cogs of Goldman Sachs?

*my attempt to be politically corrected to the specifics of being gender non-specific has clearly failed… Or as I used to suggest to my dumbfounded students, ‘bugger the glass ceiling, just give me leaders like Jeannie Longo’. That’s Jeannie in the photo above.

Feeling low? Feeling lethargic? Not enjoying life like you used to? Are you a male? Are you a man? If you are a woman, read on and laugh…

Are you ready, willing and able to attend to the servicing of your car and household plumbing but not to the necessities of your own physical health? Happy to clean the plugs of your lawn mower but not the congestion of your heart and lungs? Convinced that the market place is the broker between every problem and its cure? Want to re-charge your health just like you’d recharge your ‘phone? On the market for eternal youth? If so, then take the test on the left*. If you answer ‘yes’ to two or more of these deeply insightful questions, sign up now! Buy a round of pills and become the Superman you always thought you were. Captain America! Iron Man with jets. All yours for a measly $500 per month. $6,000 per year. $60,000 for ten. So long as you don’t die of the side effects…

Yes sir. Answer ‘yes’ and your problem is ‘Low T’. Low testosterone. The latest designer health malady and co-joined cure from Big Brother Pharma. Hand crafted psychoses and associated cures; direct to your door via the fast lane of the marketplace.

Read the questions. What else does this list remind you of? Are these the symptoms of a life let go from too much wallowing in the couch? Aren’t these the symptoms of a bicycle-shaped hole in the life of those afflicted by sloth?

Yes, I could hijack this stupid questionnaire and corral the argument as a pitch for more cycling in your life. All the issues it highlights can be addressed through spending one hour per day on your bike. But, I do confess, there are side effects from the cycling-cure that should footnote any cycling advocacy of that kind. Read the small print that should be attached to cycling your way back to good health. Perhaps these side-effects are enough to keep the mob planted in their couches, sucking pills instead of pushing pedals. I’ll do my community service and spell it all out. Read the following list.

The Small Print… Side Effects of Cycling Yourself Back to Good Health

* I am not going to give these turkeys any linklove by referencing this quiz. Just Google ‘Low T’ and ‘quiz’ if you insist on knowing more. Viva və läs′ə pēd′

For some strange reason, few people ever want me to drive a car these days. My family suggests that they’d rather walk… Indeed, my kids say that walking is faster.

You see, I have this theory. My theory is that whatever speed is good enough for a bicycle is good enough for a car. I mean to say, I can get most places on a bike in reasonable time.

Which got me thinking, as I do when I’m out on a lovely long ride. What if the whole world could slow down to the speed of a bike? Such a nice thought. Especially considering that this thought of mine happened at just that point when a double trailered cattle truck was overtaking at ten times my speed on that lonely, dusty, gravel shrouded, oh so very very narrow road.

Let me run with this thought play of mine. Assume, somehow, that all vehicles were tied to the maximum speed of a bicycle. Not a kiddie’s BMX. Or some first timer’s wobbly ride. No, let’s assume the speed of, say, Louis Leon Sanchez. Or of Lance, if you insist. What’s that? About 45km/hour average on flattish roads? And about 100km/hour down really nice, steep, properly tarred hills. [That's about 28m/hr and 62m/hr respectively, for those of you who still clinging to the Imperial system - like a drowning sailor clinging to a raft on the edge of an earth thought to be as flat as a dinner plate...]. But there’s more. Assume as well that your daily dose of travel is also linked to the possibilities of the pedal: about 200km in a really, really, good day. Of about 7 to 8 hours. Before the average punter would pass out.

Imagine a world slowed down to the pace of our pedal powered legs. Instead of 1000km in a day, you’d be looking at 200 instead. Or more likely, about 100 [62 miles]. Imagine what that would imply.

For starters, people would start thinking more locally than they once might have been inclined. People would stay closer to home. They’d shop, work and play within a radius of a good two hour ride. Local businesses would start to pick up. They, in turn, would start sourcing their own supplies from closer to home. We’d all start becoming vastly more locally self-sufficient. If you insist on getting stuff that’s further away, be prepared to camp out as journeys that once took a day by car would now take up to a week. As our local communities are recharged, so too would be our employment. And that long-promised era of internet commuting would really take hold! More and more of us would start working from home. Think of the CO2 that would then stay in the ground instead.

Globalisation would wither like the dried snake-oiled skin it always was. Globalisation of trade in goods and the globalisation of all the world’s stupidities. The globalisation of culture into some odious amorphous mash. The globalisation of identity. The globalisation of financial crises. The globalisation of impacts further out than our own back yards! Import the goods, exports the bads.

But electrons would still be free to swing at the speed they need. The internet would keep us connected to the globalised crowd sourcing of ideas, creativity and learning. That’d keep us from falling back to medieval times. The best of the past fortified by the knowledge and technology of this internet age.

Our thoughts of distance would start to compress. Distance would recede ever further away. We’d start becoming re-regionalised all over again. Big urban centres would become even more centred around nodes of our now slower paced transport modes. Planes would fall out of the sky! They’d never be able to take off at bicycle speed… Ships would start sailing again. Trains would matter as they once did and always should. Cars would become an even bigger pain. And how many folk will persist with SUV’s when it takes all day to reach the next pit stop for beer?

How could we all go off to war if it took us a year to get to the front line?

If you are going to shoot off a missile at pedal powered speed, you’d better make sure your nuke has got a thousand kilometre fuse…

And just think how much more careful we’d all start being about the garbage we throw out. If our trucks can only cart your junk 100km in a day, in no time at all landfills would leech their return to your back yard fence. It’s harder to ship the stuff off to some distant place when distance is compressed by how far you can ride a bike in a day.

And what if you could no longer depend on instant responses from the ambulence, fire fighters and the police. We’d probably become somewhat more circumspect about the risks we take and the things we do that might cause offence. It’d become easier to catch a bicycle thief when the best he can do is escape at the same pace as you. Just maybe the village doctors might start making house calls again! Imagine.

And what’s the future of the business lunch when it would take those business men all day to reach their wine and truffles bloated troughs?

And what, oh what, would be the future for golf! So long in the commute and so little time on the green. There’d be no time left for swilling at the 19th hole.

Life would slow down and we’d start noticing the details our speed once blurred from view. Journey’s would become a time for living rather than an interruption between destinations. Life lived along the way. The smaller stuff of our lives would grow to become life’s more exciting adventures. A trip to town would become yesteryear’s trip overseas.

Just imagine. And best of all, next time I come across that double trailered cattle truck, I could pass him instead!

This is not about politics. It’s not really about sheep either. But it is about standing out from the flock; being the only sheep dressed in lycra rather than ubiquitous wool.

It’s also not really about my pathological aversion to that most arcane of socially constructed curiosities: wearing a suit and tie.

But let’s start with a game currently being played here in down town Australia. No doubt the same game is being played where you live too. Londoners will relate pretty quickly I am sure when they consider a certain Mayor called Boris. This is about what happens when we allow the cyclist we are to extend further out into life than out-of-hours ‘private time’. It’s about being unordinary when ordinary is how you would otherwise maintain your position in the flock.

It’s perverse, all this. Just consider the conundrum of someone like a politician grappling with the duality of the need to be noticed while, at the very same time, being a well-behaved member of a team. Stand out and the harsh sharp blades of conformity are likely to take off your head. Blend in too much and the folk won’t notice you are there. Is life really about the art of micro-tuned subtlety? Or can we become the erupting volcano in the room that’s pretty hard to miss?

Segue to Australia’s latest Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott. I have no interest in his politics, or of any other politician for that matter (particularly the towering inanity of our own particular local member…) But something caught my eye a while ago. Picture this. The reporters were interviewing Tony Abbott in his plush Canberra office. Sitting beside his desk was his bicycle. I am almost certain that this is the first time a bicycle has sat beside the desk of such a senior politician in this country, or probably anywhere else as well. Did George Bush prop his Trek beside his desk in the White House? Does Boris do so in London town?

I didn’t hear what Tony Abbott was saying. I was transfixed by the bicycle beside his desk! Then, the next thing we heard was that Mr Abbott was competing in an Iron Man event; the media was apoplectic in shock. Now, there’s this. A Pollies Ride from Melbourne to Sydney. See the picture above (click on it to make it bigger. Follow this link to read the full story). He was going to ride his bike as part of a campaign to meet and greet; to connect and learn. And all on tax payer time! Now I am pretty sure this is getting down to seriously unique. One quote from the story is worth a vote to note:

…no one would be complaining if Abbott were doing the trip in a car instead of on a bike

Exactly. Precisely so. There’s serious difference going on here. This guy’s not playing the lame same game like everyone else. Every hack journalist in the country is laying inane sporting metaphors over the story; which serves to highlight their own insecurities rather than to serve effective derision on the pedalling pollie target in their sights. Take this intellectually disabled backfiring jab:

If the wheels of government only turned when Abbott wasn’t on his bike we wouldn’t get anything done

I bet the turkey who said that is permanently dressed in a suit; porky belly jammed up against his regulation desk. Dreaming of McDonalds and watching Australia’s Greatest Loser on TV.

But this is not just about one politician daring to admit cycling further into the highway of his life. It’s about why and how it is that so few other cyclists are prepared to go so far. Or to go so far in the shining light of the public’s unfiltered gaze. I mean, the car crowd are never shy to park their cars in the public gaze. The CEO of my last organisation even had a sign erected over his parking space so that everyone would know that that sporty little BMW was his. A statement of how he perceived himself, I guessed. (An open-topped, underpowered mini-man car). So why can’t we extend the same egocentric posturing for business hour posing to our bicycles as well?

For good reasons, that’s why! Because there’s more to a bicycle than posing. Anyone can stick a Colnago on the wall. But only a cyclist can ride it to the purpose of its design. There’s no roaring V8 of noise to confuse prowess for pose with a bike. You just look a dork if you can’t ride to match the bike you prop beside your desk. Being a cyclist is a more complete package of a statement to make than any business suit or car can provide.

I want my leaders to possess at least some degree of leadership! To lead, you have to be out front. Or at least prominently leading from behind. You can’t lead if you are invisible inside a flock. Leadership requires demonstrable qualities of distinction. Otherwise, just let the flock make it’s mob-meandering emergence like the happenstance of driftwood floating on a river. Like a mob of sheep, the flock will eventually end up in some place other than where they started. But they are still going to get shorn, in the end.

I know there’s some good qualifiers to all this, of course. You don’t necessarily need to voice your distinctiveness by stepping out in lycra and parking a bicycle beside your desk. It’s possible to use other means to escape the black hole attractions of floating with a flock. You can be distinctive via intelligence, for example. Or inventing stuff that’s totally new. Or by being immune to anger; or sticking to your principles, or anything else that maintains your orbit around the gravity well of the otherwise inane.

And yes, I am assuming it’s leadership that Mr Abbott is demonstrating here rather than just a predilection to pedal while his tax payer funded metre is running. Not all cyclists are leaders and not all leaders are cyclists (unless you are in a pro-cycling team). But his notions of pedal powered community mingling do have huge appeal; you can’t be more open to community access than that. They don’t make bullet proof cycling vests and it’s ever so hard for security hit teams to keep you under control when you are out on your bike. Especially when you are Iron Man fit and your security goons can’t keep up…

But I like the cut of this politician’s leadership suit. The message is clear. He’s in command of his security to be different; distinctive and assured. It matters not if his politics are different to what I’d ordinarily choose. That’s not the point. This person stands out. We can read him with greater clarity than is usual in the flock that goes for leadership these days. If someone is prepared to stand so high; to stand out so far; then we can at the very least admire him for allowing our judgements to be so easily made. His orbit may be heading off into outer space. But at least he is in orbit rather than decomposing at the bottom of the bog.